Chapter 16

Chapter 16

We’ve already extended our time once. It won’t happen again. Devan knows it, and I know it. I close my eyes, hating the gritty feeling of unshed tears. “Still. That’s what I want.” Mark me so I have a piece of you past this deadline. Please.

He hesitates so long, I suddenly wish I could see his face, even though I know I won’t be able to identify any of the emotions he’s actually feeling. He’s too good at keeping things locked down. Finally, Devan moves, thrusting into me slowly. Every other time we’ve done this, he’s worked himself into me in slow strokes.

Not this time.

He’s not moving fast, but he’s also not giving me time to adjust. I whimper and jerk forward, trying to escape the endless onslaught of his giant cock, but he tightens his grip on my hips, pinning me in place. Each fingertip digs deliciously into my skin, a constellation of pain on each hip. I know even without looking that I’ll sport his bruises later. Maybe not forever, but for a while. For longer than a moment.

Even still, it’s almost too much. I feel like he’s breaking me down, shattering my already jagged edges. “Wait!”

Devan hesitates. “Wait doesn’t mean red.” But he waits all the same.

“I know.” A tear escapes the corner of my eye, and then another. I can’t stop them. I don’t even bother to try. At least he can’t see my face, won’t know…

I really should stop under-estimating this man.

He pulls out of me and flips me onto my back. Devan takes in my tears in and gently reaches out and brushes his thumb over the sensitive skin beneath first one eye and then the other. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” I shake my head. I can’t stop the tears, can’t explain to him that this is good and bad and inevitable, all at the same time, all tangled up inside me. “No, I don’t want to stop. Please.”

For a moment, I think he might ignore my words, bundle me up, and do something horrifying like take care of me. I like being held by Devan almost as much as I like fucking Devan. There’s something about being wrapped in his arms that makes me feel like nothing in this world can touch me, that he’ll step between me and whatever tries to hurt me.

I can’t accept that right now.

It will hurt even more than anything he can do to my body, because it’s not real. This is only temporary, which means no matter how kindly or harshly he treats me, it’s all part of one fantasy or another.

I can’t let it be real.

I wrap my hands around his wrists. “Fuck me, Devan. Fuck me hard. Please.”

He studies my face for a long moment, dark gaze touching on my eyes, the tear tracts down my cheeks, my mouth that feels ravished after our earlier kisses. Finally he shakes his head. “No.”

“But—”

“That’s not what you need, Hazel.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I need!”

His lifts his brows, but his face is oh-so-serious. “Don’t I?”

“No.” I start to sit up, but he plants a big hand in the center of my chest and pushes me back down. I glare. “Let me go.”

“Do you want to use red?”

God, I’ve never hated a man the way I do in this moment. Of course I don’t want to use red. We’re so close to the end of this thing, using red now might actually end it, and that’s something I can’t live with. “No.”

He doesn’t mock me for my submission. He just hooks one arm under my thigh and spreads me wide so he can start working his cock into me again. “You don’t need to be fucked, Hazel.”

I’m so furious and hurt and turned on, I can’t keep my mouth shut. “Oh, sure, keep pretending you know what I need.”

“Don’t have to pretend.” He thrusts forward a little more, finally sheathing himself entirely within me. He braces himself on his elbows and holds my gaze. “I know what you need. I’ve always known what you need.”

“And, pray tell, what’s that?”

“Someone to take care of you.” He kisses my neck as he starts moving slowly within me. “Someone to tell when you’ve been a dirty little slut and need the attitude fucked right out of you. Someone to be a safe place for you, a harbor in the storm.” He starts moving slightly faster, pleasure overtaking his words, to the point where I’m certain I don’t hear the next bit correctly.

I couldn’t have possibly. Because I could swear he said… “Someone like me.”

Devan’s dick is too good. It has me hallucinating feelings. Except I know that’s not the truth, it’s never been the truth. I drag my hands down his back to grab his ass, urging him to thrust deeper, harder, even if he never increases the pace. It feels too perfect to be held by him like this, fucked by him like this. Like it’s not fucking at all, but something entirely more emotional.

Even though I know better, I can’t help striking back with the only weapon I have. My words. “You don’t know me, Devan. You never have.”

“Wrong.” He wedges one arm beneath my hips, lifting them into an angle that lets him go deeper yet. “I know you in every stubborn, glorious detail.”

Now it’s my turn to throw his accusation back in his face. “Liar.”

“You were right before.” His voice has gone rough as he fucks me. “Not the little details. Not the bullshit. But I know you, Hazel Gardner, and don’t try to tell me otherwise.” And then his mouth is on mine again. This time, he doesn’t back off. Devan fucks me like he’s mad at me, like if he can just make me come hard enough, he can convey some understanding to me that’s slipping through my fingers.

I want that understanding just as much as I’m scared of it. It doesn’t matter what fantasies we weave here, because they’re fantasies.

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.

Oh fuck, I’m going to come again.

I feel the words bubbling up a second time, just as unforgivable as the last. Instead, I press my face to the mattress as I come so hard I scream into the mattress. Devan follows me over this edge this time, grinding deep and cursing as he comes inside me.

He rolls us onto our sides and wraps his arms around me, his cock still lodged deep in my pussy. I blink too rapidly, determined not to let the burning in my eyes become something more. Not again.

I wait for Devan to say something, to comment on the unforgivable words I let slip, but he seems content to merely hold me close and trail kisses over my shoulder and neck. I don’t know if that’s better than addressing it or worse. I’m too tired to figure it out.

Besides, it feels good be held by him. Almost as if he cares just as much as I do, as if his foolish heart has betrayed him the same way mine has. I know it’s a lie. Devan would never lose control enough to catch feelings for a woman he’s glad to finally be rid of. An albatross at his neck he’s finally putting down.

He’d have to be a fool to pick me back up again at this point.

I close my eyes and focus on getting myself under control. An impossible task. I’m one giant exposed nerve for this man. He might call me a liar, but I’m far too honest for both our sakes.

This time, when sleep takes me, I welcome it.