Page 44 of Ruined (The Knights of Ruin)

That meant something—something I wasn’t prepared to face just yet. So I ignored it. I concentrated instead on what I was doing: sucking him deep, pumping him with my fist, turning him inside out the way he’d been doing to me for the past week. Watching him as he groaned again, his head tipping back, exposing the strong muscles of his throat.

‘Oh, fuck... Cat...’

The harsh edge in his voice was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard in my life. I could feel his hands in my hair trembling.

Iwas doing this to him. This strong, immovable man. I was making him shake. I was making him desperate.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Lines of agonised pleasure were carved into his familiar, beautiful face, and the sounds that were coming from him—harsh and deep, ragged gasps of breath—made the ache between my thighs even worse.

I didn’t want this to end. Because in that moment I felt more powerful than I ever had in my entire life.

I thought being on your knees meant you were weak, that you were beaten, with your eyes swelling shut and the sick, bitter taste of defeat in your mouth.

Not here. Not now. Not with Smoke.

No, Smoke made me feel like there was more to my power than I’d ever dreamed possible. But that was what he always did. He made me feel powerful even when I’d thought I wasn’t.

His hands were tightening on my head and he began to direct my movements, flexing his hips, thrusting faster, harder, and I let him do it—let him take control of me.

‘Fucking look at me, Cat,’ he whispered roughly as I let my lashes fall shut. ‘I want your eyes up here.’

So I looked at him, meeting the ferocious blackness in his gaze, holding it.

This is going to change everything. Nothing will be the same again.

I ignored that unwelcome thought and lost myself in my best friend’s dark eyes, watching as the climax hit him, as his head was thrown back as he called my name, raw and harsh, his fingers in my hair a sweet agony. As he came down the back of my throat and I swallowed everything he gave me.

There was silence afterwards, broken only by the ragged sounds of his breathing and the thunder of my own heartbeat. I didn’t want to think about anything—not what was going to happen later, or what it meant for our friendship. What it would change and what it would break.

Because something always got broken when lines were crossed. Always.

His hold in my hair eased as he withdrew from my mouth, and I rested my cheek against the hot skin of his taut stomach and closed my eyes, feeling the flex and release of hard muscle in time with his breathing.

I was aching, the pulse between my thighs heavy and insistent, but I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay here, in this peaceful moment, where it was just him and me and silence. Where we didn’t have to talk or angst about the choices we’d made... Where the only thing that mattered was the feel of his fingers in my hair, gently massaging my scalp.

But of course it didn’t last.

He was still semihard and getting harder with every second. Then the gentle hands in my hair weren’t so gentle any more as he pulled me to my feet.

I looked up at him, abruptly panicking about what this would mean for our friendship, opening my mouth to tell him that we had to put this behind us, that we had to pretend it hadn’t happened. Yet before I could say anything he bent his head and his lips were on mine, the kiss forcing my head back, forcing my mouth to open for him.

The demand in his kiss made me tremble—because there was no resisting him, no holding out or holding back. He took everything. His tongue was pushing inside, sliding along mine, exploring me, and he must have tasted himself because he growled all of a sudden, his fingers tightening around my upper arms.

Then we were moving as he walked me backwards down a short, dark, dead-end corridor. There was one door to the left, a blank wall to the right, and he pushed me into the corner where the blank wall met the end of the corridor. His hands were pressed to the wall on either side of my head, his big, lean body caging me there while he kissed me, deep and wet, with total and absolute demand.

The scent of him—so familiar and yet now so heavy with the musk of male arousal—was the most erotic thing in the entire goddamn universe. And the heat of him, so agonisingly close to me, was making me crazy.

Yet I was shaking. Because some part of me knew what was going to happen next and I was terrified. It would be a step we couldn’t come back from. I knew that deep in my soul.

Like that blow job hasn’t changed things already?

Of course it had. But this...this was different. It was one thing to turn him inside out, make him come. It was quite another to give him the same power over me.

His hands dropped from the wall to grip the fabric of my skirt, pulling it up higher and higher. My breathing was fast and I felt dizzy, as if I didn’t have enough air. I reached for his hands to push them away, but he was too strong, too insistent. My skirt was around my waist before I could stop him, and then he lifted me up against the wall, pinning me there with his body.

His strength was effortless, and the hard flex of his muscles as he held me tapped into a very feminine part of me, making me shiver with delight. It was insane that I should like this—his control, his dominance—but I couldn’t help it. I did like it.

He shifted, pushing his lean hips insistently between my thighs, and because his jeans were open I could feel his cock, hard and hot, pressing against the soaking-wet fabric of my panties. The sensation was a lightning burst in my head...a shock of sensation overloading every nerve ending I had.

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