Page 14 of Flame
The penetration isn’t nearly as deep as before, but the sensation is harsher. Damn near explosive. Sparks shoot through my body with every exacting stroke of his, alighting every nerve.
Setting me on fire.
I’ve never been so raw in my life. So wet. I can’t seem to find any air, but it doesn’t really seem to matter. He slams life into me—marks me with jabs from an invisible knife that will never ever heal. And I relish every single wound. When he’s inside me, I’m not some pathetic, helpless rabbit.
I’m not even sure I’m still human. I’m greedy. I’m restless. Reckless. My nails seize hold of a pillow, digging in as I flex my hips toward him, meeting every thrust and eliciting hungry growls that resonate in my skin.
“That’s it.” He voices his pleasure in a low groan when my inner muscles clutch him, urging him to spend himself. Empty every bit of emotion from his body that he can’t control.Use me.
“Bunny.” His fingers latch onto the back of my skull, tugging my head toward him. The moment I’m within reach, his teeth seize my ear, nipping while his other hand cups my breast, squeezing just on this side of pain. He curses when I moan, the foreign words he mutters somehow making sense in my lust-addled brain.
“You’re mine.”
My sweat-soaked fingers lose their hold over that groove in the headboard. I settle for bracing both hands flat on the sliver of mattress in front of me, riding him until it doesn’t matter if we’re silent or not. The headboard rams against the wall, and I can’t muster the energy to care.
Doubt fades. Shame melts away, and I surrender to everything he has to give. The fingers of his other hand find my nipple, swiping it into a stabbing peak before doing the same to the other.
And then I feel him slam into me with a shudder and the world ceases to matter.
Noises crawl from my throat I’ve never heard myself make, melding with his deeper, gruffer grunts. It’s a symphony of pure, primal pleasure. My fingers grip his forearms, tracing the path of the flames spewing from the creature on his back as his explanation for designing it echoes in my mind—it’s power. Control.
Another word seems fitting enough to describe it as well—it’s freedom.
But it doesn’t last. His thrusts quicken, losing their punishing rhythm. He grits his teeth on a frantic pace toward release—but his hand slips between us, finding a part of me that makes my spine curl as if connected to an invisible tether. One he can command with stroke, after stroke, after stroke…
Until he finally stills, his mouth at my throat, his fingers twisting through my hair.
“Fuck,” he hisses before rolling off me to collapse onto his back. “Holy fuck.”
He doesn’t sound happy, just exhausted. I look over to find him scowling up at the ceiling, his chest heaving in a ruthless tandem to match his panting breaths.
It’s jarring how he switches out emotions. Fire one minute and ice the next.
“You had to fuck him.” He chuckles to himself, wiping his hand over his injured lip. “It would certainly explain why he’s so damn pussy-whipped. You had to fuck him…”
I don’t follow the leap in logic, but the confidence in his voice unnerves me enough to let another piece of the truth slip free. “It was never like that with him…”
He frowns and shoots me a searching glance. “It was about control, then. Getting inside your head. Directing your every move. That’s what he got off on.”
“It wasn’t like that, either,” I whisper.
Though he’s not far off. I’ve spent my whole life growing accustomed to Branden’s control. One mantra above all was drilled into my head like a creed. I owed him.
“Our… My parents never really looked out for me,” I admit, stretching out onto my back beside him. “They were successful. We were wealthy. But my mom had her issues, and she wasn’t around much when I was growing up. My dad was overwhelmed and looked to other relationships to cope. Branden was the one left to look out for me.” It sounds strange when said out loud. Dysfunctional. In reality, it was all we knew. “One day… I think I must have been five. I ran out into the street and was almost hit by a car. The fallout was bad. The police were called. They couldn’t find my parents. Bran was twelve, and it hit him hard. Things looked worse than they were. The aftermath could have ruined his life.”
“He doesn’t sound like your boyfriend,” Rafe says. Strangely, he doesn’t accuse me of lying outright. His tone carefully straddles the line between confusion and irritation, leaving it entirely up to me whether or not to come clean.
But there’s no point in denying it anymore.
“He’s not. Bran is my brother,” I confess, too weary to even see how that piece of information lands. I stare up at the ceiling, my thoughts like a sieve, leaking all of the dark memories I’ve struggled to suppress.
“So what? Your parents got busted for neglect. Why the fuck is that your problem?”
I hesitate to answer, squeezing my eyes shut against the past. “Because… I wasn’t wearing any clothes.” The silence that falls in the wake of those words is deafening. The only way to combat the awkwardness is to keep talking. “And I don’t remember what I said when the police came, but they were concerned enough to start an investigation. I shouldn’t have to say what kind.”
“Shit,” Rafe says.
I nod in agreement. “All of that because of me.” It always surprises me how deep the guilt goes. How a child’s innocent actions could lead to a whirlwind of chaos.
