Taboo: A Dark Romance Boxset (Stud Ranch 1)

I cry out in pleasure while he drops kisses along my shoulder. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispers. “So fucking perfect.”

And then I’m crying again. But not because it hurts. Or maybe it does. Hearing those words that are always so impossible for me to believe, from him, in this moment with everything stripped down between us.

Does he know what he’s doing to me?

Does he know that in this moment he could break me with a single word?

Because right now, right here, I’m raw.

This is the same place Bryce Gentry used to take me. But after Bryce got me here, he never told me I was perfect.

He brought me to my most vulnerable and then let me know how worthless I was. Useless. Ugly. Cheap. Over and over. He took me to the brink and then instead of lifting me up, he’d stomp me under his heel.

But when Dylan cups my face so that I’m looking back at him, his eyes are full of the wonder from earlier.

He swallows hard, not uttering a word as his eyes search mine. That’s when I see it. I’m not the only one raw right now. I’m not the only one cut open like a heart patient on the operating table with their ribs spread wide.

I reach a hand around to touch his face, too. I scrape my thumb down the stubble on his jaw. I run my forefinger across the slight lines on his forehead. He can’t yet be thirty but he looks older. Weary beyond his years.

He snatches my hand and brings it to his lips, kissing my knuckles. And then he sucks my fingers into his mouth, all the while moving slowly but forcefully inside me.

I shudder and feel my eyelids flutter closed.

Oh God.

I thought hard and brutal was the best sex I’d ever had but this? This passionate, slow intensity?

“Eyes,” he demands.

My eyes spring open and go back to his. He doesn’t offer more. He just holds my hand to my shoulder, a subtle sort of bondage, and I kept my head twisted round to look at him.

The position makes my neck ache and eventually I have to look away.

But Dylan’s not having that. He lifts me off of him and moves us in the tub, twisting me so that I’m facing him, my legs straddling him. We’re no longer along the back of the tub but in the center.

His cock nudges at the lips of my sex and slips back in like it knows exactly where home is. I can’t help grinding down on him, rubbing my pelvis to get friction exactly where I need it most.

He hisses and grasps my shoulders from behind, pulling me down as far as possible on his cock.

Then he loops one arm around my waist and uses the buoyancy of the water to help lift me up. He pulls me back down and I squeeze my walls as tight around him as possible. The corresponding strain on his face is so satisfying I concentrate all my strength on my core, squeezing and tightening with every downstroke.

“Fuck,” he hisses low right before he tangles his hand in my hair again and drags me down for a passionate kiss.

I cry out against his mouth as, once more, my pleasure ramps up. He bites and licks and teases at my tongue and lips. It’s more of a give and take than it was earlier. And he must be learning my body, because as my breaths grow shorter and higher pitched, he pulls away, watching me with an expression I can’t read.

The moment my orgasm, pleasure also strains his face as his mouth drops open and he shoves into me and then he’s cumming.

For a single second, we’re both lost in pleasure. The pleasure we’ve gifted to one another.

And in that moment, I know perfection.

But the next one is pretty damn good, too, because even though I gasp as the white light recedes and the world comes back into focus, it’s to Dylan’s strong arms around me and Dylan’s mouth on mine again.

He kisses me the entire time he reaches to unplug the bathtub stopper. And he kisses me while we both clumsily stand up in the tub. He breaks our kiss only for a moment while he steps out and reaches for towels.

But the second he shoves mine into my hands, he has his hands in my wet hair and he’s pulling me to him and kissing me again.

I giggle and he grins as he helps me out of the tub.

And then he’s got his arms wrapped around me, the towel trapped between us while we both drip water onto the bathroom tile.

I break away laughing and gasping for breath. “I don’t think this is going to get us dry.”

“I don’t fucking care,” is all he growls before pulling me back and kissing me again. It’s like he’s a man starved. Like he’s been walking through the desert and I’m the first tall glass of water he’s had in weeks.