Page 73 of Taming Achilles

His lips crashed into mine, his tongue diving in deep, conquering, tasting every inch of my mouth. I tried to squirm away but his mouth just attacked harder. Just as he’d promised. He’d take and take. He’d never stop.

My nails dug deeper into my flesh, wanting pain. Needing it to help me survive this agony and lust.

“I thought you were marrying my best friend. I thought you were fucking Cal,” he said, his hand tightening around my fingernails until he pried them from my skin. “You made me believe it. I needed to move on. If it was what would make you happy, I had to move on, or slit my own throat. I died when your engagement was announced. Do you understand? I died that day. I was a walking corpse.”

Pain. I needed pain. I put my hand in a fist, prying it from his hold and bringing it down onto my thigh again.

He grabbed my wrists, and brought them together in front of me, holding them in my hand.

“You don’t get to cause yourself pain,” he admonished, his voice angry, but professorial. “You’re mine. I get to hurt you, no one else. Not even you.”

I whimpered, the bubbling wail in my throat begging for release. I felt the snot, and tears, and all the watery filth leaking from my soul coat my face.

“I couldn’t be with anyone else, Pippa. Not without going through to extremes, and even then, I saw your face. I heard your voice, I smelled your scent.” I didn’t want to hear this anymore. I shook my head, as if it could swat away his words. “It was always you!” His voice struck through me, as I tried to pull my hands away and tried to get up. “I got off because I imagined I was doing it to you. Always you. Only you.”

I heard the words. I understood them. I wanted to believe him, but all I could see was other women. Simona. Others. Fucking Detective Delgado and her competent eyes, and the respect between her and my Geo. Countless women. Gorgeous, loving, admiring him on their knees, giving him pleasure that I never had, because I was a selfish lover. I always had been. And he used to give, and give.

His hard hands had always been so gentle, treating me like I was the most delicate bloom. Nothing like how they touched me now.

“Let me go.” I tried to pull away, but my heart was making me weak. I had no strength left.

“No,” he said. “Never. Never. Never!”

He grabbed my face in his hands, and I started hitting him in the chest, my fist coming down. Thump. Thump! Thump!

I wept, because he had no right to be with others. I wailed because I knew his hands had given someone else pleasure. He had held someone else as he was holding me.

I hit him because I needed pain. I needed to hurt him, and to hurt myself. Before I went completely mad.

He wrapped his arms around me again, pulling me to his chest as I cried. It was long minutes before I realised that he was groaning too. His face, buried in my neck, was wet with tears as well, his chest heaving like mine.

He was crying too. I pulled away, just enough to look at his face. To see the tears and how they stained his cheeks and added a glare to his brown eyes.

I wiped his tears away, hating myself. Hating how they were wrong on him.

“I love you,” he whispered, bringing his forehead to mine. “I love you, Pip. I love you.”

He kissed me. I kissed him back with the desperation of a drowning man, and he was air. I kissed him because I knew that it could be the last time. I tugged his shirt open so I could run my fingers over his bare chest. He pulled at my dress until the seams gave way, and it hung around my waist.

“I love you,” I whispered against his mouth. I needed him to know that.

He pulled up my skirt with one hand and undid his belt with the other. He opened his trousers, lowering me onto his length. I screamed in ecstasy. Tears flowing down my cheeks, to my neck, and as far as my bare breasts that he took in his mouth.

“I’ll never let you go again,” he promised when he let my nipple go with a pop. “I’ll never let you run.”

I shook my head. “Just give me this. Just this one time. Tonight. There’s no past. No future. Just this. Please.”

He shook his head, denying me my request. “There’s nowhere you could go where I wouldn’t follow. Never. Never!”

I swayed, dizzy in his arms, my hips bucking against him, his cock deep, bottoming out inside me, so that my walls expanded to accommodate his girth. He was so hard and I felt like over kneaded bread. Raw and ready to fall apart.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you. I love you.”

He chanted it again and again, and I believed it, because it was the same words that were pouring from my heart.

He made love to me on the couch. On the floor. In the bed. We fell asleep for a moment. I woke to him between my thighs, licking my slit, sucking on my clit and grazing his teeth on my skin. He made me come that way, before making love to me again, and again, until the sun came up.

We watched the sun creep over the Hollywood Hills, turning the landscape orange.

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