Page 49 of Savage Fire

She shuddered, her naked body curling deeper into him, seeking out more touches, more caresses.

“Good morning. I slept like the dead, thank you. It helps that you fucked me into the mattress until I was too liquified to blink let alone move a muscle,” she sassed, making him laugh. Fuck yeah, he could definitely do this every morning for the rest of his life.

Pulling her back into his chest and thrusting his rock-hard cock into the crack of her ass, Fang wasn’t ready for her question.

“Why do you have the Hive?”

Stunned by her out of the blue question, Fang blinked at her, his mind quickly trying to think up a response that would allow him to put off really answering until he was ready.

Will you ever be ready?

Tessa, sensing his mental withdrawal, flipped over to face him. Her blue eyes penetrating, missing nothing in his expression.

“Come on, Javier. There has to be a reason you chose to have no-strings—though, I don’t see how making them sign a contract could be string-less—sexual relationships with five women. You’re a gorgeous man. A man any woman would want as her own. Why would you willingly…well, cheat yourself out of a meaningful relationship with one woman? Was it like Sipha said, that no one woman could satisfy you, or is there more to it?”

Basically, she was asking if she, alone, was enough to keep him happy. She was asking if he would fuck her then stray to fulfill some need for variety.

If she only knew….

She can know. If you tell her.

Sitting up, he maneuvered backward until his spine was flush with the headboard. Tessa sat up, bracing herself on her elbow. Her gaze was on him, examining his features, looking for the tell-tale signs of his withdrawal. He knew it. She knew it, and she’d be right…if he weren’t determined to do right by her.

“I don’t even know where to start,mi amor,” he admitted, reaching out to pull her up to lean into him, their naked bodies still sticky from a night of sex.

She shrugged. “Start at the beginning. That always works.”

Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one with a lifetime of evil tainting everything they were, deep down to their soul. Once he opened to her, told her the truth of who he was, she’d run. She’d hide. But he’d just run after her, capture her, and never left her leave him again.

“At the beginning, huh?” he said, conceding.

Against him, Tessa settled in, her gaze on his face.

“My mother was kidnapped from her village in El Salvador when she was twelve. She was sold to a bordello in Buenaventura, where she spent the next thirty years on her back, servicing men with a taste for rough sex.”

Tessa turned green…then red. Flipping from disgusted to ragey in a blink.

“Oh, Fang…” she murmured, her gaze softening at something she saw in his eyes.

“She got pregnant with me when she was seventeen.” He swallowed, bracing himself for the next part. “Instead of aborting me like most of the whores did when they fell pregnant from their clients, she kept me. I was born on the floor of a whorehouse, and that’s where I slept for the next fifteen years.”

“You said something about that…about your life changing when you turned fifteen,” Tessa remarked, her hand caressing his cheek, his jaw, dropping to press over his pounding heart.

“When I turned thirteen…the women started…teaching me. They thought it was their duty to fuck me and instruct me on the ways of pleasing a woman.”

Tessa had turned green again.

“But you were a fucking child!”

He shook his head sadly.

“In Buenaventura, childhood died a quick death. Those six women were my lovers, my teachers, my source of knowledge and comfort….Mi mamawanted nothing to do with our strange arrangement. She hated that those women had ruined her boy. The truth is, though, those women helped me more than they ever thought possible.”

“Fuck that, they were child molesters!” Tessa spat, back to being ragey, her face flushed, her body vibrating. “And you said six women.Six.” She tipped her head in thought, her mind whirring to the conclusion he knew she would reach. “That was your first Hive, wasn’t it. You just didn’t call it that.”

He nodded once, hating the look of disgust on her face. Her plush lips were curled, her nose scrunched up like she’d smelled something foul.

“That’s why you don’t do monogamy—you are right back there, in that whorehouse, using women as sex toys to sate your lust then send back to their rooms. It’s like you never left, Fang.”

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