Page 72 of Endless Love

Ivan’s footsteps are heavy behind me. “Run, little dove,” he growls, his voice bouncing around the space until I swear I hear it from every direction, unsure of where he’s going to come at me from.

I want to run. And I want to be caught.

The house is empty now, none of the killers or ghosts or skeletons left in the rooms, only the decorations. I almost trip over a fake gravestone as I run through one of the rooms, and I hear Ivan close, so close that as I dart around a medical table soaked in fake blood, I think he’s going to grab me.

I think the only reason that he doesn’t is because he’s not ready for the chase to be over yet, either.

I bolt through the haunted house, down the hall that connects it to the next one, into the maze. My heart is beating so hard that it almost hurts, and the confinement of the maze, the twists and turns, only adds to the adrenaline. But this is a different kind of adrenaline than what I’ve been feeling for the last several days. This is an adrenaline that leads to something I want. An anticipation of something that I need—and I think Ivan needs it, too.

I hear his footsteps and swing left, darting down the next hall—and come out into a room of mirrors, my panting, breathless, figure visible from every angle.

Ivan appears in the mirror, a dark shadow behind me, that mask still firmly on his face. I hear a door slam behind me, hear the click of something, and he moves closer, that skeleton mask smiling at me in a tight grimace.

“Little dove,” he murmurs, and when his hands touch my waist, I yelp. “Looks like I caught you.”

I can’t breathe. His hands slide up my waist, up to my breasts through my thin t-shirt, molding them in his hands as he pulls me back against him. My back is flush to his chest, my ass pressed to his groin, and I can feel how hard he is.

“I’ve been hard since the moment I started chasing you, dove,” Ivan growls in my ear, his hands dropping to them hem of my shirt. “I’m fuckingthrobbing, thinking about what I’m going to do now that I’ve caught you. My little bird, out of her cage.”

He yanks my shirt up, over my head, leaving me in my bra and jeans. I hadn’t even realized there was a chair in the room, but he reaches over and grabs one that I didn’t see in the darkness, yanking it between us and shoving me down into it. I gasp, letting out a terrified squeak as I feel the sudden rough rasp of rope around my wrists, and Ivan grabs them, pulling my arms behind me and tying my hands together behind the chair.

“My pretty little captive. You want to be so angry at me for ‘kidnapping’ you, right? For chasing you down and trying to make you mine. I’ve tried to be patient, dove. I’ve tried to show you that I know I went about it all wrong. But you’re angry at me anyway. I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. So—” Ivan chuckles behind the mask, and I see the glint of a knife, reflected in what seems like a hundred mirrors. “I’ve decided todo.”

He won’t hurt me. This is a game. He won’t hurt me.I know it, logically. But my instincts tell me that there’s a man with a knife, a muscled, dangerous man who couldabsolutelyhurt me if he wanted to. That I’m tied, and helpless, and that I’m in danger.

I kick out at him, twisting and opening my mouth to scream, and Ivan lunges forward, bending over me as he claps one gloved hand to my mouth.

The feeling of the leather against my lips brings back a flood of memories, and I gasp, arousal soaking between my thighs as I let out an involuntary, helpless moan.

“That’s my good girl,” Ivan murmurs. “I paid the carnies to ignore any sounds they heard. Paid them well, too. So I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that.” I feel the cold slide of the blade against my back, and then the sudden looseness of my bra as he cuts through it, slicing away the straps until the garment falls to the floor.

My nipples instantly harden in the cold air, and Ivan sinks down, kneeling between my legs. He reaches up with the hand not holding the knife, cupping the curve of my breast, his gloved thumb rolling over my nipple.

The second he touches me, I let out a whimper, my hips arching up. Ivan chuckles darkly, tilting his head, that white mask staring up at me. My cheeks flush hot at my reaction to him, but it’s been too long. The tension has been simmering for days, building since the last time he bent me over that sink, refusing to fuck me. We’ve come so close, teased right up to the edge of it, and now I’m desperate for him. Desperate for more, desperate for him to make me come.

“Little dove.” Ivan reaches up, pressing the point of the knife tip into my breast as he circles it around my nipple. Not hard enough to draw blood, or even really enough to hurt, but enough for me to feel the sting. He traces the tip around, between my breasts to the other one, pricking my nipple with the knife as he leans in and captures the other hard, stinging point between his gloved fingers.

The sharp point of the knife and the pressure of his fingers against my nipples is almost too much to bear. My hips arch up again, and I moan, my head tipping back as my legs splay open. The knife presses deeper, and I feel Ivan pinch my nipple hard between his fingertips, hard enough to make me yelp.

“Keep your eyes open, Charlotte,” he commands. “I want you to watch all of this. I want you to watch what I do to you. Watch how badly you need it. Watch yourself squirm and beg while I strip you down. And every time you close your eyes—” He twists the knife around my nipple again, rolling the opposite one, sending a shudder down my spine. “I’ll make it hurt. But you like that too, don’t you, filthy girl?”

I glare down at him, refusing stubbornly to answer. But Ivan just chuckles, tweaking my nipple as he digs the knife tip directly into the center of the other one, pushing me further.

The sensation jolts straight down to my clit, a flood of mingled pain and pleasure making me cry out. “Please,” I gasp, and Ivan pulls back, looking at his handiwork. I don’t have to look down to know my nipples are red and swollen, hard as diamonds from his attention.

“Please, what, little dove?”

I don’t even know what to beg for. I want to come, but I’m not far gone enough to beg for that yet. Ivan laughs darkly, dropping the knife onto his lap as he leans in to reach for the button of my jeans.

“That’s what I thought. But we’ll get there. Now tell me, dove, if you don’t want to be punished again. How wet are you for me? Have you soaked through those panties yet?”

I press my lips tightly together, still glaring at him. Some small part of my mind, in the back of my head, knows that I’m doing this on purpose. That Iwantthe pain. That this is the filthy, perverse thing I was chasing when I logged onto that site in the first place, when I talked to Venom, when all of this began.

I wanted this. I wanted all of it. And Ivan is going to make me face it. I’ve been punishing him for it, so he’s going to punish me in return.

He reaches up with both hands, twisting my nipples hard. I cry out, the sound ending in a moan as I feel myself clench, myhips arching up as if I can get any friction that way. My hands twist uselessly in the ropes behind me, and I want desperately to get them free, to get the pleasure that I so desperately need. But Ivan is the only one who can give it to me.

“You’ll answer before I’m done with you.” He reaches down, yanking my zipper and curling his fingers into the waist of my jeans, dragging them down my hips all the way to my boots. He pushes my legs open, leaning in as he tugs off one glove, his bare fingers dragging up my center between my legs, pressed against the wet cotton of my panties.

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