Page 80 of Devilish Ink

“Tell me I’m yours and I’ll give you what you want.”

I let out a frustrated noise and tried to reach down to touch my own clit. If he wouldn’t give it to me, I’d take it.

He grabbed my wrist and twisted it around my back, firm but not painful.

“No,” I moaned.

I needed to come so bad. I needed to come aroundhimso bad.

“Who do you belong to?” he said, sliding in and out of me achingly slow, keeping me on the edge but not giving me what I needed. “Say it.”

My resolve shattered. My heart swallowed up my guilt.

“You,” I gasped. “I’m yours.”

For a moment he remained still, as if he couldn’t believe what I was admitting.

Then he pounded into me, hard, tilting his hips to find theangle that hit that sensitive spot inside me, his hand closing firmly around my throat.

I broke apart under him, pleasure and relief slamming into me like a dam burst.

He thrust into me and shuddered against me before he collapsed.

“And I am yours,” he whispered.

Liam crawled onto the couch and pulled me on top of him, holding my head against his chest. I listened to his heartbeat as it slowed down.

“My father would beat us…” he confessed. “All of us.Discipline, he called it…”

For the first time, I saw the darkness that hollowed his eyes. For the first time, he let me see it.

Perhaps that’s what had drawn me to him. Deep down, I knew he was like me: haunted by monsters.

“But Rian…he got the worst of it. I wanted so badly to stop what my father did to Rian. So badly. Itriedto stop him…” His voice broke off in a choked sob.

He shuddered against me. For a moment I saw him as a young boy terrified of his father, so terrified he couldn’t do anything to help the brother he loved.

Without thinking, I reached out and brushed my hands along his chest, soothing him, encouraging him to continue.

“My father said that Rian needed toughening up. And that if I helped him, if I defended him, I’d prevent Rian from becoming a real man. That Rian would end up like a lame horse that just needed to…to be shot.”

I sucked in a gasp, my heart aching at his admission.

“Do you hear me, Ry? My father told me—he swore to me—that if I defended Rian, he’dkillhim.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as grief wrapped its cold fingers around my lungs.

I imagined these two frightened boys, Rian being forced to sleep out by himself in the cold barn night after night, and Liam, huddled in his bed and staring out his window to the dark barn, to the brother he was forced to ignore.

A sob broke from me. If there was a God, how could he let such monsters roam this earth?

He traced my cheek with his fingers. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. But I’m not sorry for pursuing you. And I amnotsorry for falling in love with you.”

I turned my face into his hand, aching for his touch. Even as guilt wormed through my insides.

“Rian won’t ever forgive you for this,” I said quietly. “If you had made up with him first, maybe…. But this…us…”

Liam rested his forehead on mine, his arms around me, holding me like I was his lifeline.

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