Chapter 14

I part my lips to protest but he uses that as an excuse to slide his tongue inside my mouth. Opportunistic fucker. His tongue teases mine, coaxing me to dance with him, but the more I fight against his hold, the deeper he kisses me. The increased pressure of his weight on my wrists pushes me further into the mattress and as with the horrors of my past, I know the only way out of this is to give in. Accept it.

No. Kaiden is not like The General. He would never hurt me, I chastise myself.

Oh, but he did, didn’t he? A snide, unwelcome voice inside my mind replies.

I refuse to engage in that mental battle and instead focus on Kaiden. I cease fighting him and melt into his kiss. The pressure on my wrists eases and a moment later he releases me.

This is it. A sucker punch to his throat and I’ll be free of him.

But my brain sends an entirely different message to my hands, which curl around the back of his neck and pull him even closer. My legs wrap around his waist of their own accord and I cling to him as my tongue starts to frantically fight back. It’s not a dance, it’s a series of complex war manoeuvres, with the two of us battling for the crown.

Neither wins.

After several minutes – or years – we break apart, panting so hard that even our chests press against each other in a fight for dominance and air, and Kaiden rests his forehead on mine.

“It almost makes the nightmares worth it,” he says quietly after a moment.

“Kaiden, I—” I open my stupid mouth and try to break the spell but he doesn’t let me.

He lowers his lips to mine once again and gives me another kiss.

This time it’s slow and sensual. The frantic need of before is gone, switched out for a steady passion which burns my insides. We’re no longer fighting but this kiss stokes a fire in me. If the first kiss was a spark, it was dangerous because it had me wanting to tear his clothes off and lose myself in sensation, if only to forget the heartache of the past for a few hours.

This kiss?

This kiss promises to be catastrophic. It’s a conflagration that will destroy everything in its path, burning hot and fast and feral, but lasting longer than the most savage wildfires on record. Eternal.

This kiss floors me, because it feels like an apology.

Like a silent declaration of love.

Which is why I’m powerless to stop him when his hands move from tenderly cupping my face to slowly descending my body.

Everywhere his hands trail and skim with the lightest of touches, the blaze follows, scorching my nerve endings in its wake. I’m powerless to stop him and I’m not even sure I want to. He slips beneath the silky camisole top I slept in and groans. As his head moves to my neck he whispers, “You’re even softer than this satin.” before his hands fist in the material and he shreds it off my body. He descends my neck with strong open-mouthed kisses that I’m sure will leave a mark, but I can’t bring myself to care as his strong hands grope my exposed breasts and squeeze.

I feel the exact moment he locks his lips around the tiny wound on my neck. A sharp spike of pain makes me gasp, but the explosion in my nerve endings as he sucks at the cut has me rearing up off the mattress like I have zero control of my body. And I don’t. It’s like I’ve become possessed, turned into a marionette. The perfect compliant little doll to his superior puppet mastery. He has complete control over me and my body, in a way that The General never could.

Because The General took, and this time you’re giving.

“Kaiden!” I cry out when he bites at the tender skin on my neck, causing my back to arch once more. He slips a hand into my pyjama bottoms and finds me soaked.

“Christ, Odile,” he groans as he moves his sinful lips to my sensitive nipples and runs a delicate finger from my clit to my entrance. “You’re drenched.”

I really wish he was still kissing me. I don’t need a running commentary on how my treacherous body still responds to him, despite the heartache and loneliness he put me through. I also don’t want to think about how Kaiden’s attention to the wound on my neck affected my body.

I don’t say anything, not wanting to break…whatever this is, but I do buck my hips in encouragement to keep him moving in the right direction. The direction of a lot less talking, please.

Mercifully, he takes the hint.

“Holy shit, that’s tight,” he murmurs more to himself than to me. There’s a pause for a beat and then shocked – no, horrified – eyes meet mine. “Are you a—”

“I swear if you ask me if I’m a virgin right now I will grab that knife from the floor and stab you with it!”

“But—”

“It’s just been a while, okay?!” I snap.

His normally bright silver gaze darkens to the exact shade of a stormy sky on a cold winter’s morning. Blazes just as turbulently too.

“Who? Tell me and I’ll kill him.”

“What?”

“I want to know who you slept with.”

“Which time?” I raise a brow, deliberately provoking him and he growls. His finger, which I had somehow forgotten about, curls to hit that magic spot I can never quite reach and I gasp.

“No fair!”

“I hate that anyone’s been here before me.”

“You didn’t want me,” I gasp again as Kaiden uses my body to take out his frustrations. I try to sound firm, pissed off, matter of fact, but I fear it comes out sounding needy and weak.

I should probably be kicking him from my bed – and my life once and for all – right now, but I can’t when every muscle in my body is coiled and primed for release.

My body is pathetically eager to fall apart for him, as easily as my heart did.

“You know nothing, little doe.” He takes the sting out of his words with a kiss which momentarily distracts me from the second finger he adds. Fuck, it feels too much, and at the same time, I somehow want more.

For this? For a release? I’m not above begging. It doesn’t make me weak. After all that I’ve been through I refuse to feel guilty for sleeping with my enemy. I have every right to experience sex whenever and however I can.

It’s just sex.

“Kaiden, please.”

“Not until you come for me. Come all over my fingers, and then my face, and then I’ll feed you my nice thick cock. I need to get you ready for me babygirl, and one orgasm just ain’t gonna cut it.”

Fuck me sideways, his words should not turn me on like they do. Nor should they trigger my release. With a muffled cry, I do exactly what he says and spill my release all over his hand. The strength of my orgasm forces his fingers from my pussy and he gapes at me in shock.

“You just ejected me,” he gasps, sounding affronted.

“So? That’s normal, right?”

“It’s never happened to me before.” I blaze green with envy. He hates that I slept with someone besides him? Apparently that possessive jealousy goes both ways. “Your muscles must be fucking strong. I can’t wait to feel you clamping down and squeezing the life out of my dick.”

I almost blush at his words but I’m distracted by the way he brings his fingers up to his lips.

It’s sinful the way his silver eyes bore into mine as he licks himself clean of me. I can’t even fight my blush when he mouths “delicious” at me with a wicked grin.

He doesn’t give me time to recover though, kissing me deeply so I taste myself on his tongue, and then moving south so that his head is between my legs. If he sees my scars he doesn’t comment, but maybe he’s just too fixated on the prize to notice or care.

He eats me like he’s at a fancy banquet sampling the best cuisine the world has to offer. He has all the skills and finesse of a nobleman well versed with fancy dinners, but devours me like a starved savage. All I can do is fist my hands in the sheets, cling on for dear life and get dragged along for the ride all while trying to remember how to fucking breathe.

His cum-covered face is triumphant when I come back down to earth.

“What?” I pant, too sated to be defensive or paranoid about the look he’s giving me.

“You’re a fucking screamer, babygirl,” he says with a grin. If only you knew, I think.

“I fucking love it. I know you just woke your entire flat up, but how about we try for the whole block?”

If I’m honest, I kind of just want to go to sleep now. I feel so damn good, so much better than I’ve ever made myself feel, and I sure as fuck don’t want to spoil that now with sex.

Sex is…fucking overrated if you ask me. Everything I endured at the hands of The General was torture. There was no pleasure, only pain and sick and twisted games. I used my months of freedom from him to attempt to overcome the damage he did to me, but the best I could get out of having sex with other people besides him and his perverted little friends was indifference to the act itself. At least being touched sexually by another man no longer triggered me. That’s as much power and ownership over my body that I could hope to regain.

And while I feel deliciously…liquid and satisfied with how far things have gone with Kaiden, I’m not convinced I want more. Part of me would love to have sex with him, but part of me is scared to ruin a good thing. A really good thing.

“You good?” Kaiden asks me. I open my eyes and see that he’s wiped his face, but his eyes still shine with excitement and desire.

It takes several swallows to get my words out. “Yeah.”

“You’re a fucking dream, Odile. I could get addicted to you.”

He kisses me and lines himself up at my entrance. I cling to his back, my nails threatening to break his skin. He groans as he presses into me. I hiss out a breath and wait for the feelings of panic and disgust.

They don’t come.

Fuck. I feel so full. So deliciously, amazingly full. I want him to move so I tug on his shoulders.

“You sure? You’re so fucking tight. You sure you’re not a virgin?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be now, would I?” I somehow manage to quip in a desperate attempt to disguise from him how freaked out I am. I’m freaking out because I’m not freaking out. I’m falling apart because it feels so damn good and I didn’t know it could be like this.

He laughs and the movement makes me quiver.

“You ready?” he asks. I nod.

Slowly he withdraws and sinks back into me. I groan. He repeats the action, moving so slowly it’s a new, delicious kind of torture. One I’ve never experienced before. Now my nails claw at his back in desperation, not fear. I want more. I need him to move faster.

“You’re so fucking sexy, Odile. Always have been. But never more so than when you’re thirsty for and begging for my dick.”

“Fucking give me it then,” I grind out from between my clenched teeth.

“As you wish, princess.”

He grins down at me and withdraws once more. When he doesn’t immediately push back in, I frown at him. He waits. I’m about to snap at him when he steals my breath away by slamming home.

And it is home. Kaiden has always been that place of safety for me. The one I couldn’t bear to lose, despite my confused feelings for Axel and my secret relationship with Zie…back in the day. Obviously everything is different now. My head and my heart know that. But my body doesn’t.

“In the fucking present, princess, or I’ll fuck you until you don’t know what day it is,” he snaps, but it’s the sharp way he pinches my nipple that brings me back to the moment.

The bite of pain makes me tense. I wait for darkness to come but as he continues to tug and twist on the sore bud, the pain turns to pleasure. He waits until I’m moving my hips in jerky tandem with his before letting go. “That’s better, good girl.”

Thank fuck The General never called me that because I would vomit from the shame, but coming from Kaiden it’s embarrassingly hot.

“I can’t believe Zie never fucked you,” he moans.

“How do you know?” I pant out between his punishing thrusts.

“He wouldn’t have been able to keep from bragging. You’re—”

“You can’t say anything!” I cry in a panic, tensing up. The action makes Kaiden swear under his breath.

“Relax. I’ll be your dirty little secret,” he teases before kissing me. “Are you close?”

Should I lie? I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come from just sex but no one ever took the time to ask or try.

I shake my head no. “I can’t,” I admit without embarrassment or shame. I’m simply stating a fact. He doesn’t need to know it’s a miracle I can even tolerate his dick between my legs.

Rather than feeding me some macho bullshit about how he’s god’s gift to intercourse, or how I haven’t had the right dick yet, or how I just need an expert that knows my body better than I know myself, he actually listens to me – to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying – and he slows his pace.

“Do you want me to stop? I’m happy to die with my head between your thighs so I’ll happily make you come that way again.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I like this. It feels good. Besides, I got to come twice. Surely it’s your turn.”

“Being with you is enough.” I shake my head at his bullshit and he laughs, which does amazing things to my insides. “Okay. I’m dying to bust a nut but I’m a gentleman.”

“It’s fine.” I give my permission for him to have at it. Me.

“Let me help you come again, and then I’ll be happy.”

“Alright. But you have to pull out when the time comes, okay?”

“Sure.”

He withdraws and I frown, but he chuckles and tells me to have a little patience. Reaching over my head, he grabs one of my pillows and brings it down to my hips.

“Lift up,” he says. I do as he asks with a slight frown. He positions the pillow under my hips and then tells me to lie down. I do, and thanks to the pillow my hips are now raised a couple of inches off the mattress. But I’m not sure what that’s meant to achieve. “Trust me.”

Do I trust Kaiden? More than the others, maybe. With my body? Yes. To make me feel good? Absolutely.

But with my heart? No. And I don’t think I ever could again.

He slides back into me and I’ll admit the new angle feels nice. But I’m still not going to come like this. He kisses me deeply until I’m panting and writhing maybe a teeny tiny bit on his dick, but it’s still just sex.

Until he slides a hand between our bodies and finds my clit. My eyes go wide when he begins to circle it, all the while withdrawing and thrusting into me. The pillow, the angle, the clit…it’s all too perfect.

“Sorcery,” I gasp and he chuckles.

“I got you, babygirl. Fall apart for me and I’ll catch you. I’ll put you back together again.”

And I don’t know if it’s his words or his actions or just the sheer relief of not freaking out, but I do exactly that and break for him.

“Perfect. You’re fucking perfect, Odile. I got you, baby…” I have no idea what other words of encouragement he murmurs as I thrash through the biggest orgasm of my life, I’m only aware that he picks up the pace and the finesse with which he strokes my clit slips as he reaches fever pitch.

A moment later he stills with a tortured, relived sort of groan.

I pause and wait, but he doesn’t move. Eventually I ask, “Did you just…”

“Fuck yeah, that was so good.”

“I said pull out!” I snap, in panic, pushing at his shoulders like if I can somehow remove him now, the damage can be undone. He slides free of me and I wince as our combined fluids leak between my legs. That feeling will always be traumatic for me. It’s another reason why I didn’t want him to come inside of me. I should have insisted on a damn condom, but I swear I was too fucking orgasm-drunk to even remember the word.

Never again.

I’m a fucking idiot.

I scramble to my knees and stare at Kaiden who flops onto the bed beside me and peers at me through lowered lashes. He is not going to sleep again.

He misreads the look on my face. I guess after that orgasm his brain’s a little slow too but all my good feelings have gone, replaced with icy dread.

“Relax, I’m clean. You are too.”

I think he means to sound reassuring but I want to vomit wondering how he could possibly know that about me.

“I’m not on birth control!” I cry. After…my trauma…there were complications that rendered me unable to tolerate most kinds. I can’t think about that right now.

“You are.”

“What?” My voice is a lethal blade and Kaiden must notice even in his sleepy post-coital blissed out state because he sits up and raises his hands defensively.

“He said he got you the shot at the same time as the tattoo.”

“But you weren’t there,” I point out as my mind spirals into chaos. Kaiden hesitates, looking sheepish. “So he could be lying.”

Not to mention, what the fuck else did Axel do to me while I was unconscious?! He can’t have given me the shot. I’m allergic. Fuck. What did he inject me with?

“I should go.” Kaiden slips from the bed and reaches for his clothes before hastily pulling them on. I’m frozen on the mattress trying to process what Kaiden’s just revealed. Why would Axel do that? I mean, why would Axel do any of it, sure, but why put me on birth control without my knowledge? Was he planning something? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

I feel sick.

Kaiden pauses, bends down and retrieves something. Standing, he hesitates before holding out his hand to me. I eye him warily.

“Keep this on you, Odi,” he tells me, handing me my now closed flick knife. “Stay safe.”

With that little caveat, he goes, and I’m left fuming on the bed at my own damn stupidity.