Devastate (Deliver 4)

“Never let go of you?”

“If that makes you happy.”

His response confused her, and given the creases on his forehead, it confused him, as well.

“Be careful, Tate.” She stroked the line of his sculpted jaw. “It’s just sex, remember? We’ll have to let go eventually.”

Considering the state of her health, it would be sooner rather than later. But for now, she wrapped her arms around him and held tight.

“We’ll see about that.” He took her mouth in a kiss that stole her thoughts and bowed her spine.

The instant his tongue met hers, sparks of energy flashed through her body. He must’ve felt something similar, because he gasped against her lips and leaned back. His eye contact was brief yet poignant before he tangled a fist in her hair and returned to her mouth with an explosion of passion.

It was a full-body fusion—legs entwining, hips grinding, chests heaving, and hands groping and clutching. He shaped her to him, like heat melting glass, and she softened, liquefied, inhaling when he exhaled, moaning when he groaned. It was the best kiss she’d ever experienced, and he kept it going for a lifetime, letting her feast, savor, and soar.

When he pulled back, she blinked at him, dizzy with hunger.

His lips were wet and swollen, his pupils huge and breaths careening out of control. Knowing he was as affected as she was only made her want him more.

“Arms up.” He shoved her shirt toward her head and yanked it off.

Then he was on the move, his chiseled torso and hard cock shifting out of reach as he settled his shoulders between her legs.

“I fucking love your cunt.” His fingers slipped through her wet heat and circled her opening. “You’re dripping.”

“Tate…” She wriggled beneath him, hating and loving the way he spread her flesh open and bared her to his eyes.

“God, I can smell you.” He buried his nose in her pussy and inhaled. “The sweetness of your skin mixed with your arousal… You’re a goddamn sinful temptation.”

He pushed a finger inside her and turned his head to nip at her inner thigh. His strokes kissed along her inner walls, rubbing with wicked precision and setting her on fire. Her hand fisted the blanket, the other flying to the silken strands of his hair.

As he fingered her cunt and licked along her thigh, his thumb danced over her clit, swiveling and whisking and making it hum.

With his long digit curling inside her, he rested his lips against her mound and captured her gaze. “Did you use a condom this morning?”

Shame punched her in the gut. During her delirious puking episode, she’d told him she raped a man. I’ve raped so many innocent, married men.

The reminder swelled a sob in her throat and sent her scrambling to get away from him. She was humiliated, so fucking disgusted with herself, she couldn’t bear his touch or whatever look was on his face.

“Stop.” He caught her swinging arms and restrained them above her head.

She fought him for a useless moment before falling still. The struggle had shifted her fully beneath him with his legs straddling her hips and his huge body bent over her.

“Why are you doing this?” She glared up at him through a sheen of tears. “You can have your pick of untainted, clean women.”

“I’m not asking for me.” Holding her wrists in one hand, he removed three condoms from the jeans on the floor and tossed them on the mattress. “I need to know if you’re protecting yourself.”

“When I can.” Her voice broke into a flat, dead sound. “Sometimes I’m not given a choice.”

His eyes clouded, darkening with understanding. Like her, he’d been forced by a man. He didn’t just grasp the ruin. He’d lived it. But unlike her, he’d never inflicted that ugliness on another. Her crimes were hypocritical and heinous.

“How can you stand to look at me?” she asked. “Let alone touch me?”

“Do you enjoy raping them?”

“No!” A flood of misery crumpled her face. “I’m hurting them, and I don’t want to. I thought…” Guilt spilled from her eyes and down her temples, tickling along the curves of her ears. “I thought it would be better this way, but it’s not. It’s insidious, disgusting abuse, and when they…” She gulped down a sob and evened her voice. “When they come, I see the destruction in their eyes. They hate themselves as much as they hate me. I’m doing that. I’m—”

“Listen to me.” He gripped her chin and held her head immobile. “You didn’t do it for yourself. You did it for them, and doing so hurt you. Dammit, Lucia. I know you know that.”

“I’m not a martyr.” She clenched her teeth. “Not even close.”

“Doesn’t matter. It stops now.”

Her breath hitched. “What? I can’t—”

“You’re dying, right? So be sick. Fake the symptoms if you have to. Vomit. Pass out. Do whatever you need to do to avoid that torture room.”

“He’ll hurt them! He has this…this razor thing he puts on his finger, and he…” Her stomach rolled with nausea, thickening her words. “He cuts and mutilates their bodies.”

“We can’t save them.” His fingers tightened against her jaw. “But I can save you. You’re my only concern, and I want you out of that room. Understand?”

She swallowed, and swallowed again. “Yes.”

“I’m waiting on a medical test kit. It should be here in a couple days.” He released her and propped his elbows on either side of her shoulders. “I’ll draw your blood and test for STDs.”

“I’m clean.” She averted her eyes. “No STDs. Tiago’s doctors test me regularly.”

“Okay. Good.” He lifted up and gazed down the length of her nude body, chewing on his lip. “I don’t know if the blood test will tell us anything. But while we wait for the results, no more torturing. And I’ll be here every night…”

He dragged a knuckle over her breast and down her trembling stomach, pausing on the short hairs above her pussy. He had that look in his eyes, the prowling predator look that told her in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t finished with her.

But the conversation they’d just had left her feeling raw and loathsome. She killed a rapist today only to turn around and inflict the same evil on someone else. Yet Tate stared at her as if she were the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. It was appalling.

“I can’t do this.” She shoved at his chest with enough force to knock him off balance.

Then she fled. Off the mattress, across the floor, she didn’t make it to her feet before he seized her ankle and yanked her back to the bed.

“You’re a fighter.” He shackled her wrists in the unbending clamps of his fingers, holding her down on the mattress. “But you want me to fight back. You want me to punish you and use your body to get myself off. Because that’s what gets you off.”

“That’s not—”

“I saw you with that man at the club last night. The pleasure on your face while he caned y

ou was undeniable.” He spread her legs wider with his knees and brought his mouth to her ear. “You’re a dirty, kinky girl. Tell me I’m wrong.”

The protest stuck in her throat. He wasn’t wrong. Punishment and capitulation balanced her horribly unstable world, and she needed that now—the liberation that came with pain and pleasure and willing surrender.

“You’re right,” she whispered.

He hauled in a rough breath and blew out slowly.

“If you move your arms,” he said, pressing her wrists to the mattress above her head, “I’ll flip you over and fuck your ass.”

CHAPTER 17

I’ll flip you over and fuck your ass.

Heat flushed through Lucia’s core, and her legs fell open, unbidden.

“Ah, fuck, baby.” Tate’s hand shot to her pussy, stroking the soaked flesh. “You like that, don’t you? You want me inside your ass.”

She’d never had a pleasant experience with anal. It had always been forced and blindingly painful. But she ached to feel him there, knew he would do it with care, and nodded her consent.

“You’re killing me.” He stole a deep, heart-pumping kiss. Then he gathered the condoms and lined up the three foil wrappers along her breastbone. “I’m going to use all of these tonight and wish I’d brought more.”

Instead of sheathing his cock, he slid his hands beneath her butt and lifted her pussy to his mouth.

The first lick followed her seam from bottom to top. She throbbed against the hot greeting of his tongue, fighting to keep her arms above her head. He buried his face, and she moaned, jerked, and choked on her own breath.

As he sucked and licked with ferocity, his scratchy jaw burned a trail of fire along her thighs. His lips covered every thrumming nerve between her legs as he gripped her ass cheeks and spread them so he could roll his tongue around her rim. She bucked against his unyielding mouth, drenching his whiskers with her arousal.

At some point, the condoms tumbled away, and her hands moved on their own, pulling at his hair and clawing his scalp.

He knocked her fingers away. “Your ass is mine.”

Tossing her to the side, he flipped her to her stomach and covered her back with his body.