Page 40 of Romancing the Reaper

Despite the anger and everything else, I can’t deny the pull between us. A magnetic force that I can’t understand. I should fight it more, but I don’t want to.

“Or, have you forgotten who you belong to, Ada?” Kieran’s grip on my throat tightens. Hearing him speak my name feels strange now. I’ve gotten used to the sweeter names that he’s taken to calling me. I almost expect them. I should push him off, slap him - tell him that I don’t belong to anybody but myself but that’s a lie. With the cold way he says my name, some irrational part of me wants to do anything just to have him call me his princess again. I want his voice dark with desire when he speaks to me - not this.

It might be a test, and I won’t fail.

I bite down on my bottom lip, frozen with indecision. He’s hurt - I shouldn’t push him any further. He could get seriously injured. I just fished bullets out of his body and now… and now…

I can’t picture a future that he’s not in. Perhaps that says something seriously twisted about me, but I can’t help it. I don’t want anything to happen to my brother, I don’t want anything to happen to him and I don’t have the words to say what I’m feeling. Instead, my hands move to the waist of his pants, undoing them quickly. If I can’t speak, then I’ll do my best to show him.

My chest feels tight, I can’t tell if I’m going to cry or not as I push his pants down around his thighs. It takes no time before he is hard for me. I stroke him with my hand a few times, just enough to have his hand shift from my throat to the crown of my head, fisting into my hair. This time he doesn’t guide me, and he doesn’t take over. The choice is mine. Where is my place? I know where he wants it to be. Fuck, it’s what I want, too. Isn’t it?

I run my tongue along the tip, swirling around the head and licking the precum off with a sweep of my tongue before taking him into my mouth. I try my best to accommodate his size but without him forcing my head down, I can’t get nearly enough. I try until my eyes water. I gag and sputter as he sits there, unmoving.

Finally, I look up at him, eyes blurry. I need him to accept me - we have to fix this.

He pauses, studying my expression. He waits, making sure that I’m certain.

He nods in the direction of the mattress. I pull my shirt off of my head in a fluid motion and head for the mattress. I crawl halfway up the uncomfortable, lumpy thing before Kieran grabs the back of my pants, pulling me back and my ass up into the air. He pulls hard enough the seam of the pajamas rips right in half. He moves without the same ease as before, likely because of the bandaging and the wounds - and he aligns himself behind me, not taking time to ready me before slamming into me so hard it hurts. It hurts enough that I cry out and attempt to crawl away from him, to have that relentless pace ease for a moment but all that he does is shift me. I’m on my side, one leg up and half over his shoulder. He laces his fingers together over my thigh and uses that as leverage to fuck me.

It feels like he’s going to split me in half. Fuck it shouldn’t feel this good. It’s like he’s taking out every aggression from the day, every bad thing that happened and the fear that he might lose me all out on my pussy. The discomfort fades and shifts into something else. The friction of the position is intoxicating. Kieran shifts one hand, still keeping me close with the other as he slaps my breast. He holds it firmly, pinching and pulling on my nipple with possessive firmness. Nothing that I can’t handle but the sharp bite in such sensitive skin is shocking.

Then he actually bites me, right on the inside of my leg and I cry out.

“Ow! Kieran!” I slap at him, pushing him to get off of me because it hurts. I don’t want it to hurt. There’s an animalistic ferocity in his eyes as he reaches between us and pinches my clit. My scream of protest turns to pleasure for a moment, distracting me for just a moment before I come to my senses. “No! Kieran!”

He pauses, his nose scrunching. “No?”

I push at him, and he captures my wrists, holding both of them in one large hand, pinning them up above my head as he shifts us. I try to kick him away but he manages to slip between my legs. He aligns himself and starts to fuck me again. Sharp, punctuated thrusts like he’s proving a point.

“No? You’re mine, Ada. If you need the reminder, that’s fine - but don’t ever try to leave me again.” Kieran insists.

I snap my head back, torn between biting whatever skin I can reach and the building pleasure in my core -- and then I see his face. There’s such open vulnerability there, something that I never thought that I would see from him. There’s still dried blood on so much of him. He looks like a horror show. He could have died today. I can see it all there, even as his hips start to still. He’s terrified.

Something in me thaws. His grip on my wrists loosens and I cup his face tenderly, shifting so that my legs wrap around his hips, pulling him closer as he changes to a much softer tempo. He kisses me so softly I think he’s the one in danger of breaking. I smooth his hair away from his face as I kiss him, letting him take from me what he needs to feel whole again.

I don’t think that I could leave and go home, even if he unlocked those doors and told me to leave.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ADA

Ihave never slept so well in my life. I think Kieran worked me harder than I knew was physically possible and then I might have passed out.

I have no way to know what time it is, or how long I’ve been asleep. My body is sore in places that I didn’t even know that it was possible to be sore in. My mind is helpfully blissed out and offering up flashes of memories from the previous night into my mind like a replay highlight reel. I could lie here in bed and pleasure myself to the memories alone. Rather, I would let Kieran do it for me… but he’s nowhere to be found.

I slide out of bed gingerly, the tenderness between my thighs almost stopping my desire to give in to my more base urges. But I can simply find Kieran and then force him to handle it for me.

I wrap his sheet around me like a dress and hold the front closed with my hand as I quietly make my way to the bathroom. But he’s not in there either. I had hoped he was just taking this time to shower.

I pause in there only long enough to splash water on myself and make myself feel slightly more awake. I need a clock or something to help me tell the time.

Glancing in the mirror at my reflection, I’m disappointed by what I see. I knew that skipping so many days of my skincare was going to make everything a wreck, but I didn’t think that I was going to lookthisrough. The poor nutrition and stress, paired with my fatigue makes for a terrible combination.

Worry takes hold of my gut and holds tightly. How can Kieran even touch me when I look like this? How long have I even been here? It has to be a few weeks now at least. I push at the bags under my eyes and then pinch at my cheekbones for a long moment, mentally picking apart my reflection. Old habits die hard.

No. I have to stop. I cannot keep doing this. I simply can’t allow it.

I bite my bottom lip and force myself to turn around, my back to the mirror as I try to stop the incoming panic attack.

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