Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(62)

The layers of him, hard and impenetrable—they hadn’t been built up overnight. They’d been built up through eons, through his father’s abuse and his brother and sister being threatened, his baby dying. But inside, underneath it all, was pure longing. Like mine.

It was why he dragged me from the dorm at gunpoint.

Why he held me down and filled me with his come.

“Family,” he said, with a cold laugh. “Yes, family. Don’t know what I’ll do to you? How I’ll hurt you and f*ck you and break you? When I look at you, that’s all I can see, how much I’ll destroy everything that you are.”

His fingers worked quickly at my jeans. Then he shoved them down with my panties until they pooled around my thighs. The hard length of his cock was heavy on the top curve of my ass, resting there, threatening.

He bent close to my head. “But then you know that,” he murmured. “You saw that firsthand. When I let you stay in my house, when I locked you in my f*cking bedroom. I don’t want anyone to touch you. Don’t want anyone to even see you.”

The blunt head of his cock nudged my sex. He thrust deep in a single push, and I cried out, impaled, split open. My whole body was shoved forward, and my forehead fell to my arms, resting there—the only soft thing I could feel. His cock inside me was steel, his fingers on my hips like a vice.

“Except for me,” he said hollowly, almost haunted. “And I’ll ruin you all by myself.”

I wanted to tell him no, no, you didn’t, you won’t, I’m fine, but he thrust back inside me, stealing my breath. I cried out, because it did hurt, it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe—like the panic but different, again. He was doing this to me, turning me inside out, and I couldn’t respond, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but take it.

“That’s what you said, didn’t you?” He thrust deep, punctuating the question with a groan of pleasure. “I’m just like those f*ckers in the penthouse. I want to f*ck you, to own you, isn’t that right? Just like them.”

I was sobbing now, head in my arms, being impaled from behind. “No, no,” I said, even though I did—God help me, I did think that. I wanted him to f*ck me, to fill me. I wanted him to claim me in the most primal way a man can claim a woman.

“I do,” he whispered, harsh and cruel against my neck. “Say it.”

“No,” I whimpered, weaker now.

“If you don’t say it, I won’t come inside you.”

I was trembling, on the verge of coming, shaking with the need to hide the truth, to expose it. “Please. Please, take me. Use me. Take me.” Tears tightened my throat, making my voice thick, my words somehow more raw. “Like them.”

He surged back inside me with a grunt of triumph, his hands harder than before, almost bruising me to the bone, and I reveled in the violence, the need of it. As if for one moment he might actually follow through. He might actually keep me.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m just like them. No f*cking good. Hurting you, using you—and you like it, don’t you? Making you mine so you’ll never be able to leave. You f*cking love it.”

I whimpered, unable to deny the truth of it. I loved what he did to me, how he broke me and put me back together. I loved the way I felt when he touched me, as if he were the soil wrapped around my roots, holding me so tight I could never get free.

He pounded into me, furious, turning my body soft and liquid—that was the only way to be in the face of such force, with the cuts on my hands and knees, spilling over. “You’re so good, kitten. So f*cking good.”

His body stiffened around me, pushing some of his fury into me, his strength, something to carry with me even when the inevitable happened.…

And then he pulled out.

His cock pulsed against the flesh of my ass and his come—hot and liquid lava, that had only ever been inside me, deep in my body—spilled over my back. In a matter of milliseconds it was cooling, hardening, turning from something hot and intimate into something cold. No.

My chest constricted with grief. I didn’t want to come anymore.

Except he reached around my body to play with my clit. It only took two circles of callused finger pads, and then I was coming too, squeezing around nothing, dampened only by own arousal instead of his come.

I was crying by the end, soft tears that felt like goodbye. A wordless denial.

He pulled away and straightened our clothes. A handkerchief cleaned my back, taking away what he usually forced inside me. I didn’t want to think about what it meant. He had always forced me to him, even when he thought it wasn’t the best thing for me. He had always come inside me, even when I hadn’t consented to it.

So what did it mean that he pulled out?

He laid me down on something soft and bunched up under my head—his suit jacket? Something else draped over me, a thin and wide blanket. I fingered the fine material and felt a collar, buttons—his shirt.

But he would be cold. He would be—

“Shhhh,” he said, stroking my hair. “Rest now. You’ll be out of here soon.”

And I drifted like that, his hand on my head, his voice in my mind. I floated until the sound of scraping rock told me that someone was coming on the other side. I scrambled to stand up, watching as light broke through suddenly, men with picks and hard hats on the other side calling my name. A rescue.