A loud noise escaped her at the tightness; her eyes fluttering close as she felt him go deep in, the metal on his cock rubbing against her clenching walls in a way that had become familiar but no less exquisite now.
“You hated being on display, didn’t you?” The words against her neck made her shiver, goosebumps scattering over her arms.
She had, and this wasn’t really her being on display per se but in a way she was too because the glass didn’t hide her and her noises certainly didn’t. It made her realize that yet again, he had barreled through something she had previously despised, replacing the act with an unforgettable, incredible memory instead in its place.
She let one of her hands curl around his neck, felt him deep inside her, and turned her neck, their faces inches apart. “What I had before wasn’t sex. It was cruelty and it was cold. Being used, being displayed, being touched, everything was humiliating. I didn’t know it could be different, that I could feel different, until you. You showed me sex was deeper. It’s a way to connect to someone you care about. You breathed life back into me, and at this point, I—” she rotated her hips, their lips inches apart, seeing the affect her words had on him “—trust you to do whatever you want with me, knowing I will always be safe in the end.”
His lips slanted over hers, hard, rough, his tongue pushing into her mouth as he moved inside her, her noises drowning against him.
“So,” he asked, pulling back, “you would trust me if I took you down into a room full of people and left you there naked?”
Her breath hitched at the thought, dread filling her but she nodded. “Yes.”
“And if I invited people here to watch this, you’d trust me?”
“Yes.”
“And if I slipped something in your drink, still?”
She looked deep into his eyes, knowing he knew that being drugged was a worse memory for her. She swallowed but nodded.
“Fuck, Lyla,” he groaned, thrusting so hard inside her she almost blacked out. “Nothing gets me like your trust. Nothing.”
“I trust you,” she breathed, and felt his response in a full body shudder, one that seeped into her as he proceeded to undo her. She turned back to the glass, watching the debauchery all around her, and for the first time in a long time, felt happy about being owned.
Chapter twenty-threeHim
She slept like the dead, exhausted after the sexual wringer he’d put her body through at Moonflame. She had surprised him. Out of all of her inhibitions, being on display had been the one that she’d hated the most for understandable reasons. But somehow, she trusted him to take care of her, and that more than anything made him feel like the most powerful of all. Her had her love, he had her trust, and that was how he knew it was time.
Looking down at the tablet, he looked at the gallery of photos he’d taken through the years, and sighed. Locking the tablet, he put it on the side table and lay down, his arm going around her small frame.
She curled back into him unconsciously, her lips moving in a mumble he couldn’t hear, and he felt something tighten in his chest. Holding her, sleeping next to her, being with her, it had changed him, opened him up to possibilities and ideas, and the range of emotions he still didn’t feel to the fullest extent but one he knew about.
Giving her a squeeze, he pressed a soft kiss to her head, before getting out of the bed. Knowing she’d sleep through the night—she always did after an intense fucking—he dressed in his dark athletic wear, put his phone in his pocket just in case she woke up and needed him, and quietly went to the window.
One of the reasons he stayed in this room was because of the emergency access ladder that was right outside his window. He could use it and go down without getting on any cameras inside the hotel. It also gave him the additional thrill of stymieing any watching eyes.
To the world, Blackthorne was asleep in the bed with his beautiful wife. It was time for the Shadow Man to walk.
Out the window and down the ladder, he jumped into the side alley, slowly walking down the street to the warehouse they had kept her locked up in. Poetic justice or simple vengeance, he didn’t know, but he was keeping both Hector and the second guy there. She had been right under his nose and he’d been looking everywhere else.
Six months. They had kept her in chains and broken down the last remaining pieces of her, to the point she had been driven to the arms of death when she’d gotten out. The first week she had been back at home, she had barely left her room, barely eaten, barely talked. It had taken her days to slowly unfurl, open up, and let him in. Days where his connection with her over the years hadn’t meant a thing because she had been too depressed.