35. Natalie

35

NATALIE

A dam’s mouth is firm against mine. It’s the second time he’s kissed me properly, his little charade of possession at Alchemy aside, and it’s as intentional as that one in my office was earlier. No other man has ever kissed me like he means it quite so much. He twists his body towards me and slides his hands up my neck and cups my jaw and angles my face, as if the details matter. As if he wants the fundamentals of this kiss to be flawless.

If this is how he kisses, with hungry slides of his lips against mine and desperate drives of his tongue, his fingers clawing feverishly at me, then I can’t imagine how intense it will be to have him moving over me, pinning me down against his bed.

He was right last night—of course I loved the push-pull of what he deemed hate-sex (or hate-oral, at least). It was hot beyond belief, and every smug smirk and self-confident jibe from him had me spiralling higher. But this is arousing in a completely different way. It’s raw and honest. We’ve stripped ourselves bare tonight, and when he takes me off to that bed of his I’ll go willingly .

More than willingly.

Somehow, I suspect that will be more consuming for both of us than my endless denials and barbs last night.

It’s so much, like this. He overwhelms me with his size and his strength and the heat of his desire, his hands now roaming over me, one cupping a shoulder bared in this asymmetrical dress I’m wearing as the other tugs at my hair. He smells delicious, and the noises he’s making at the back of his throat are so low and male , and oh my God.

Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t kiss me last night, when I was still telling myself I hated him. I couldn’t have withstood this onslaught—I wouldn’t have survived it.

My heart is invested now, too, after listening to the horror of his story. It’s still beating, bleeding, outside my body for this beautiful man who has so many reasons to think me a hostile audience and still chose to trust me enough to share the most harrowing details with me. I kiss him harder, as if hoping that the intensity of my need for him can act as some kind of eraser for the memories that still haunt him, some kind of harbinger of oblivion.

He felt dangerous when I saw him only as a thug, a blunt instrument shrouded in Italian wool and hand-rolled lapels, his presence in this beautiful house as incongruous, as undeserving, as a beast seeking refuge inside a Fabergé egg.

But now that he’s lifted the mask and shown me his true self, now that he’s wearing his wounds and welts as openly as if his skin was coloured with them, he is dangerous.

Because I’d like to think that no matter what I let him do to me last night— asked him to do to me, in that dim little room where he peeled me like a piece of fruit—I would have held firm inside while my body prostituted itself and betrayed twenty years of firmly held hatred in favour of his delicious mouth and capable fingers, in favour of the carnal pleasure of having the white ropes of his arousal paint me like I was his whore.

Tonight, when he peels me open in the astonishing, heartbreaking light of his revelations, he’ll find this particular piece of fruit ripe for the picking, a sweet, unctuous mess for him.

I want his pain. I want his bruises. I want to wear his heartbreak like a brand; I want to exsanguinate that bleeding heart of his and take it all in some sick, grandiose transfusion of his anguish to me.

He slides a hand over my breast and palms me hard, his life line and heart line dragging over the tightly furled bud of my nipple through the fabric of my dress, my bra.

‘Have you had enough to eat?’ he whispers hoarsely against my lips.

I’m a goose in a foie gras factory right now, but I don’t say that, because the poignancy of Adam having spoon-fed me as he recounted, relived, his little sister’s death is not lost on me.

‘I’m good,’ I tell him, my fingers working in his thick curls. ‘I want you to fuck me.’ It feels so good not to hold back, not to try to shield myself with the semblance of dislike or the pretence of indifference. It feels so right to rub my face against his beard as I kiss him, the memory of its abrasion of my pussy a real, vital thing between us, to inhale him so hard it’s like I’m snorting, to lean into him, to take and take.

If this is how I am with his kisses, there’s no doubt he’ll have me begging once I’m in his bed.

‘You sure?’ he asks, the check-in sounding so reluctant I almost laugh. It’s reassuring to know he’s as opposed to applying the brakes as I am .

‘God, yes.’

Arousal has my skin sensitised, a heavy need blooming low in my belly at the thought of Adam consuming me.

Obliterating me.