Hellbent, page 19
He pressed her knuckles against his cheek. Felt the soundless gasp, the delicate tremor that racked her. Tension released. A door opening silently that he could feel with his secret wordless senses. He kissed them again, passionately.
Instinct led him. No thought, plots or plans. Just hunger, need, desperate hope.
He tugged off the socks. Cupped both her feet in his hands. They were as beautiful as her hands, long and narrow, a high arch. Pale, covered with that tawny blur of freckles.
He leaned to seize her waist and pulled her up onto her feet. Leaned forward to press his face against her belly as he slid his hands beneath the long sweater, finding the tee-shirt, insinuating beneath it. Looking for that hot, petal-soft skin. Sinuous curves. The dips and swells of her hips, her belly. So lithe and strong.
His cock ached with clamoring urgency, but he clamped down on it with grim resolve. He was in sexual worship mode. Any payoff his body was screaming for would just have to wait. He was going for the big prize. He slid his hands higher under her tee-shirt, stroking her with butterfly-light caresses. No bra over those small but perfect breasts Her nipples were tight and hard against his palm as he petted her.
She shivered in his arm, her body vibrating. She wrapped her arms around his head, holding him tightly against herself. Not playing it cool. At all.
That was a relief. To leave the power games behind. She could hold him as tight as she wanted, as long as she wanted, just as long as she never let go. Let hell freeze over. He could never get enough of her. He was so owned.
There was a tight thrum of tension in her body, as if she were poised to jump. He glanced up, and for an instant, before she turned her face away and let a fall of hair hide her eyes, he saw two glittering tears flash down. One of them hit his face.
He touched the wet spot with his finger. Tasted it, savoring the heat of it. The salt.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me,” she said.
“That’s too much to ask,” he told her. “You’re too beautiful.”
“I can’t stand it.” Her voice was uneven. “It’s freaking me out. It’s too much.”
He pressed his face against her belly, then hooked his fingers into the waistband of the leggings and tugged them down. “Distract me, then.”
“Oh, yeah?” She was wiping her eyes, but a smile flashed over her face. “How?”
“How do you think?”
She snorted under her breath. “Opportunist.”
“Hell yes,” he agreed, dragging the fleece leggings down her thighs. “Any opportunity to make you come. I love your taste. I can’t get enough of it.”
She laughed, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulders, her fingers digging in. The other wound into his hair, tugging. Almost hard enough to hurt. The pressure was demanding, warning, admonishing him. “You’re fixated on that, aren’t you?”
“If it’s you, yeah.” He tugged her underwear down. “Got a problem with it?”
“Oh, God, no,” she said swiftly. “Believe me. I’m not complaining.”
“I love when you come against my face,” he told her. “Slippery soft. Wide open.”
There might have been words in the incoherent moan vibrating through her as he buried his face in her muff, nuzzling and kissing that twist of downy red ringlets, stroking the warm divide of her pussy lips with his fingertips. She was hot and slick and welcoming as he kissed his way all the way around her silken hollows and curves, the highlights and shadows. Flower-petal soft warmth of her inner thighs.
He kissed the red curls decorating her mound. Taking his time. No rush. He resisted the temptation to thrust his fingers inside her, feel the scalding wetness he craved. Part those pussy lip and make her clit pop out, and then go at it with his lips and tongue and fingers, rubbing and licking and sucking until she sobbed with pleasure and gave it up completely, yelling and bucking, coming wildly. Taking his thrusting fingers inside.
Not…quite…yet. He waited, silently promising more pleasure to come with his slow, lazy kisses and caresses.
After a few minutes of that treatment, she got impatient herself and started moving against him. Her nails bit into his shoulders, her hips moved.
“Stop playing around,” she said sternly. “Get on with it.”
He hid his smile against her mound, one lingering final kiss before he looked up. “I was going to wait until I heard you beg,” he said. “But now that we’re here, it seems like the regal imperial command vibe is just as hot. Judging on the effect it has on my dick.”
“Yeah?” She dragged him closer, eyes glowing hot. “Prove it.”
23
There was a keening sound in the back of her throat. Fiona couldn’t seem to stop. It was just too goddamn intense. Agonizingly sweet, this shivering brightness lighting her up, making her chest so hot and soft, her throat melt and her eyes fill. And between her legs, the tender, lashing strokes of his tongue, the deep slow pull as he sucked at her clit, the liquid caress as he circled it, flicking and teasing. Hands inside her, opening her.
Still teasing, right to the brink of coming, and then he eased her back, waiting until the tension subsided, ever so slightly. Then he had at her again. Running his tongue around and around her clit, just…fast…enough to…oh God. The energy swelling. Rising.
Yes. Please.
The wave crested, broke. She lost herself in the uncontrollable power that jolted through her body and then widened out. Infinitely wide. Shivering. Achingly sweet.
After she found herself on the bed, flat on her back, no memory of sitting, lying, falling. Every damn time he touched her, the feelings stabbed deeper, reached further. Every time, he stirred her up into fresh chaos.
She was limp and soft, her body still shimmering with delight as he kept on kissing her thighs, her belly. Cupping her pussy tenderly with his hand.
She struggled up into a sitting position. Lifted up her arms eagerly up as Anton dragged the sweater and necklace and tee-shirt off her. Kicking off the pants and underwear that still clung to one of her ankles. Tossing the wild tangled mass of hair back from her face.
Anton was wrenching off his own clothes with quick, economical gestures. He leaned over her and jerked the covers down. Then seized her and pulled her up to lie next to him. Skin to skin against his heat. The shock was a rush of pleasure all over her, like falling into water, caressing every inch of her. She fell into his kiss the same way. As long as their tongues were doing that slow, hungry dance, she would stay in flight somehow.
He’d managed to twitch the covers up over the two of them, somehow managing never to break contact with her, by some miracle of acrobatics. He pressed her down into the mattress, settling between her legs, and had rolled on a condom before she even thought about one. He’d plucked the thing out of thin air, and lucky for her, because she hadn’t thought about it at all. He positioned himself, and they writhed and moved against each other, breathing hard, as he slid his cockhead between her pussy lips, caressing them with it. Getting slick and shining with her juice before he pushed slowly inside.
Breathless perfection. His cockhead caressed her, shoving in, sliding slowly out. Surging forward again. She couldn’t hardly drag in enough air to whimper for the next deep, penetrating stroke. Digging her nails into his back, lifting up to demand more.
The power possessed her. Nothing mattered but getting more of him. No pride or fear, no past or future. Just his deep, slow, expert fucking, driving her absolutely mad.
He refused to give in to her incoherent urging for a long time, keeping it deep and slow, but the power finally overcame him, too. At the end, his hips pumped against hers wildly, his hair brushed her throat as he kissed his way up her neck and tongue-kissed her madly while he drove her straight into an intensely beautiful orgasm.
He shouted with his own release as he let go and came with her.
After, he rolled to the side, still panting. Pulling her to face him.
And that was it. The soaring flight was over. She hit the ground so hard, it physically hurt.
Same wipe-out. Every damn time. The more earth-shattering the sex, the harder she crashed afterward. Cold, gripping her deep inside. Something inside her was intent on punishing her for letting herself feel it. Letting herself want it.
This is what you get, you dumb little slut. This is how you feel. And this is only the beginning. It gets worse. Oh yes, it surely does. There’s no end to how bad it’ll get. So go ahead. Knock yourself out, bitch. If you have the stomach for it.
She rolled over onto her back, her hand over her eyes. Anton tried to tug her back to face him, but he sensed the tension in her body and let her be, rolling backward.
“Fi,” he said. “Really? We’re doing this now? Again?”
She looked over at him. “I didn’t say a goddamn word.”
“You don’t have to.”
She turned her back to him. “You just keep begging for it, Anton,” she said. “I keep warning you. And then when we hit the wall, you still act so fucking surprised.”
“Tell me about that wall,” he said. “Why are we hitting it now? What did I do?”
Oh, God, there was no getting through to the man. Fiona rolled off the bed and grabbed the tee-shirt and sweater, tugging them right side out again before pulling them on. Not looking at him.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
“I need some alone time,” she said. “I’ll go stretch out on a couch downstairs.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Stay up here in the bed. I’ll be the one to leave, if you don’t want my company.” Anton reached for his jeans. “I have to get up early to get Mace anyhow. Just let me get rid of this condom, and I’ll get out of your hair.” He stalked out the door, leaving her to pace miserably around the room until he came back in and pulled on the rest of his clothes. He smelled like soap and toothpaste. He kept his eyes averted.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and just stood there, immobile. She sat just as still. She couldn’t even breathe.
“Why, Fi?” he asked. “Make me understand. This could work. We have something unique. Something I don’t think either one of us will ever find again in this lifetime. And you’re shutting it down. Why?”
She lifted her tight shoulders. Her throat ached. “How do I know? If I knew, I wouldn’t be all twisted up like this.”
“Can’t you just try?” he asked. “Can’t you give us a chance?”
“I keep trying.” Her voice felt tight and strangled. “I wipe out every time.”
“Wipe out?” He turned to look at her, frowning. “What do you mean? How so?”
She let out a sharp sigh. “You said to imagine if all the bad stuff never happened,” she said. “And I did.”
“Yeah, and it was amazing. So?”
“So it was a fucking fantasy, Anton! The bad stuff did happen! It’s all still there, inside me. It made me who I am. I can’t instantly make myself into something different just to suit you. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I don’t want you to be different,” he said. “I love the way you are.”
“Hah,” she muttered. “You haven’t tried being me. I’d love to change. I’d do anything to make him shut up.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Make who shut up?”
Oh God, now she’d done it. “I misspoke,” she muttered. “Never mind.”
“Bullshit. Who is this ‘him?’”
She shook her head.
Anton folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me.”
No way out of this except for through. “Kimball,” she admitted reluctantly. “I hear his voice. In my head. I hear it all the time.”
“Uh…okay,” he said slowly. “So…”
“Not like an auditory hallucination,” she said. “It’s not like I’m psychotic, or anything. I wouldn’t mistake his voice for a voice coming from outside myself. But I still hear him, and I can’t make him shut up. He’s just as disgusting and hateful and slimy inside my head as he was in real life. He makes me feel like shit. Particularly if I’m in any sort of a sexual situation. He just…I don’t know. Jabs at me. Constantly. Makes me feel ashamed and stupid. Polluted.”
“And that’s why you freeze me out after we have sex.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. “It’s embarrassing, to have a psycho sleazebag stuck inside my head. I try to just live my life as if he wasn’t in there, yammering at me, but sometimes it gets the better of me. I’ve tried getting my head shrunk, several times. My aunt took me to a bunch of therapists, psychiatrists. I’ve tried different drugs. Anti-anxiety, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics. I tried talking it to death. Nothing seems to work. So.” She threw up her hands. “There it is.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “I hear Jeremiah in my head,” he said. “We all internalized his voice. But I know it’s not the same. Jeremiah was crazy, but not a sadistic abuser.”
“I hear Jeremiah sometimes, too,” she admitted. “Kimball’s worse.”
Anton walked back to the bed and sat down. His dark eyes had that piercing quality they took on when he was aroused, or inspired. Or enraged. “So you’re going to let him win?”
That rocked her backward like a slap. “Fuck you, Anton! I have done nothing but fight! I don’t even know how to stop fighting! That’s my whole damn problem!”
He sat there, eyes boring into her. “Kimball knew that I wanted you, back at GodsAcre,” he told her. “He caught me looking at you. Pining for you.”
“Pining?” she scoffed. “Please.”
“Call it whatever you want. He saw it, and that was part of the thrill for him. That way, he got to fuck us both at the same time. He got his toy, and he also got to show me who was boss by hurting you right in front of me.”
Fiona flinched at the thought. “Anton. Do we have to talk about this right now?”
“So you’re going to let him take this, too? He already took everything else from you. GodsAcre and all its people. Your childhood. Your girlhood. Your mom. Patti.”
“Stop it, Anton.”
“He destroyed it all,” Anton went on. “A clean sweep. But by some miracle, it looks like you and I get one more shot at this. If you’re brave enough to take it.”
Fiona lifted her hands from her wet eyes to glare at him, sniffing aggressively. “You’re questioning my bravery? Seriously?”
“Yes.” His voice rang with naked challenge. “Are you up to it?”
In the silence that followed, her automatic response was to shove him away with harsh, cutting words, but she didn’t trust her automatic response.
It had been programmed by someone who was not her friend.
So she just held herself, silent and suspended, barely breathing. Then she wiped the angry tears off her face with the backs of her hands and sucked in a deep breath.
“So what am I supposed to do to satisfy you?” she asked him. “Fake a smile when I feel like dying?”
Anton pried off his shoes and came back to the bed, sitting down next to her. “You never, ever have to fake anything with me,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”
She snorted. “Maybe you should be.”
“Maybe,” he replied. “But I want you. All of you. You made me want this, like I haven’t wanted anything since I was seventeen. You made me crave it.”
“What, exactly?” she demanded. “Sex, you mean? Because personality-wise, I’m not exactly little-wifey-type material, Anton. In case you haven’t noticed.”
He smiled briefly. “I don’t care. When I’m with you, I feel like there’s magic all around. Infinite possibilities. It’s an incredible feeling. I’m hooked on it. Now that I’ve felt that, I’m starting to see the point of it all.”
“Point of what?”
“All of it,” he said. “Being alive. I didn’t give much of a shit about anything for a long time, except for Otis and my brothers. But maybe, just maybe, the rest of this crazy goatfuck could be worth it. If you’re around to kick my ass. Blow my mind.”
“Whoa,” she whispered. “Dial it down, lover boy. You’re getting pretty flowery for a hard-assed babe like me.”
“It’s your own fault for being so fucking incredible.”
She let out a huff of startled laughter, and that was it. That brief, whispery giggle was the first crack in the dam. The pressure had sneaked up on her, but it was all there, pent up. It overwhelmed her, suddenly and completely. A tidal wave that tore her apart from the inside.
Anton tried to put his arms around her, but that was too much. She pulled away, pressing her hands hard against her face to keep it from shaking to pieces.
Anton just waited. Eventually she found herself resting her forehead against his broad shoulder.
That point of contact was all she could stand. Her forehead glowed where she touched him, as if an inner eye had opened up while the impossible idea slowly took form in her mind. The revolutionary notion that everything she thought she knew about the world could maybe, just maybe, be re-thought. Re-understood. That maybe the world could be re-ordered, with some place in it for her. Some place where she could breathe.
This thing, with Anton. Was it even possible? It seemed so dangerous to hope for something so huge, so delicate and lovely. She’d be setting herself up for pain, humiliation, heart-crushing despair. She’d be letting them all make a fool of her again. Every instinct forbade it.
But she didn’t trust those instincts anymore.
Her forehead still glowed. A light in the darkness. Anton sat patiently, witnessing her fall to pieces and apparently not freaked out or repelled by it. A quiet bulwark.
He reached out, gathering up handfuls of her hair and winding the thick locks around his fingers. Then he leaned down to drop slow kisses against her head.
No hurry. That was the silent message. She could sob for hours if she needed to. He knew he couldn’t touch her yet, but he tethered her to himself gently with her hair. He wouldn’t let her drift away into those dark, wild waters. He would keep her safe somehow.
