Her Rebellion (The Rite Trilogy 2)

He releases my hand and grabs me by the face, his thumb dragging over my lips. His eyes are half reverence, half regret. But we aren’t going back to that place. I prove it when I stop playing with myself and thread my fingers through the belt loops of his trousers, tugging him forward.

He doesn’t fight me as I pull him to the chair and shove him down into it roughly, only to climb atop him and straddle him. His eyes are liquid fire when I reach between us, and this time, there are no protests from his lips when I drag his cock free from his trousers.

My stomach clenches as I stroke him in my palm, our eyes locked, our breaths mingling. I want to know what he’s thinking, but I don’t dare ask. Instead, I lean my body into his, capturing his lips with mine as I feed his cock into me slowly. So slowly, it’s impossible to miss the catch in his breath when I drag my fingers through his hair and tilt his head back, biting my way down his jaw and neck.

Judge groans, and I do it again because I want to play that sound on repeat. His palms come to rest on my ass, squeezing me as I start to rock against him. When I leave a bite mark on his neck, branding him in the only way I can, he snaps his gaze back to mine. His nostrils flare, and he yanks me down against him hard, forcing me to bear the full brutality of his cock. And I know he’s let me have my fun when his palm slaps my ass, reverberating with a sharp crack.

“This isn’t a game, little monster.” He wraps a handful of hair into his fist, keeping my gaze pinned to his as he fucks me from below.

“No?” I whisper. “Then what is it?”

In answer, he fucks me harder. Faster. Smacking my ass and grunting out the frustrations he refuses to give voice to. He has no fucking reason to be pissed off, yet that’s exactly what he is.

“If this is what you call punishment, maybe I should misbehave more often,” I muse.

“Punishment?” he growls. “How’s this for punishment?”

He stands up and unceremoniously dumps me onto the floor, fisting his cock inches from my face as he glares down at me. What he’s doing would be hot in any other circumstance, but there’s no pleasure in it. He’s choking the life out of his cock, his anger driving home his point that he will deny me what I want. I know it when he grabs me by the hair and holds me there, forcing an orgasm as his come spurts over my breasts before dripping down onto my thighs.

He releases me with a ragged breath and glares down at me. “Little brats don’t get to come.”

“Little brats make themselves come.” I thrust my fingers between my thighs resentfully, and he turns away, stalking toward the door.

There’s no pleasure in my actions, not with his abrupt dismissal, and I refuse to let him walk away from this so easily.

“So how does this work exactly?” I call after him. “How much was my time worth to you just now? Will you leave some cash on the floor beside me before you go?”

He freezes, his back going rigid, but he doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t say a goddamned word.

“Or do you consider this a bonus?” I ask. “On top of what Santiago’s already paying you.”

His head dips, the only sign he even heard me, but again, I get no response. The silence goes on too long. It’s too painful. And despite my best efforts to restore myself to factory defaults, wipe away all my emotions, I revert to the mess he’s made of me.

“Clifton asked me out on a date, and I want to go. Next week.”

“No.” The word squeezes through what I don’t doubt are clenched teeth.

“It’s not up to you.” I force myself to remain calm. “I need to find a husband, and I’m tired of waiting. There’s nothing to be accomplished by you keeping me locked up here—”

“I said no!” he roars.

The thunder in his voice silences me, but if that wasn’t effective enough, he takes it a step further, snatching a decorative vase from the nearest table. When he hurls it at the wall, shattering it with a deafening blow, I can’t help but flinch.

Slowly, he turns his sharp gaze to me, and at that moment, I hardly recognize the man I know burning beneath the hatred in his eyes. But for a moment, only a fleeting moment, I see something else there too. Something that looks like the same agony I feel splitting my ribs apart.

“Over my dead body,” he grits out. “Will you ever go out with him.”

With that final blow, he prowls from the room entirely, slamming the door behind him.

I smearmy fingers through the come on my chest while my empty reflection stares back at me from the mirror. For three minutes, my thoughts have swung wildly on a pendulum, trying to decide if this is the evidence of his hatred or his possession. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. One is the short road to heartbreak, and the other is the long. The result, inevitably, will always be the same.

I wash him off me, tears stinging my eyes as I reach for my makeup bag and dig through it with trembling fingers. When I pinch the pill between my fingers, examining the only evidence I need to understand, something inside me breaks all over again.