Chapter 15

15

T here will come a time—probably tomorrow morning when the light of day flashes across my face in the reflection of my mirror—that I will likely regret this. That I'll look back on what I did tonight and want to smack myself upside the head. The last time we played this particular song, it turned into a hell of a lot more than I bargained for. But as I watch him, the way his chest is rising and falling, each breath deeper than the last, and his dark eyes that are sinful and demanding, I can't find it in me to care about tomorrow morning or any regrets I'll have.

The heavy ache between my legs is running this show, and I suck in a sharp breath as I reach up into my hair to remove the bobby pins holding my long mane up. He watches me, his wild gaze fixed on my fingers as I move deftly and quickly, dropping the pins to the floor. That'll be a moment of reflection too, when I have to clean them up, but it doesn't matter. The way he's looking at me, the way he kisses and touches me, how he knows all the right moves and ways to make me lose my mind…

Yeah, tonight's happening, whether it's stupid or not.

But he's right. It can only be tonight for a lot of reasons, chief among them, I won't start something with him that leaves me hurt and reeling again.

After the last pin is out, I run my hands over my breasts, squeezing them and plumping them up in my bra while my thumbs drag over my nipples just to fuck with him a bit. He always liked my tits, so why not remind him just how much? He makes a low, angry noise deep in his throat, and his fists clench by his sides. I'm disobeying him, and I bet if I called him sir right now, he'd be back on me in a heartbeat, taking over and destroying me for good.

"You fucking tease." His gravelly voice is pure, unadulterated lust. "I'm going to have you begging me to let you come."

"Your threats don't scare, sir . Or have you forgotten that I'm pretty good at doing this on my own?"

He blinks once, slowly, as if trying to make sure I said that word to him. A flush rises up his cheeks, and then he's back at me as I knew he'd be. Grabbing me by my thighs, he flips me around and presses the side of my cheek against the door. He takes my earlobe between his teeth, sucking on the diamond there.

"Keep your hands on the door, little rose, or I'll spank you with my belt for being such a dirty tease and playing with your tits before I gave you permission to."

Jesus . I've never been spanked before. Not like that anyway. My insides squirm at the thought, and now I'm not sure what to do.

Sensing my indecision, he chuckles lightly against my ear, making me shiver. "You want to feel my belt, you devious girl?" He moves behind me. The sound of metal jingling and leather whipping through fabric has me biting into my lip and my pussy clenching. What is it about this man that always has me hurtling willingly to the edge and tumbling over it?

His hand rubs along my ass cheek in a soft circle, and then a gasp flees my lungs when I feel the leather of his belt does the same on the other cheek. Oh, my hell in a handbasket. I wiggle and worm, unable to stop it.

"Hold still, baby girl," he whispers huskily against my ear, and I bite my lip harder in order to obey his command. "Do you want pain, pleasure, or both?"

I shake my head, my legs trembling terribly even as I bite back my smile. I'm in the mood to play, and I know he'll oblige. "Whatever would please you, sir."

He growls against me, his forehead pressing into my spine as he takes a breath. "My little rose, you are playing with fire."

I get a thwack on the ass, not hard, but enough to startle and have me gasping again. And then moaning. Because fuck am I keyed up. My skin was already humming, and that smack was like a spark in the dark. He sinks down and licks where he just spanked, and my knees give out.

"I said to hold still." His voice is a deadly purr, and he bands the hand not spanking me across my lower back to hold me up. Thwack. Thwack.

My eyes roll back in my head. I never ever considered how getting spanked with a belt of all things could possibly turn me on, but here I am. A writhing, whimpering mess of a woman. It's the heat of it as it raises my flesh. The naughty taboo. The dirty depravity. The strange, alluring humiliation. How controlled he is with the intensity of his strikes. The way he gives me no choice but to take it and want more of it.

"Did you like that, my bad girl? Is that what you were looking for?"

All I can do is nod, my fingers gripping the door that barely provides purchase. "Yes, sir. It is."

"You're such a filthy fucking goddess. Christ, Tinsley. What you do to me." He presses the hard ridge of his cock nestled beneath the silky fabric of his pants into my smarting skin, and my clit pulses and throbs.

Another thwack, and he's kissing it, licking it, turning that sting and heat into a smoldering inferno. His fingers slip under the back of my bra, and then it falls away, drifting to the floor. A tug on either side of my hips and my thong shreds as he rips it from me. My eyes snap wide, and I glance down to see the silky fabric fall.

Oh, my heavens to Betsy. He just ripped my panties off the same as he did my dress.

I've never been this turned on in my life. If he told me to crawl to him, I would. I'd do anything for him right now. Anything for the pleasure I know he'll give me.

Bending to his knees behind me, he nips, bites, licks, and kisses my ass before he splits my cheeks and rings my forbidden hole with his tongue.

Holy shit!

"Stone. I can't… I haven't?—"

"Shhh, baby girl. You are mine tonight. I am your sir, and I will take what I want." As if to prove his point, he licks me there again, and I shudder, the sensation foreign but not as unpleasant as I imagined.

His tongue trickles lower, his hand jerking my hips back and spreading me open wider to give him a better angle and access. His tongue dives straight in, swirling around before he does the same motion on my clit. He rains kisses along my upper thighs and then plunges back in and repeats the motion, switching it up. Giving me what I need, what I'm desperate for, only to immediately pull back.

My asshole. My pussy. My clit. My thighs.

On and on he goes. Edging me so exquisitely, I'm a panting, pining, begging mess. To the point where I can't take it another second. It's too much.

"Stone. I'm…"

I don't even know what I am.

"At my mercy, which is exactly where I intend to keep you tonight." Another lick. Another spanking with the belt, this one a bit harder than before. A punishment. "It's been two years, and yet here I am. You drive me to the end of my sanity. I don't know how to turn away. I don't know how to stop. I see you and I crave you and I have to have you. There is no other way for me. How do you do that to me?"

"It's the same with me," I admit, because it's true. I hate him and I want him. I'm crazy about him, and I can't stand him. But no matter what, I'm inexplicably drawn to him. A magnet, helpless and incapable of fighting the pull.

"You taste better than I remember," he murmurs against my soaked flesh. "Two fucking years of jacking off to endless fantasies and memories, and they never could live up to the real thing."

Oh my hell. My eyes pinch shut, and my teeth bite into my bottom lip so hard I'm shocked I'm not tasting blood. I've thought of him too. Pleasured myself to memories of him more times than I can count.

All I know is…

"I want you inside of me. Please. I need it, sir."

A low, strangled groan flees his lips. "Soon. I'm not done playing with you yet."

I whimper and grind against him, desperately seeking his mouth where I need it most.

Thwack .

I yelp in surprise, the belt already half-forgotten, and then his teeth dig in straight over the spot on my ass. More playing. More teasing. More driving me crazy. And just as I'm about to lose my mind completely, he sucks my clit into his mouth right as two fingers plunge straight into me, curl just right, and tip me over the edge.

I come. Hard. It's an explosion. A tsunami. A fucking seismic event. I come all over his fingers that are working me hard and lips and tongue that are all over my clit, sucking and flicking it. My hand slams into the door, and I scream out, grinding down into his face and fingers, my toes curling in my heels that I'm somehow still wearing.

He growls against me. "Yes. That's it. All over my face, little Rose."

I collapse against the wood, breathing hard, eyes closed, mind spinning. He rises behind me, his body coasting against mine so I feel every inch of him as he goes. It's a reminder. He's not nearly done with me. That was simply the start. His appetizer. He has yet to make a meal out of me, but I have no doubt he will.

I feel him start to undress, clothes falling to the floor, and how will I recover from this? Fear ripples through me at the thought that I might not. I did the last time. I forced myself to because I was making a lot of changes in my life, and after I ran from him and cried my eyes out to Wren, I pushed him from my thoughts and away from my heart. That's likely what I'll have to do again.

He's dangerous to me. A potent drug I grow to crave the more I taste. I could shove him out the door and save myself. Protect my heart from the man I nearly gave it all to, even when he didn't want it or ask for it. But I don't want to. I want tonight. The same way I wanted that first night with him back then.

It's only tonight. There is no ship. There are no ten days at sea.

It's this and then nothing.

I'm only here for three months. I can avoid him. It's a big enough city, and I'll be careful when I see his people and mine. How difficult can that be?

"You're thinking too much," he murmurs against me, gripping my hair and using it to turn my neck so he can force my gaze. "That's not a luxury we can afford tonight."

He's right. It's not. I either give into this and all the subsequent aftermath, or I call it quits now.

"If you still want this," he tacks on, his voice even and low, though there's something flickering in the back of his eyes. Something that makes my heart ache. I don't even know what it is, and it's gone almost immediately, and he's back to being Stone. Hard. Cold. Impenetrable.

This was him back then, too. Brief flickering moments of softness and vulnerability, and then gone. I can handle that familiarity. It's a certainty, one he won't go back on. He's too resolute for anything else. And the truth is, all I feel right now is pure, undeniable lust. The kind that only has one way of sating it.

"I still want this."

I reach behind and grip his cock, feeling it pulse against my palm, toying with the barbell through his shaft and head. He takes my hand and plants it back on the door, pushing me halfway against it. Before I can so much as utter a sound, he takes hold of my hips, yanks them back, grips his cock, and thrusts deep inside me.

The noise that tumbles past my lips would be embarrassing for how loud it is, but considering how good he feels—better than anything—it can't be helped.

His forehead presses against my spine between my shoulder blades, and he holds himself still, breathing heavily and murmuring something under his breath that I can't make out. With an angry bite to my shoulder, he starts to pound, his thighs slapping against mine, driving himself in as deep as he can go.

I gasp and clench around him, my breathing ragged and uncontained. My palms flatten against the door beneath my cheek, a barrier to protect myself as he moves hard and fast, taking me without mercy.

He fists my hair, turning my face so his lips can attack mine from the side and his tongue can slip inside and kiss me sloppily. I moan into him, tasting him like this and only wanting more. His hands run down my sides, slap my ass, and reach around to cup and squeeze my breasts. Calloused thumbs drag over my hard nipples, running circles across my skin before he grips them and uses them as leverage while he fucks me. For as brutal as he fucks me, his mouth is soft and gentle, worshiping me as he rains kisses down my jaw to the back of my neck and shoulder.

"Fucking perfect," he grunts, pulling on my nipple and licking my skin, tasting me.

The feeling of him slipping in and out of me, the sounds we're making, the smell of sex, and his spicy cologne all around me are so intense that my back arches and my ass grinds back. My eyes blink open, and I find him there, his eyes on me, watching me from inches away.

"There's my girl. I was waiting." He picks up his pace.

"Oh, god." My eyes start to close again as the head of his cock with that goddamn barbell pounds vigorously against my front wall.

"Un-uh. Look at me. Look at me," he repeats more forcefully. "I want to watch you. See your eyes. And tomorrow, when you're sore but still so fucking turned on you have to touch yourself just to try to ebb it, I want you to think about who made you that way."

My eyes cling to his, and I know it's a sight I'll never forget. The sheen of sweat on his brow, the fierce, possessive, wild look in his blown-out green eyes, the flush on his cheeks, and the parting of his lips to accommodate his ragged breaths. He makes me come undone, but I do the same to him.

One hand continues to abuse my tits and nipples while the other slides down to my clit.

"Ah!" I cry as he presses in on it with a firm pressure that has me trembling and shaking uncontrollably.

"Your cunt is soaking me, baby girl. No one has fucked you right since me, have they?"

I shake my head, too close to speak. Too close to tell him that he's the last one who's been inside me and that I'm starting to think he's the only one who ever should be again.

His hips pick up their pace, his hands and fingers are rubbing and rough, and with his eyes on mine, I lose the battle, close mine, and come harder than I've ever come before. He buries his head in my neck and lets out a roar, his body shaking so badly that I force myself to hold still so I can feel him as he comes undone inside me.

He gives my sensitive clit one final tap, and then his arms wrap around me. For a moment, all he does is hold me, breathing hard with his face nestled against my skin. Spinning me around, he captures my face in his hands and kisses me, just the way he did that last night on the boat. Only I'm not running right now. His hands sweep under my legs and around my back, and he lifts me, holding me bride-style, his lips never leaving mine as he heads for the stairs, carrying me up them, ready for round two.