Page 76 of Honey Pot

“If you want to stop, Clem, we can,” he whispered.

“Scared of getting caught, Loverboy?” I bit back, my toes curling in my socks at the thought of someone walking in on us.

He lifted my hands over my head, his lips ghosting over mine but landing on my nose as he walked us backward until my back hit the wall. The muscles in his back tightened and flexed as he tossed the rope over the chin-up bar above my head.

As he tightened the rope so I couldn’t wiggle free, I laughed. “I can’t move my hands at all,” I huffed, the memory slipping from me without effort, and Cael paused for a second. His cocky persona cracking as he met my gaze with fire behind his beautiful, slate-blue eyes.

“Good,” he said. “I don’t want you covering up,” he whispered back under his breath like it was instinct. Like he had memorized every second of that night.

“Stop doing that,” I demanded and wiggled against the ropes, drunk on the dizzy lust but running from those feelings in our past.

“No.” Cael laughed. “I like how nervous it makes you to think about that day. It’s the only time I seeher.”

He was talking about the weak, insecure, quiet Clementine. The one without real-world experience or a new attitude. He was talking about that little girl he used to know.

“She’s gone.” I shuddered as his fingers tickled down my arms and danced across my collarbone.

“She’s not gone.” He leaned in close, the smell of sweat and the remnants of his cologne filling my nose. “There’s nothing wrong with protecting her. We all do it, tuck vulnerable pieces of ourselves away,” he whispered in my ear. “But I promise not to hurt her.”

You already have.

I stared at him as he backed up, blue eyes burning into my skin. Swallowing tightly, I pushed aside the urge to fight him, to remind him of all the ways he had let that girl down, so I forced a smirk to my face and leaned into the sharp pain of the jump rope biting into my wrists.

“You talk too much,” I purred at him.

Cael narrowed his eyes, but a wild smile formed on his lips.

“Yeah, maybe I do.” His smile grew, his thick erection straining against his sweatpants as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled my hips forward. The motion forced me to my tiptoes with my hands restrained. There wasn’t anywhere for me to go as Cael shoved down his sweat pants and stepped between my legs.

He wrapped my leg around his hip, lifting me off the ground and sliding past my underwear and into my entrance without warning.

“But you’re always soaking wet.” His eyes fluttered close as his hips rocked forward, and he filled me completely. “So I must be doing something right,” he hummed and dragged his teeth along my jaw as he started to find a pace that suited us both.

I intertwined my hands around the ropes and tightened my leg, pressing into his ass with my heel to keep him close as he thrust relentlessly into me. His fingers dug into my skin hard enough to form little crescent shapes with his fingernails as he buried his face into my neck.

Cael’s pace buckled out as his heart started to take over again. I could feel it in his kisses on my skin and the way his hips rocked to a more tender rhythm. Within moments, the heat building in my stomach was raging with every lick from his tongue and grasp of his fingers.

“Don’t stop,” I begged as he relaxed at the sound of my strangled whimpers in his ear.

He pulled back, chest glistening with sweat that coated his hard, tan muscles. It rolled down his neck in salty drops that I wanted on my tongue, but he was glazed over. I had lost him to the memories again.

“Don’t be gentle,” I warned him, but he didn’t listen. I was standing in front of him, begging for it, but all he could see and hear washer. “Quit fucking me like you know me, Cael, you don’t.”

A growl vibrated from him, his expression shifting from a haunting, heartbreaking stare to something angry as he picked up the pace. We melted into one another as he shoved deeper and harder than before.

I didn’t need him to protect me anymore. I wanted the pain and all the pleasure that came with each brutal thrust. Cael sucked at my skin as I used what was left of my strength to lift and drop myself into his ragged thrusts. My aching walls throbbed around him, aching for release as the coil in my stomach wound so tight it was ready to snap.

“I don’t care who you think you are,” Cael growled breathlessly as his teeth found my ear. “You’ll always be mine.” His final thrust broke the walls down inside of me, and the pleasure crashed over my muscles like a tidal wave. My leg tightened around him, and my toes curled into the mat below. My nerves were shot, and my head was dizzy from the intense orgasm that filled me to the brim.

Cael stuttered in his step as his body tensed, and he fell over the edge shortly after me, his lips peppering my throat gently as he rocked himself through the downfall of pleasure.

His chest was ragged as he tried to catch his breath, his eyes trained on my lips. There would be nothing I could do if he decided that was his chance, but they flickered back to my eyes, and his jaw clenched tightly as he stepped forward and worked the knot loose on my wrists.

As Cael brought them down between us, his eyes widened at the marks the plastic had left. Even worse, he saw that stupid frayed pink friendship bracelet, limp and torn from me, in his palm.

He said nothing as he curled my fingers around it and brought the raised red skin to his lips, kissing it gently with his eyes closed. “Sorry,” he sighed and started on the other. “I didn’t think it was that tight.”

My breath hitched in my chest at the idea that, after all this time, the bracelet had finally broken and, stupidly enough, it nearly made me cry. I swallowed tightly, trying to control myself as he delicately cared for each wrist, blaming himself quietly, no doubt.

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