Page 27 of Executing Malice
My legs are jelly. My shoulders throb from the strain of being pinned down and tortured. Every breath stretches the invading objects, making the areas pinch. I hiss, instinctively arching away like I can escape it, and only agitating them further.
He catches me when I flinch. His big hands are warm anchors holding my sides in place.
“Easy,” he soothes softly. “Just breathe through it.”
Like his voice has the controls to my body, it obeys. My lungs take slower, shallower pulls. My skin calms. Still prickles, but I have less of an urge to rip the metal pieces out.
When his touch trails around my ribs to ghost along the sticky curve of my spine ... I lean into him. And regret it when the motion assaults my clit. My poor abused clit that feels like it’s swelled up to the size of a fist. Every twitch, every adjustment sends another wave of agony pulsing through me. Not exactly pain but not pleasure either. Something I can’t explain.
I whimper and shift sideways to take pressure off my center.
“Hurts?” he asks with genuine concern that pisses me off when he’s the cause of it.
I give a dramatic scoff. “What? No! Why would it hurt? Getting my vagina stabbed by a complete stranger with an ice pike is a normal occurrence.”
He has the audacity to chuckle. “That’s inflammation. It’ll pass.”
“I hate you,” I snarl through my teeth, but the breath I suck in turns traitorous when it sends bolts of electric currents through my freshly pierced nipples and I flinch.
The slow, maddening glide of his fingertips along the knobs of my spine never slows. Never falters. Completely unfazed by my venom.
“No, you don’t.”
It’s the kind of steadfast assurance that only fuels my fury.
Fucker!
“Oh, I fucking do, pal. You have some nerve. The second I can move without feeling like I’m tearing my clit off, I’m kicking your ass.”
But even as I spit the words, I feel his body move forward. The heat of his fully clothed frame burns every naked inch of mine. The table creaks as I’m dragged to meet him the rest of the way to the ledge.
“What—?”
He kisses me.
He captures my mouth, my words, with a firm command that leaves me speechless.
I gasp and he pushes deeper, holds me closer. His lips move against mine like he’s tasting everything he did to me, every flood of pleasure, every drop of pain. He drags me deeper into this strange web he’s spun around me from the moment I first laid eyes on him. It’s so deliberate, so ... familiar, I forgetto breathe.
I forget everything but the way I recognize him. Not just my body, but my mind. My soul. Like I’ve kissed him a thousand times before in a different lifetime. The surreal sensation splinters what was left of my anger, shatters my fight. I’m left in a puddle of surrender in the arms of a man I don’t even know the name of.
“Who—?” I try, but he kisses me harder.
Deeper. He folds me harder against his chest. Presses himself between my thighs. I find my arms closing around his shoulders. Fingers bury themselves through thick strands of hair at the back of his head.
I know I should stop him.
It’s the most obvious, rational thing to do, but I’m so close. Not to orgasm. To peeling back that corner of wallpaper hiding my past behind it. The tiny fold that keeps slipping from my fingers. If I keep kissing him, I know I’ll finally reach it.
But he stops.
He draws away and I’m left panting. My lips quiver with the loss.
Then his brow settles on mine and we’re sharing air warm with desire and cool from the room.
“Still want to kick my ass?”
Maybe it’s the overload of everything. Not just from when he captured me, but earlier. Years in the past. A whole lifetime I lost. But I am punched in the chest with a surge ofemotion I can’t bottle back. It climbs up into my throat, a vomit of glass and panic that cuts into tender flesh.
