Descent (Black Heart Romance)

I gasp as he uses his fingers to spread my pussy open and quickly squeeze my legs together before he can push one into me. His body is getting closer, so I brace a hand on his muscular chest and push him away. “Calvin…”

He lets go of my pussy and repositions. I know I should get out of the bed, but before I can put that thought into action, he peels back the blanket and exposes my bare body to the cool night air. Then he climbs on top of me, and the moment I feel his hardening cock pressed against my leg, I know what I was so relieved didn’t happen will happen if I don’t find a way to stop him.

“Wait. Wait, please,” I say quickly, my mind racing for some way to stall him.

Calvin catches my hand, then dips his head and softly kisses the sensitive skin of my wrist. “I’ve waited long enough, Hallie.”

“No. No, wait. Please,” I add more urgently, a little more sweetly since that seems to be what he responds to.

He hesitates.

I grab onto it. “Please, Calvin,” I say softly, looking up at him.

He cocks his head and looks down at me, then softly strokes the side of my face. “God, you’re beautiful.”

My heart flutters. It’s the way he says it. Not even deliberate, just an unguarded thought that escaped his lips.

My heart hammers once it starts beating again. I don’t know what I’m doing or what might work, but following some instinct I don’t even fully understand, I lift his hand from my face and slowly, carefully turn it so I can kiss his wrist. Then his palm. He sucks in a breath when I do, obviously not prepared for tenderness from me.

I’m not sure what I’m doing, but it feels good. My mind resists—I shouldn’t be kissing him. He’s bad, I know he’s bad—but my body knows what to do. I kiss him the way he talks about me—like he’s something precious to me. I know how much it throws me off, so maybe it will do the same to him.

At worst, I suppose he might think I’m a lunatic, but I already think that about him, so why should it matter what he thinks about me?

“What if… what if we move slow?” I ask.

“Slow,” he reiterates, a tinge of curiosity in his tone.

“You can take it from me right now if you want to. I can’t stop you. I could try to run, but you’ll catch me. You’ll… you’ll pin me down, maybe on the floor beside your bed and have your way with me right there if that’s what you want to do.”

His dark eyes heat with desire.

Of course he likes that scenario.

I swallow past my doubts and keep talking. “But there are things you can’t do that way. Things you can’t take.” To emphasize my point, I place another tender kiss against the palm of his hand.

“I’m listening,” he says.

I caress the back of his hand with my fingers and let my lips linger against his skin. I need to think through what I’m about to say one more time before I let it out into the world because I think it’s fucking crazy—no, I know it’s fucking crazy—but it’s the least painful way I can realistically envision this night going.

I look up at his face to gauge his reaction to what I’m about to say. “You want a second taste. The first and second are the best, like you said at dinner. So you already had the first taste, and you had it your way. You trapped me in that dungeon, you stripped away my will, and you violated my body because that was what you wanted. But, because of the way you did that, there was stuff you didn’t get to experience. Maybe that’s why you’re still thinking about it. Maybe it’s just the missing pieces. The things you can’t have.”

His eyes narrow in consideration.

“So, tonight, what if we do that other stuff? And maybe it will lead to sex, I don’t know. That’s crazy, it definitely shouldn’t, but maybe it will. I’ll be open-minded. I’ll listen to my body. If it wants something crazy… maybe just for this one night, I’ll do something crazy. But if I don’t, if I say no, you have to respect that. You have to stop and let me leave. Those are my terms.”

“What is included in this ‘other stuff’ package?”

Somehow, the answer seems scarier than waking up in a strange bed. “All the normal parts of physical intimacy. We’ll kiss. We’ll touch. We can explore each other’s bodies, but only within the confines of consent. The moment I ask you to stop, you have to respect that or the whole thing is off.”

He doesn’t bother telling me that I can withdraw my consent at any time and he can ignore it all he wants—I know that, but he doesn’t say it.