Annihilation Road (Torpedo Ink 6)

She was silent, and then she nodded. “Just once, after you took off the first clamp and we started to move again. The chain on the second one was swinging. The clamp tightened and it felt like it pulled so much. It was painful. Too painful.” Her voice was muffled by his shoulder.

Savage couldn’t tell if she was beginning to cry again. He tugged on her hair until she tilted her head up, her blue eyes meeting his. There was that liquid in them that made his cock stir. “Why didn’t you tell me to stop?”

She frowned. “There was so much pain, and it radiated out and down to my . . . sex, and then the pain turned scorching hot, and you were moving so hard and fast. The vibrator was going crazy. My bottom was on fire. Everything came together, and I couldn’t tell what was happening to my body, only that I was hot and needed you desperately.”

“Did you like it?”

Her frown deepened. Her fingers on his arm dug into his muscle. “I don’t think like is the word I’d use. I think it’s addicting. This time I came so much harder than last time.”

He let his breath out. She had recognized that her body wanted the things he had been slowly introducing to her. Each time he made love to her or fucked her hard, he had to have some level of this kind of interaction, and he’d done different things to coax her body into accepting them.

“It’s also a little terrifying, Savage. I was so scared of why my body responds to this kind of sex when I never really responded to other men. Why, when I bent over that bench, was I already getting hot and slick at what you were going to do, and what you would do after? I think about you teaching me to take you in my mouth. You haven’t done that yet. I don’t know why, but I know it’s going to be a lesson that might be scary and yet my body reacts the same way. I think about the ultimate end, what you’re going to need, and that’s the most terrifying of all, and yet I’m so hot I can’t sleep sometimes. What’s wrong with me, Savage?”

A fresh flood of tears accompanied her question. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his chest.

“You fell in love with me, Seychelle,” he said gently. “That’s the only thing wrong with you. The only way you know how to love is wholly. Completely. With everything in you. You gave yourself to me knowing I was a fucked-up mess. I don’t know another woman who could have done that. You came into this with your eyes wide open, but more importantly, baby, so was your heart. You turned your body over to me to be trained in the things I need.”

He brushed kisses down her temple to her ear. “I love you so much, Seychelle.” He whispered it to her. “I can’t be any different. I want to be. I was trained to be this way from the time I was a little kid. It was every day. Weeks. Months. Years. I trained girls for them. Boys. I did things to keep my brother alive. To keep the others alive. I don’t know when I crossed the line into needing this shit, but somewhere I did, and there was no going back. I never knew any other way of having sex. I didn’t know there was another way.”

Savage stroked her hair and then nuzzled the top of her head with his chin. “I can’t lose you, Seychelle, I can’t, but I’m never going to be different. I thought, when I realized how much I loved you and that it was growing every day, that maybe I could overcome those needs for your sake, but instead of them lessening, I needed them more.”

He pushed his forehead against hers as he made the confession. “The idea of putting my marks on you, of you allowing it, of wanting them there.” His lungs burned as the rush took him. “It won’t go away, baby. And with it, there’s going to be other things I thought I could give you, that you asked me for, but that we might need to talk about again.”

“I’m so scared for both of us,” Seychelle whispered. “Going down this path with you, and then if something goes wrong and I lose you . . .” She trailed off. “What if I can’t be what you need after all? What if I’m not that woman? I almost stopped you.”

“Baby, we would have stopped. You say stop, we stop. You’re so far ahead of where I thought we’d be, it’s insane. Clover clamps are for very advanced users, not beginners. I expected you to put the brakes on. I wanted you to see it would be perfectly all right and you could trust me to stop.”