Page 53 of His Bride

It does. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe it’s just my desperation conjuring up that pure fragrance of her. It’s not her perfume. It’s that natural scent of her skin, herdesire, her lust, that sweet aroma of her arousal that sinks into me.

It unravels me. Ruins me. Severs my control, and I want it. I want that out-of-control hunger to possess me. It’s fucking intoxicating and addicting.

I fall onto the bed, my back against the silk sheets, squeezing the pillow tighter, inhaling deeper as if it could somehow satiate my hunger for her, and my cock grows hard.

It’s not lust. It’s not desire. It's something deeper, more primal. A hunger that goes beyond flesh, something born out of sinew and soul.

I'm aching for her, my entire being yearning for her touch everywhere, and I quickly loosen my belt, unzip my pants, and pull out my dick—hard, throbbing desire of the angry kind.

I stroke myself. It’s fast, unrelenting strokes, tightening my grip, squeezing. I need it to hurt. It needs to fucking hurt as much as my insides do, her image taunting, a cruel slideshow of something I no longer have. My desire for her is this volatile thing that infects my marrow.

I want her. I need her. Her lips. Her touch. The way she arches so beautifully into me while I fuck her. How her mouth forms the perfect O, those blue eyes lit with a fire so hot, so intense, it could burn down the entire world around her.

I can still see it, her virgin blood on my palm the first night I fucked her in the woods. I imagine it still smeared over my fingers as I pump my cock, harder, faster, pulling back as far as the skin will let me, my hand a piss-poor substitute for her warm, slick pussy.

Fuck, she’d get so wet for me, drenched from her clit down her smooth, soft thighs.

I move with a wild pace as I jerk off, bucking my hips like I’m fucking her. Like she’s on top of me, riding me and making a mess around my dick.

Sinking my teeth into the pillow, I let out a desperate, wild grunt, coming so violently that the world narrows down to this single, scorching point of pleasure as my seed spills over my clenched fist.

I’m fucking suffocating myself, pressing my face so damn deep into the pillow, squeezing out every last drop of cum.

My cock pulses, and I throw the pillow off the bed, roaring into the room with so much rage I could kill.

I sit up, panting heavily.

My fingers are sticky with my own cum. I’m supposed to feel relief. Supposed to be satiated. But instead, the pain lingers. The emptiness is raw and throbbing. There’s this thing coiling around my chest, winding tighter instead of releasing.

I miss her.

She’s like a phantom limb, a missing extension of myself, and it’s hell trying without her—seven times over since I’m desperate to convince myself I feel nothing when I feeleverything.

All I can think about is how I don’t have Giana anymore. And what’s worse, this big, black hole thing in me is increasing in size by the fucking second.

It’s almost like…

Like—

I drag the non-sticky palm down my face.

—I love her.

Chapter 14

GIANA

Two weeks later

The papers in my hand don’t feel right.

It weighs nothing, yet I haven’t felt anything so heavy.

I stare out the window at the restaurant, struggling to swallow past the lump in my throat.

Last time I was here was with Caelian, our first official fake date. It was here where Caelian stabbed a man through the hand for trying to touch me.

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