My head aches. That’s my first thought.
The second is the pleasure between my legs, my pussy throbbing like I’m on the cusp of an orgasm. And then the feeling intensifies, and I whimper. It sweeps through me, obliterating my thoughts. I squeeze my legs together, only to find them held open by two hands on my inner thighs.
I lift my head and squint in the low light.
Steele’s between my legs, his head buried against my skin. His grip on my thighs tightens ever so much, like he’s ready for me to rip my limbs away. But then his tongue pushes into me.
“What are you doing?” I groan, my fingers sliding into his hair.
He pulls up just a little, kissing my pubic bone. His gaze travels up my body, lingering on my breasts under the t-shirt I don’t remember falling asleep in, and finally stops on my face.
“Having breakfast,” he says. “I woke up starving.”
I collapse back to the bed as he leans back down.
“Steele.” I don’t know why I’m saying his name.
Everything is too sensitive. My headache lingers, but it’s really my hunger to come again that makes my hand return to his hair—to tug his lips back to my clit. He obliges with a grin, his tongue flattening on the sensitive bud.
“Oh God,” I moan.
He stops just shy of pushing me over the edge, climbing up my body and shoving my t-shirt up as he goes. He licks my nipple. I drag my nails up his neck and wrap my fingers in his hair. I love that his hair is a little longer in the back and top, because my grip is solid. And I use it to guide him up my body.
Steele growls, going with my pulling but trailing his lips across my skin. Over the shirt that’s now caught around my neck, up my throat to my jaw. He shifts his hips, aligning with me, and I make some desperate noise.
He thrusts into me. I’m slick already, but the stretch of his length, combined with my near-orgasm he left me hanging on, undoes me.
My eyes close, and my muscles tremble, riding a cresting wave. Two hard strokes inside me, and I shatter completely.
I cry out. He captures my lower lip between his teeth. The pain slips into pleasure.
What sort of fucked-up person am I to enjoy pain?
“I know, sweetheart,” Steele whispers, nipping my ear. “I know what you crave—and it’s not sex on a soft mattress. You want to be fucked on the ground. Taken from behind like an animal.” His voice is hoarse, his movements slowing. “You need dirty, and you need to hurt. You need to be stuffed full of cock that you’re not sure you entirely want, like a little slut that Daddy didn’t pay enough attention to as a child.”
I grip his chin before I can register making the conscious thought to do so. I drag his face closer, his dark eyes boring into mine. Sometimes I feel like he can see right through me… and other times, I want him to look into me.
“Maybe I’m a little slut because my daddy gave me too much attention,” I whisper against his lips. “Ever think about that?”
“No.” He grabs my wrist and tears my hand off his chin. He pins it to the bed next to my head. “No, I didn’t. Is that what happened?”
I blink.
Breathe.
His eyes go impossibly darker. “Did he tie you up, sweetheart? Put something in your mouth?” He’s stopped moving entirely. There’s more, he knows there’s more. And he doesn’t shy away from it. “He spread your legs. And then what? Did he touch you?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I whisper.
I don’t have nightmares about my childhood.
I don’t have lingering trauma—unless something like what Steele did to me triggers it. In everyday, ordinary life, I’m fine. Normal. Happy.
“You are going to talk about this, Aspen. Because knowing what happened to you lets me inside you just a little bit more—and I won’t stop until I’m buried so deep in your bones that I’m impossible to remove.”
I shudder.
What’s worse is my body’s reaction. My skin prickles, my core tightens. I’m sure he feels the way I clench around him.
“Tell me, and I’ll be yours forever. Just let me in, viper.”
My gaze slides away from his.
“Tell me, Aspen.”
“Soft. Everything was soft and slow,” I gasp, trying to break his hold on my wrist. A yank, two—it does nothing. “He’d leave me tied up for hours in the dark, and I’d cry and plead, and nothing ever worked.”
I can’t believe I’m telling him this.
My wrists wrapped in his silk ties. My legs held open with padded cuffs, each secured to the corners of my mattress. The flash of a camera, sometimes, or just a red blinking dot in the dark. A piece of rubber in my mouth. My tongue would loll against it, and sometimes it felt like I couldn’t get a breath in. Especially when my nose clogged, when the tears burned my eyes and panic overrode my senses.
I stare up at him, and part of me wants to believe him. But the other part is sure that he’ll run away from me and never look back. “Everything is warped in my memory. His face staring down at me, the flashes of his camera. I don’t know what else, but it’s not anything a kid should know about, much less be forced to endure. I was six when it started, Steele. Six.”
He doesn’t. Fucking. Flinch.
And for some reason, that pisses me off.
Like he doesn’t give a shit that my father is the worst piece of trash on the planet?
I yank at my wrists again, just wanting him off me. I thrash with my whole body, harder than I’ve ever fought him. My hand slips from his grasp, and before I can latch on to reason, I punch him in the face.
He growls and rears back. His cock slides out of me, and the sudden loss creates a newfound ache. Why am I so messed up?
I scramble off the bed, falling to the carpeted floor. The hotel room is foreign, dark, and it’s hard to get my bearings. Didn’t need them up until now. But I spy the open door to the bathroom and rush for it.
Steele slams into me, our bodies hitting the counter next to the sink. He folds me over it and grips the back of my neck. My cheek kisses the cold surface, and a shudder ripples up through my body. He kicks my legs wider and pushes back into me.
I groan, bracing my hands against the wall. “More.”
He gives me just that. His fingers on my skin are bruising, and I close my eyes as he takes whatever he wants from me. And then he lets out a noise, a gasp with my name on his lips, and stills fully inside me. He groans with his climax, and the force of his hips pressing mine into the counter. The way he fills me, the lust and pain that seem to mirror each other in my body—it’s all too much.
We stay like that for a moment. Connected.
My heart thunders, my pussy pulses.
I want to come, but he didn’t make any move toward my clit. Nothing that would give me pleasure.
And fuck if that makes me wetter.
He slips out of me. His hand leaves my neck, but the pressure on my skin doesn’t. He keeps his palm on me, sliding down my spine. It stills at the small of my back. My breathing turns ragged when cool air brushes my ass cheeks—and then his lips. His teeth follow a moment later, and I try to jump—but there’s nowhere to go to evade him.
He chuckles, nipping my sensitive skin again and then licking it. His free hand cups my other ass cheek, squeezing gently. And then it parts my cheeks, and my body goes hot.
“Steele—”
“Quiet, Aspen.” His tone warns not to argue with him.
I shiver at the darkness in it. And he doesn’t make me wait long before he runs his finger around my asshole. He spits—the noise is unmistakable—and the liquid hits my ass a second later. He uses it like lube, smearing his spit on my skin and then slowly pushing his digit inside me.
I groan at the sharp sensation.
“I wish you could see how my cum looks seeping out of your cunt right now,” he says. “Do you feel it on your thighs, little viper?”
Bite.
I close my eyes.
He kisses and bites his way lower, tilting my hips to get better access. His tongue flicks my clit, and I moan again. Unbidden. Every inch of me is hyper-focused on him. His hand on my back, his other inching deeper into my asshole.
And then he removes his hand from my back, and he thrusts two fingers into me. Hard. My back arches, my breasts pushing into the counter, but I don’t lift more than that. He sits back and finger-fucks me, pushing his cum back into me.
I’m trembling with the need to come. The sensations are too much, him filling both my holes with his fingers, fucking my ass and pussy at the same time. It’s too overwhelming.
Bite.
The pain draws my focus to a point. A spearhead lancing through me.
“Come for me,” he orders, driving me right over the edge.
And I fall.
When my body has stopped trembling, he withdraws. Moves to the sink beside me and washes his hands, his gaze on me. I feel like I’m stuck, unable to straighten up until he commands. Stuck in some space in my head where I do not want control.
He runs his finger up my spine. Along the top of my shoulder, following the contour of my arm. To my bent wrists, my hands still pressed to the wall. To my knuckles. My fingers. When he gently pulls my hand away, my exhale comes out shaky. He guides me upright, then leans down and picks me up.
I rest my cheek on his shoulder, and he carries me back to bed.
The alarm clock on the nightstand reads just past seven, although the blackout curtains hide any trace of sunlight. He lies down with me still in his arms.
“Rest.”
I gulp.
He runs his hand up and down my arm and moves me to the side. My legs are still draped over his, even when he rolls to face me. He drags the blankets up with one arm, pulling them up to my shoulder.
“You okay?”
I blink at him. No, is what comes to mind. But I’m not sure how to say that.
“Mom left because of Dakota and Lennox,” I whisper. Continuing this story even though he’s long since stopped forcing it out of me. “It took her until her two younger children were in danger to get us out of there. She didn’t believe me, I think. Not that I ever told her outright—but what was I supposed to say? The signs were there, but she never made a move against him when my life was in danger.”
The old bitterness is resurfacing. I never blamed her for getting away from him. In fact, as it was happening, as we were running, I was grateful. Terrified and relieved. We stayed in shitty motel rooms and cheap, rat-infested apartments while Mom worked two jobs to afford more than that. Hid and feared and tried not to worry that the monster was hunting for us.
Steele leans into me and presses his lips to mine.
Soft.
Slow.
Exactly what he accused me of not wanting earlier seems to be the perfect balm now.
I inch closer and wrap my arms around him. Our chests press together, all the way down to our hips. His tongue sweeps across the seam of my lips, and I automatically open for him. Letting him taste me, tasting him in return.
It’s… I don’t know. Nice, I guess. In an unexpected way. Like we just went through battle and now he’s trying to heal me from the inside out.
And I let him.
That’s the strangest part.
I let him heal me. I give him all the bad parts—well, not all. There are so many more pieces of me coated in blood and ash that he has yet to see—and he takes them like they’re precious.
Gifts, even.
I’ve seen the demons under his skin, too. They come out to play when I provoke him, when I want to feel what it’s like to burn.
But his demons were nowhere near this tonight.
This was all for me.
I let out a whimper in the back of my throat, and Steele pulls me tighter. Slips his leg between mine, until his thigh is nestled against my core. Our kiss breaks off, and we breathe like that for a long moment. His eyes burn into mine.
I open my mouth to say something. A thanks, maybe, or… something.
But his alarm goes off with shrill, expert timing, and the words get stuck in my throat.
Time to go back to the real world, Aspen.
