Page 145 of Beautiful Cruelty

The slap wasn't hard—just hard enough to shock me.

It doesn’t scare me that he slapped me. It scares me howgoodbeing slapped like that felt.

I had no idea how desperately I'd been craving him to do something like that. It’s like a hidden part of me knew I wanted it, but never dared to breathe life into that request.

"Open your fucking eyes," Vadim growls. His hand around my throat tightens ever so slightly, thumb pressing against my pulse. "If you say that I've taken away every one of your choices, then I'm taking this one as well. You don't get to close your eyes and imagine that I'm making love to you."

My body betrays me, clenching around him at his words. He feels it too. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens, the slight hitch in his controlled rhythm. His grip on my throat tightens enough to make breathing an effort, but not enough to truly restrict it.

Each thrust drives me higher, closer to that edge I'm teetering over. I don’t look away from his face, don’t hide from the intensity burning in his eyes. He may think he’s the one who forces me to stay present and acknowledge exactly who is fucking me.

But I’m the one who’s forcing him to give me this sweet torment I begged for.

The pressure builds, pleasure coiling tighter and tighter until I can barely breathe. My body trembles on the knife's edge of release, every nerve ending electrified. The cold marble beneath me, the heat of his body above me, the bruising grip of his hands—it all blends together into a swirling chaos of sensation, impossible to disentangle.

"I'm coming," I gasp, my voice breaking. "Oh god, I’m?—”

The orgasm hits me like a tidal wave, more intense than anything I've ever felt before. A scream tears from my throat as my inner walls squeeze and flutter around him.

His hand clamps over my mouth, muffling my cries.

"Shut the fuck up!" He roars. "Shut the fuck up and keep taking that cock."

My body convulses beneath him as waves of pleasure crash through me. I can't think, can't breathe, can only feel as he fucks me through the most intense orgasm of my life. Tears stream down my face, soaking into his palm still pressed firmly over my mouth and scream uselessly against it. My nails rake down his back as I come.

I shake my head frantically, desperate to scream. My body is still quaking from the first orgasm when I feel another one building impossibly fast. His relentless pace drives me higher and higher.

“Come!” He growls. “Come like the desperate fucking whore that you are."

The words send me flying over the edge. My back arches off the marble as the second orgasm crashes over me with devastating force. Stars burst behind my eyes, and indescribable pleasure sets my body on fire.

My lungs burn for air. His hand is still clamped firmly over my mouth, denying me the release of screaming. Something primal takes over and I bite down on the meat of his palm. Hard.

The metallic taste of blood floods my mouth.

A savage growl tears from his throat, but he doesn't pull his hand away. Instead, his fingers dig deeper into my cheeks as he holds me in place.

I force my eyes open, meeting Vadim's gaze. The sight of unshed tears in his storm-gray eyes nearly breaks my resolve. But I can't let him see how much it affects me. I pour all my anger, all my guilt, and all my pain into my glare, wielding the unspoken emotions between us like a weapon.

I know what I'm doing to him. I can feel it in the way his fingers are trembling around my cheeks.

I can hear it in the uneven rasp of his hot and heavy breath with every relentless thrust. And I can smell it from the drops of sweat dripping from his brow onto mine.

I'm asking him to become the ghost of the monster haunting every corner of this mansion.

I'm forcing him towards the edge of becoming something he hates.

And I know that once I bring him to the edge, I have every intention to push him over it until both of us are falling headlong into that darkness.

My teeth sink into his palm again, harder this time. The taste of blood fills my mouth again.

His hand jerks away and a scream finally rips free just as another wave of pleasure crashes through me.

"Fuck you!" The words tear from my raw throat as I come, spitting them out like poison. Each repetition punctuates another unrestrained pulse of my orgasm. "Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!"

This is exactly what I wanted.

A sweet agony that makes me forget everything else.

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