Unable to bear it, she lowered her head to the bed, burying her face in the silk covers, tears starting to pour down her cheeks.
A trembling hand pulled her up to meet his vehement conviction. “I don’t care and neither should you. We both did so many things against our will, and we’re not responsible for any of it. It doesn’t make us less or worse. It actually makes us more and better. We’re survivors, conquerors, winners. But you... You’re perfect.”
Feeling as if her heart had expanded to fill her whole body, she twisted beneath him so hard, she made him roll off her. Then she was all over him, clinging with arms and legs and lips, tears now flowing with gratitude, with relief.
He let her deluge him for a while before taking over, groaning into her lips. “My brothers used to call me The Monk. I thought I was, until you. Then I became insatiable. After you, after I experienced true passion and ecstasy, I couldn’t settle for the sexual relief I never wanted in the first place. I wanted you. Only you. Even when I thought I’d never have you again. But now I do, and all I can think of is having you, doing everything to you, with you.”
“Everything?” She moaned, undulating against him, needing him to combust. “Like what? Show me.”
“Like this...” He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top over her head and spilling her swollen breasts into the large palms they’d been made to fill. He kneaded them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him, had her frantically trying to tear his clothes off his back. She needed the crush of his hunger, the oblivion of his possession.
Grasping both her hands
in one, he did what she’d failed to. He shredded his shirt, flinging off its tatters. Her salivary glands stung, needing her lips and tongue all over his flesh, her teeth in it.
“And this.” He slid down her body, the velvet of his skin sparking her every inch into a conflagration. “And this.” He nipped each nipple in turn, had her crying out, before settling into suckling that escalated into ruthlessness, had her core pouring, until she was pummeling him for the release only his invasion would grant her.
He escaped her clawing hands, went down farther, taking her skirt and panties off with him. “And this.”
Holding her feet apart, alternating kisses between them, he suckled her toes, forcing her to withstand the sight and sensations of his ownership, his worship. “And this.” He bit into her calves, kneading them with his teeth as he trailed up to her inner thigh, before opening the lips of her core. Tantalizing her, he lapped up the flow of her arousal in long, leisurely licks before growling, “And this.” He pinpointed the bud where all her nerves converged, took it in a sharp nip.
The discharge of all the pent-up stimulation was so explosive, she heaved in detonation after detonation until she felt as if her spine might snap.
He had no mercy. He pushed two fingers inside her, sharpening her pleasure until her voice broke. He didn’t stop even then. No, he sucked every spasm and aftershock out of her, blasting her sensitized flesh with more growls. “And this.” His thumb circled the swollen nub, had her writhing under the renewed surge, the need for release a rising crest of incoherence.
“Come for me again, my darling.”
It was that “my darling” that hurled her into another orgasm.
After he’d finished her, he came up to loom over her, watching her tremble with what he’d done to her, his hand tracing soothing patterns on her back and buttocks. Mute, saturated with pleasure, hungrier for him than ever, she watched him, the emotions on his face coming too fast and thick for her to decipher. To withstand.
Spreading her legs wide, she begged him, “Inside me, Raiden. Come inside me.”
He looked down at her, sable hair cascading over his leonine forehead. “I want to be inside you all the time, Scarlett. And I couldn’t be for five years. Because you didn’t trust me to understand, didn’t give me the chance to help you, to protect you, to save you.”
Her body contorted under the onslaught of his impassioned upbraiding. “I’m sorry... I didn’t think...”
He captured her face in urgent hands. “You thought too much, and all wrong. And you should be sorry. When I think what you almost did to yourself, what you cost us when you kept me in the dark, thinking you were protecting me, my head almost explodes.”
“I did protect you,” she protested weakly.
“And I want your word you’ll never do anything like this again. Never hide anything from me again, Scarlett.”
“I won’t.” She was half lying, for she was still hiding things, but she had to protect him from further pain. Needing to distract him, needing him beyond endurance, she wrapped herself around him. “Don’t punish me anymore. Just take me.”
His body turned to granite in her arms. “You punished us both when you sacrificed yourself for me. Don’t you know I’d rather die than see you hurt? And for you to be hurt on my account... God, I don’t know how I’ll live with that knowledge.”
She stared into his pained eyes, distress expanding in her throat all over again. No, she hadn’t known that. She’d never dared dream of anything even far less.
Contrition suffocating her, she needed to take him away from the maddening what-ifs, bring him back to her in this moment. “You’re hurting me now, Raiden, making me wait.”
It was as if some switch was thrown inside him, the consternation on his face switching to voracity.
In full predator mode, he rose above her, rid himself of his pants and briefs. She felt the usual clench of intimidation at the sight of his girth and length, at his beauty and sleekness. She craved his invasion, not only for the ecstasy it forced from her flesh, but because it was the most intimacy she could have with him.
“Just take me, please....”
And he finally did. He rammed inside her, all his power and the accumulation of frustration and hunger behind the thrust. The head of his erection, nearly too wide for her, rubbed against all the right places, abrading nerves into an agony of response, pushing receptors over the limit of stimuli. Even after the releases he gave her, she was so inflamed that it took only a few unbridled thrusts for her to arch up in a deep bow and scream. In her ecstasy, she saw only his beloved face in focus, clenched in pleasure, his eyes vehement with his greed for her.