Page 32 of Tainted Love

Reaching around, I find her slippery clit and pinch it between my fingers before coaxing her climax from her.

Her body convulses beneath me, her moans turning to screams as she clings to the sheets, her orgasm washing over her like a tidal wave.

I slam into her, harder than before, the sensation of her body clamping down around me sending me over the edge.

The sight of her surrender is more than I can bear, and I'm lost to the blinding white light of my own release. I can't help but roar as I unleash inside her, my body shaking with the force of the sensation and my cum spilling deep inside her. As I groan her name over and again, I feel the residual contractions of her climax milking me dry as she convulses beneath me.

For a moment, the world falls away and it's just the two of us, tangled together in a mess of sheets and sweat.

Slowly, I pull out of her, and she lets out a small whine of protest. Right about now is when I’m usually done with a woman, but I surprise myself by lying down next to Maricela, wrapping my arms around her, and pulling her close.

She turns her head to look at me, searching for something in my expression. Her eyes are wide and full of a truth I'm not sure I'm ready to face yet.

I don't know what just happened between us, but I know it's changed something fundamental.

I'm not one for soft words, but in this moment, I need to say something. My voice comes out rough and almost unrecognizable.

"Maricela," I whisper, swallowing against the hoarseness in my voice.

She's quiet, almost like she's holding her breath, and there are so many things I want to say.

But then the haze of our passion begins to clear, and reality crashes back in, leaving me with a feeling of dread and uncertainty.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” I say roughly, and her face shutters as I pull away.

They’re not the words that were on the tip of my tongue, but I know we've crossed a line, and there's no going back now. All I can hope for is damage limitation.

In those stolen moments, we were raw and untamed, stripped of all pretenses and imperfections, yet still bound together by an unbreakable thread of unvarnished humanity.

We're not perfect, but damn it, we're real.

It's the only truth we have.

Chapter Twenty-Four

MARICELA

“That shouldn’t have happened.”

Ciaran's words echo around my head long after he rolls over and goes to sleep.

I don't feel used, exactly. I've been there. Been abused, degraded, and used against my will, and what happened with Ciaran is nothing like that.

I wanted it. Wanted him. But I do feel a certain amount of shame and disappointment. And there's an ache in my heart, because for a little while what we shared had felt so very special.

To me at least.

I know this night will haunt me way into the future because there's no way I won't remember the intensity of our passion. The way our bodies had melted into each other. The way his eyes had met mine in the depths of our connection.

To me it had all felt deeply personal.

Special.

But now it's those final words that linger in my mind and taint the memory of a precious moment in time that really meant something to me. Along with the knowledge that it's something Ciaran obviously regrets. That what I felt as an intense connection was nothing more than a moment of weakness on his part.

It meant nothing, less than nothing. I guess we really were just two damaged souls caught in the throes of a destructive passion.

At some point, I must have slept because the following morning Ciaran is gone before I wake up. And over the next few days he withdraws altogether.