Page 32 of Cherry Auction

How—?

What—?

I slam my head back into the mattress and seize a few more times before all strength is gone from my limbs.

He lazily licks me up and down like a lion, and I’m so super-sensitive, I full-body shudder each time.

When he finally pulls away and his finger slips out of my ass, I start shaking and can’t stop. I hear little noises around the room but don’t pull off my blindfold. I feel… so… I don’t know what I feel. Too much and nothing at all, at the same time.

Stunned. In shock, like I’ve just been in a car-accident.

Ashamed. Like I want to crawl into a hole and cease to exist.

And like… like I want to beg him to come back and start all over again. Because for one moment, just one brief moment, with our bodies heaving for breath together, I felt whole instead of fractured.

And now?

Being left alone on the bed feels like the cruelest thing he could possibly do. Was that the point? To bring me to the peak of such terrible intimacy and then dump me so violently from heaven’s river of pleasure to the cold, empty bed left alone without his touch?

I hear his footsteps heading towards the door.

Oh god. Yes. He is going to leave now.

And I’ll be so horribly alone. I’ll be alone, and I’ll dream of the terrifying black box when the nightmares come to swallow me whole. But when I scream and wake up in the dark, I’ll just be alone all over again. No one will be there to hold me. No one’s ever there to hold me. It’s just cold loneliness, that’s all I’ll ever?—

The bed dips behind me, and there’s a warm body at myback. Domhnall lays down, his strong arms coming around to anchor me into his warm chest. He’s got his shirt off again, and with my barely-there nightie, we’re skin to skin.

“Shhh,” he whispers. “It’s alrigh’ now, love. Shhh.”

His voice is so soft and steeped in his brogue. Instinctively my body shifts and softens against all his muscled hardness. I freeze a little when I feel his stiff cock, but he just squeezes me as if to reassure me that his intentions go no further than this.

He just got into bed to… snuggle me.

As if he could somehow sense I was freaking out at being left alone after all that.

Which is what finally has me breaking out in uncontrollable sobs. He only whispers, “Shhh, shhh. It’s alrigh’. Every t’ing’s gonna be alrigh’,” in my ear as he strokes my hair back from my face.

I cry myself to sleep in his arms, knowing it’s totally fucked up even as I allow my captor to comfort me, snuggling deeper into his embrace.

“Such pretty tears,” he whispers as I get drowsier, his fingers still stroking gently through my hair.

THIRTEEN

DOMHNALL

Last night was…unacceptable. I was supposed to be training her. Not— Not… whatever that turned into.

I have to stay in fuckingcontrol.

But after we’d gone so far, I knew I couldn’t just leave her. I’ve had plenty of training in being a proper dominant, even if I’ve thrown out all the rest of the rules with Mads. But some things likeaftercarewere so drilled into me since day one I stepped through the door at Carnal, I couldn’t just leave her there so obviously in shock after our scene last night.

Plus, I’d finally gotten somethingrealout of her. I’ve seen plenty of women fake orgasms around the club, and try to with me, back in the early days.

But a good dom learns to pay attention to each hitch of breath. Every contracting muscle and flutter of a sub’s eyelashes. You learn to watch for the grimace of pain and the twitch of pleasure, and the fascinating contortions a body twists itself into when the two intermingle.

Madison might lie to me, but her body tells me the truth. Her desire was genuine.

It gives me power over her.

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