I felt the involuntary twitch of his cock inside me. He wanted it too.
“I’ll tell you if it’s too much,” I added.
“Promise?” The question was a gravelly rasp.
“I promise. Now fuck me like you mean it.”
The man delivered.
He rose up on his knees, gripped my ass with his palms, and unleashed the beast within.
My body accepted his brutally beautiful thrusts with something that felt like joy, which made absolutely no sense. There was something in his eyes that didn’t match the grim set of his jaw. Something softer, brighter.
I ignored it and shifted my legs restlessly as a warmth started to build in my core.
Reading my mind, Lucian hooked my ankles over his shoulders and bent me in half.
I was pinned. Conquered. Completely at his mercy. And I loved it.
Sweat slicked our skin as our eyes met and locked as his body pumped into mine.
The tendons in his neck stood out fiercely, and his biceps bulged as he relentlessly drove me toward heaven. Or maybe it was hell. It didn’t matter.
I was quivering from the inside out.
“Lucian!” It was a low, keening wail.
His erection seemed to swell even bigger, and he gritted his teeth. “Damn you, Pixie,” he snarled. He brought one hand to my jaw, holding my head still. Those beautiful storm cloud eyes went glassy as I clamped down around him.
“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t know what I was asking for, what I wanted from him. But Lucian understood. He gave one final vicious upthrust, and his body went rigid.
I didn’t think. I just reached up and grabbed his face in my hands and we stared into each other’s eyes as I experienced my first second orgasm of my life.
A shout tore loose from his throat, and I felt him ejaculate. For one stupid, fleeting moment, I wished there wasn’t anything between us. No protection to stop me from experiencing every sensation of Lucian’s climax.
He was moving again, short, jerky thrusts as he used my orgasm to milk his own. He used my body for his pleasure, and that made me come harder.
We kept right on coming, muscles trembling, breath panting as we stared into each other’s eyes.
“This is the dumbest, hottest mistake I’ve ever made,” I moaned.
22
Sloane to the Rescue
Sloane
Twenty-two years ago
Six days. That was how long Lucian had been behind bars. He’d turned eighteen and missed his own high school graduation because of me. Well, technically because of his horrible, disgusting monster of a father, but also because I hadn’t listened to him.
I told my parents everything I knew the night Lucian was arrested. They hadn’t been happy with me keeping that kind of secret from them. Their disappointment in me only made me feel worse.
My dad had put everything on hold and was fighting tooth and nail to get Lucian out of county jail. From what I’d gathered through pointed questioning and blatant eavesdropping, Chief Ogden was pushing to charge Lucian as an adult. The judge seemed amiable and set the bail at an astronomical $250,000 during the arraignment, which I hadn’t been allowed to attend.
According to what Mom told Maeve over the phone, Dad had nearly had an aneurysm on the spot.
I was listening outside his office later that day when he took a call from the district attorney, who had suggested Lucian accept a plea deal for eight years in state prison. My father, one of the nicest, most polite human beings in the entire universe, told the DA to go fuck himself.
Meanwhile, Mom had visited Lucian’s mom twice since she got out of the hospital with a pair of broken ribs. Both times, the woman had refused to talk about Lucian or what really happened that night. She had also declined Mom’s offer to let her come stay with us “until things were sorted out.”
Ansel Rollins appeared to be behaving himself, for the moment.
I’d overheard my parents talking on the front porch the night before. Dad broached the subject of a second mortgage to Mom for Lucian’s bond.
“Darling, of course we’ll do it. We can’t leave him behind bars.”
In that moment, I realized what a privilege it was to grow up with good people for parents. I’d pressed my teary face up against the inside of the window screen and scared the shit out of them by yelling, “You can have my college fund too!”
I came from a family of heroes and wasn’t about to be left out. Certainly not after my mistake had caused the current situation.
I had a plan.
I’d done enough research on abusive relationships over the past year that the librarian was starting to give me funny looks every week when I checked out a new batch of books.