Page 54 of The Devil's Obsession (East Coast Devils 3)

Romy

A knock slices through the darkness. It’s loud and weighty and makes me bolt upright in bed even though I’d been in a deep sleep.

I stare into the abyss. Blink.

“No.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard such desperation from my own lips.

My hands curl over the edge of the bed sheet, my nails almost piercing the fabric.

When the second knock comes, I want to die.

Lying back down, I bury my head in the gap between the pillows and squeeze my eyes shut.

Another knock. The third. Under my sweat-dotted skin, an ice-cold river seeps through my veins, freezing me to the bed.

Don’t let him in. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him in.

I don’t, but I’ve learned by now that the Devil doesn’t need an invitation. It’s his home, his kingdom. I’m just a pathetic pawn existing within it.

The door creaks open, and light floods in.

Heavy, dangerous footsteps grow closer. The mind is a powerful thing, just not powerful enough to carve a hole in the mattress, climb among the memory foam and the springs, and hide.

“I know you’re awake.”

His voice is that of nightmares. I bury my head further, bundling the sheets around my ears to block it out. “Leave me alone.”

His hand finds my thigh so easily as though he’s committed every inch of my body to memory. “You don’t want me to leave, Romy.”

Even through the thick bedding, my skin shivers under the trail of his fingertips as they navigate north. And that’s when I realize I’m not afraid of his actions. I’m afraid of my reaction to his actions.

Self-preservation wraps its arms around me, and I kick out with my free leg. The heel of my foot connects with the iron wall of his stomach, but he doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t punish me. When the silence becomes too suffocating, I chug in a deep breath and peek out from my hiding place.

The Devil is standing at the foot of the bed in all of his glory. Stark fucking naked. Holy shit. Under those Armani suits, he’s even more impressive. The thick trunk of his neck leads down to bulging traps above his broad shoulders. Then there are biceps, triceps, abdominal muscles… it’s like looking at an ancient Greek anatomy book describing the perfect athletic form.

His voice cuts through the thick air, soft and pillowy this time.

“You try to hurt others more powerful than yourself, Romashka, in the hope that they’ll hurt you back.”

I gasp at the sound of my name. My real name. The one my mom hastily scrawled on my birth certificate before dumping me on the steps of the pustosh’.

My shoulders snap into a rigid line, and a bead of sweat drips from my forehead onto my eyelashes. “How do you know?” I rasp. Before the fear creeps in, he rips the bed sheets off me in one swift motion. It’s so quick that my nails tear from where I was clutching the fabric so hard. “What are you doing?” Panic edges its way into my question, something I never usually allow to happen.

“What you’ve wanted since the day you met me.”

He wraps his hands around the straps of my cami and violently tugs them from my shoulders. The thin fabric rips, freeing my breasts. It’s instinctive to fling my arms around myself, but he catches my wrists and pins them on either side of me against the pillows.

“No,” I whisper as something wet rolls down my cheek. I don’t know if it’s the sweat bead or a tear. “I don’t want this.”

He growls into the curve of my neck, then carves a path with his nose from my collarbone down to my cleavage. I squeeze my eyes shut, and the droplets that escape them are unmistakably tears. “You do, malishka.” I wince at the childhood memory that word evokes, then wonder how the fuck he knows that word. “Your body betrays you.”

I let out a whimper as he shifts his weight suddenly, pinning both my wrists with one hand, using his free hand to yank my panties down my legs. He pushes my thighs open with his knee, then settles his hips between them. His rock-solid cock, which has been the center of my imagination in the hours since he spanked me, rests against my inner seam.

My fingers itch to touch it. My mouth salivates at the thought of its taste. “No—”

My lips curl over the scream ripping up my throat as he plunges his cock into me, muting it. “Break for me, silly girl,” he growls on top of me, picking up into a frantic rhythm. My pussy burns, spreading a white-hot heat through my walls and up to my lower stomach. “Let me hear you scream.”

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