Diamonds in the Dust (Diamonds are Forever Trilogy 1)

I expect him to hit me back. An ugly part of me wants him to so I can hate him more. Men like my father, those I understand, but Maxime is a complex mix of confusing signals. If my words made Maxime all but suffocate me with his cock, the mark I left on his skin should do much worse. I can’t look away from his eyes. I watch their molten gray transform to a darker storm. With grinding teeth, he stares at me, his fingers tightening around my neck and pinning me against the wall. Just when I think he’s going to snap my neck, he brings his head down and crushes our mouths together.

The kiss is brutal. His teeth cut my lip. I taste the blood as our tongues tangle. His breathing is harsh, his growl a primitive sound. He mashes our lips together, sucking the very life out of me as if this is a new kind of war. I fight back. I kiss him like my life depends on it. I don’t know where my desperation comes from, only that this mutual roughness feels purging.

He takes, but I take, too. I bite down on his lower lip until our blood mingles. I use the aggression as an outlet for my pain like he won’t allow me to use my sharp words or self-preserving pride. I stop being a passive participant, trying to hold onto something precious with both hands, something I don’t want to share, and take something from him for myself.

It’s a tipping point. To take, your hand has to be open, not clutched tightly around your heart. When I take from Maxime, I open myself. I’m vulnerable to the unknown, susceptible to the sensations of a violent kiss, surprised to find I like it. It’s like a fight for life, a fight to death. Only one of us will be left standing when this is all over. The desperation transforms into arousal. Heat blooms between my legs. It’s not gentle and slow building like in the study. It’s instant and demanding. I moan, a keening sound of need that triggers Maxime’s tipping point in turn.

He grows gentle. The warning hold on my neck loosens to a possessive caress. He drags his tongue over the cut on my lip and molds his mouth around mine with tender precision. It’s a skilled kiss, a seductive kiss. I lean into it, pushing our bodies together. Placing one hand next to my face on the wall, he drags his hand from my neck to my breast, squeezing softly. My back arches. He tilts his hips toward mine, pressing his hard-on against my stomach. Water washes over us, drawing an abstract picture with blurry lines, but right and wrong vanishes with the need that pulses in my body as if it has a life of its own.

Like my aggression stoked his, his slower pace awakens new needs in me, a need to touch and to be held. Lifting my hands from the tiles where they’re plastered next to my hips, I place them on Maxime’s chest. The muscles are hard and unrelenting under my palms as I expected, but it’s the bumpy texture of his skin that stills me.

I lean back, blinking the water from my eyes. Maxime freezes. His eyelids lift with wary apprehension. My gaze skims down. The skin of his chest is red and angry, patchy all the way to his stomach and covering half of his abdomen, an aggressive pattern of pain painted on a man. I’ve never seen anything like it. My heart squeezes in involuntary empathy. What happened to him? What caused such scars?

When I splay my fingers to inspect the damage, he catches my wrist.

The pressure of his grip is too hard. “Don’t.” The single word is harsh, but there’s a plea in his eyes, and it’s mixed with agony to reflect a portrait of stunning suffering in those ash-colored pools.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“Fire.”

He moves my hand away, down, and places it over his erection. I close my fingers involuntary. He hisses. The sound gives me power. I stroke. He growls.

I know what he’s doing. He’s using distraction to prevent me from asking the questions turning in my mind, and it’s working. His cock twitches under my palm, hardening more. I look at my fist, my fingers barely meeting, and back at his gaze.

He’s watching me with sharp attention. I watch him in turn as I slide my fist up and down. I see what I do to him. I see the angry hunger in his eyes.

He cups my hip, angling his erection toward my opening. “Actions have consequences, little flower.” He grabs my wrist and moves my hand away. “You came in here knowing full well what could happen.”

I came in here to avenge myself for how he used me. Instead, I find myself pressed up against a wall, wet and needy. He grabs the base of his cock in one hand and presses the head against my clit while holding my hip with the other like I’m fragile and about to break. He rubs in a circle, sending flushes of heat through my body. Slickness covers my sex. He drags his cock over my opening, bringing my arousal back to my clit. I open my legs to give him better access. I’m panting, needing this now that I know what it feels like and how good the release is.