Page 77 of Counting Quarters

He tightened his grip on my nipple and used the other hand to cup my sex, just barely touching the most sensitive area. The contact was enough to have me pulsing against him all over again.

“If you want me to continue, you have to ask nicely.”

I bit back a sneer and raised my brow at him in a challenge, debating if I wanted to play along anymore.

But he sensed the question in my gaze and began backing away from me completely, lifting his hands in the air before him to prove his point. He wasn’t going to continue if I didn’t play along.

My body instantly reacted to his absence and my hips bucked toward him of their own accord, missing his touch. I laid my head back onto the bed and stared up in defeat, biting my lip.

After a few weighted breaths, I mumbled a quiet, submissive, “Please.”

“What was that?”

I sighed, rolling my eyes, then craned my neck to look at him. The cuffs cut into my skin behind my back as the weight of my body pressed against them.

“Please keep going,” I said more clearly.

“Good girl,” he rasped with a cocky smirk.

Then, he was between my legs again, teasing my center with his rock-hard erection. He gently pushed his tip in and then pulled it out, slowly repeating the motion in a tantalizing pattern.

A small, irritated growl sounded in my throat and my hands fought against the cuffs as I went to reach behind him to pull him into me.

“Succumb to it,” he urged in a strained whisper. “Stop trying to control everything.”

I took a deep breath and relaxed my muscles. He rewarded me by pushing himself in as far as he could, stopping to give me a moment to adjust. Then, he began pumping inside me in a rhythm I was actually happy with.

It wasn't until I fully loosened up and set aside my pride that I felt the full effect of using his handcuffs. Though I longed to touch his face or rub my fingers along his back, relinquishing control and trusting him fully with my body was a completely different form of intimacy. The metal biting against my skin was the perfect essence of pain to balance out the insane amount of pleasure that came from having him buried inside me, with his hands and mouth all over me, stimulating each of my senses at once.

I fell into another body-racking orgasm, tensing up against him as I followed his advice and succumbed to all the sensations I was feeling. He wasn't far behind, and we were both riding the clouds into euphoria as we moaned each other's names into the air.

Once we were each satiated and the high wore off, Kyle unlocked the handcuffs with a key from his police belt, revealing my raw, reddened skin. There were definitely going to be bruises.

I watched the wave of concern and regret pass over his face as he grabbed my hands up and planted kisses all around my wrists, rubbing them tenderly. I lifted them out of his touch to caress his face and pull him into me, devouring him with a kiss that said there was no room for guilt after the experience he just gave me.

When his fingers still went to caress my welted skin again, I backed away and fell to my knees, determined to repay the favor and make him forget.

“How am I going to get through this?” The pads of his fingers brushed against my cheek.

The morning sun had hardly made its way over the tree line when he rolled over and woke me up with his mouth on my body. We made love slowly and lazily, still exhausted and sore from the night before. Once we finished, neither of us bothered moving from the bed.

“Through what?”

“Rayner wants to end the Quarters. That’s been his goal from the beginning.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’ve somehow managed to fall in love with one of them.”

My eyebrows shot up at the admission. I’d felt it before without him knowing—that gush of adoration as he watched me do the most mundane things. I knew what it was when the stolen sensation found me, because I felt the same for him. But neither of us had outright admitted our feelings yet.

He went on. “It was always only about protecting my town from a madman… about avenging the deaths of the people he already took from me.”

My heart, so light and elated at his words from before, fell to the ground, shattering and splintering into a million tiny pieces.

It was in the quiet moments when no one else was around that I felt like he handed himself over to me completely. When we were surrounded by nothing and allowed to feel every thought and emotion fully, without a single outside influence. Those were the moments I was sure we were meant to be.

That I could place my heart into his hands and trust he wouldn't smash it.

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