Promise to Keep (Vow To Protect 2)

His clothes make a wet pile in the corner, and I swallow hard against the sight of his erection, bobbing against his stomach as he seizes my waist and drags me forward. “I said be calm, Valentina. I won’t tell you again. I’m not going to fuck you in the shower with your father’s blood still dotting your skin.”

I have nothing to say to that, so I simply nod and let him strip off my dirty clothes. He tosses them on top of his own pile and then scrubs my skin pink with a loofah and his own soap. The ginger scent spirals around us in the water and on our skin. Even the steam carries the fragrance out of the stall. I go languid in his arms, like a doll whose string has finally reached its end.

“Easy,” he whispers. Rubbing my back, he rocks me against him. Not sexually, but like a child in his arms.

The fact he’s trying to comfort me after what I did to him widens the ache in my chest so much more. I burn with it from the inside out. I feel the shame of leaving him and then not even being able to do it properly, only for him to hold me, save me from ruin all over, and wash between my toes where somehow even blood managed to reach.

“I think you’re going to need some new furniture,” I say against his chest.

A thread of humor enters his tone. “What?”

“I got blood everywhere. I don’t know if anyone will be able to get it out of the car or the chairs in the bedroom.”

He pulls away to stare into my eyes. A tiny crease lines his forehead. “You’re worried about the furniture?”

Before I can answer him, he’s shut off the water, herding me from the shower and wrapping me in a towel. I don’t have time to do anything with my curls or do little more than dab off some water as he again guides me from the bathroom toward the bed.

I climb up onto it and crawl over to my side even though it feels wrong to be there while things are still so volatile between us. He wants answers, and eventually, he’ll drag them out of me one way or another. It’s not as if he doesn’t know every single one of my buttons, both for pain and pleasure.

He tugs my ankle, sliding me across the bed on my back, the towel bunching enough to pull free, leaving me naked, spread eagle, and wanting him so badly my stomach aches for it.

Except he doesn’t touch me. After he maneuvers me into the position he wants me in, he removes his hands and guides both of them up and down his shaft. “Oh no, Angel, you haven’t earned the right to come anytime soon. I plan to make you work for it. If you don’t have any answers for me, I don’t have anything at all for you.”

My fingers tingle, and my stomach roils. Every fiber in my body screams at me to rub my clit and take things into my own hands. But if I do that, he’ll be angry. In his mind, it would be cheating. So I ball my fists along my thighs, squeezing the dove gray coverlet hard enough so that it bites into my skin.

I watch him jerk off. One hand reached down to play up my inner thigh, the other pumping furiously while he stares at my nudity. My face burns hot at the intensity of his gaze. I look away until he slaps my inner thigh hard enough to sting. “I didn’t give you permission to hide yourself.”

I swallow hard and nod faintly, my eyes trailing once again to his erection, clutched tightly in his grasp. He works himself more, faster, his other hand digging deeper into my skin. I don’t think he realizes it, nor the fact that I’ll be bruised tomorrow. None of it matters as I track a bead of pre-cum leaking from his dusky crown. He gathers it on his next pass, adding it to the water he didn’t dry from his body after our shower.

I lick my lips, and he grits his teeth hard. It’s almost slow motion as he comes, shooting the white sticky mess across my thighs, my hips, and even a tiny splatter up on my sternum.

Then as I watch, my mouth hanging open, he rubs his spend into my skin, meeting my eyes in challenge until every trace is sticky against my body.

I stay still, watching, waiting while my body is strung tight like a bowstring. It would take him seconds to get me off right now. My heart pounds in my ears, and I’m panting as I squeeze the bedding tighter.

“Stay here, Angel. I’ll be right back.”