What he’s saying sounds so much closer to the truth.
I know better than anyone that sometimes the truth hurts. Hurts so bad, you can’t breathe past it, until all that’s left are pained animal noises emerging from your throat.
“Hazel.”
I blink up at Devan. He’s frowning. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Liar. You want distance, and that’s bullshit” He hooks my right leg over his arm and presses it up, allowing him to sink even deeper. Devastatingly deep. “You want to pretend you’re not undone by me, birthday girl? Not fucking likely.”
“Shut up.” I grab his hair and tug him back down to my mouth. The kiss is fierce and far too short. And then he’s looking at me. God, the man is always looking at me. Always seeing too much. Always delving right down to the heart of me.
I shove at his chest, and he lets me move him back. I whimper a little as his cock leaves my body, but the temporary loss is better than having him read me like a book. I flip over onto my stomach. “Like this.”
For a moment, I think he won’t keep fucking me, but he gives a ragged laugh and presses a hand to the middle of my back, pushing me down so my ass is in the air. “It’s like that, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar. Always such a fucking liar with that pretty mouth, spouting bullshit.” He all but shoves his cock into me, resuming his grip on my hips from before. But harder. So much harder. “Do you believe the lies you tell, birthday girl?” He thrusts forward and drags me back at the same time, sinking impossibly deep.
So fucking deep. Deeper than anyone’s gone before.
He really has ruined me.
It makes me want to return the favor.
I brace my hands against the headboard as he fucks me roughly. It is fucking now. There’s no softness left in Devan, and I relish the sound of flesh meeting flesh that fills the room. “I’m not the only liar in this room.”
“Mmmm.” He lifts my hips a little higher and does something different with his stroke that has my eyes damn near rolling back in my head. Devan, the bastard, knows it. He gives low laugh. “Say it again and mean it.”
“Liar,” I gasp. “Pretending you haven’t wanted me this entire time. Pretending you’re better than the horny feral creatures we both are.”
He does that motion again, but he tightens his grip on me to the point where I dazedly wonder if maybe I really will be wearing his marks forever. “You. Were. My. Ward.” Each word a devastating stroke.
“Liar,” I repeat. “Not after I turned eighteen.”
Devan pauses for a long moment and then he releases my hips. One hand lands next to my head and the other snakes around to stroke my clit. The new position has his chest against my back, his lips at my ear. “You’re so full of shit,” he growls, even as he works my body closer to orgasm, even as he keeps fucking me. “You were still a traumatized teenager at nineteen. I would have had to be a monster to touch you.”
“You wanted to.”
“Fuck yes, I wanted to.” He bites the back of my neck, hard enough to make me gasp. “But even I have lines, Hazel.”
I want to… I don’t even know. Throw myself against the massive wall that is his control. He might be here with me right now, but he’s never going to step out of line with his plans. There’s no room for a future between us; Devan has all but said as much multiple times since the beginning of this. Fucking him was never meant to be the start of something.
It’s an ending.
I just didn’t expect it to hurt so much.
His wicked fingers keep stroking me even as he slows down, once again working me just the way I need to get off. I try to fight it. Of course I try to fight it. Each orgasm moves us closer and closer to the final one. To goodbye.
My body doesn’t care. I come hard, sobbing into the sheets. Devan doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down. He keeps fucking me, dragging my body into another wave of orgasm, stronger this time. My brain shorts out. That’s the only excuse I have for the words that slip free. “I love you.”
Devan’s stroke hitches, and for one horrible moment, I think he’s going to stop. To pull out of me, sit me down, and explain that this just sex and no, silly girl, he doesn’t really care for me beyond the history we have. It’s history for a reason.
But then he starts moving again. He presses a kiss to the spot at the back of my neck where he bit me and then moves back, urging my hips high again. I mourn the loss of him, even as I go molten at the delicious angle.