“You fucking bitch.”
He climbed on top of her, felt his erection against her hip, and ground it against her in a savage dry hump.
“This how you want it?” he demanded. “This how he used to fuck you?”
He had been desperate to touch her. Now that he had his hands on her—all that naked flesh straining against him—he could not stop. Some beast had crawled out of the dark corner of his brain, and it was in control.
Her nails clawed at his arm, and the pain only fanned the lust flooding his veins. He used his body to hold her down and felt her struggling for breath under his weight. She was strong, but he outweighed her by fifty pounds. Every twitch of her body excited him.
“Bastard!”
Her tits were heaving. His hands plundered, squeezing soft flesh.
Goddamn her!
Goddamn her for three years of wet dreams and jerking off to her memory! Goddamn her for making him feel weak and uncertain and inadequate—
He twisted one nipple viciously. When she cried out in pain, his cock went from merely hard to stone.
“You like that, whore? Is this what you always wanted from me?”
He brought his mouth down on hers, forcing his tongue inside until she bit him.
“Goddamn you!” He tasted blood and drew back.
“You don’t have the balls to rape me, remember?” She spat into his face. “You’re just a little momma’s boy—”
He hit her. A hard open-palmed slap across her left cheek. She gasped, but then grunted a laugh of utter contempt.
“Bastard . . . you’ll never get that . . . pathetic cock of yours . . . inside me . . .”
Her hand found his hair and yanked, until he grabbed both of her wrists in one hand. Her bones felt so small and fragile in his grip. He liked the way it felt: like he could break her if he wanted to.
She tried to scuttle away, crab-like, and her boot heel scraped hard against his chest. It nearly knocked the wind out of him, but nothing would stop this blind urgency to take her, to have her, to impale her with his cock.
“Sick, fucking whore,” he panted. “You’re soaking wet.”
And she was, oh, she was. The scent of her cunt hit his nostrils as he used his knees to force her legs open.
“Is this the way you want it?” he kept demanding.
But he didn’t give a fuck what she wanted.
She was punching him with hard, balled fists. He grabbed her wrists once more, pinning her down. He slammed his cock into her, feeling the wet heat of her pussy suck him deeper as her back arched.
He imagined every thrust of his hips driving the head of his prick into her spine, splitting her in two. He couldn’t fuck her hard enough or fast enough.
He buried his face in her tits as he fucked her like a machine. His teeth fastened on her nipple, chewing and biting, tasting copper on his tongue and not giving a damn.
She was moaning even as her hips rose to meet each thrust. He felt her teeth on his shoulder.
“Goddamned whore! Fight me, bite me, but you’ll fuckin’ take it . . . Take my fucking cock.”
Suddenly she was no longer fighting him, only crying out in sharp little cat-cries of pain as he rode her. Her hips were jutting wildly now, grinding her cunt against him.
“Yessssss!”
Her head flew back, exposing her throat, and he wanted to put his hands around it. He was the predator now, taking his pleasure in this prey.
“Use me . . . Use my fuck-hole.
Please. . . .
”
He could feel her orgasm coming as intensely as his own. He felt the small shudders build up from deep inside her, then grow harder as her muscles clamped down on his cock.
“Oh, God! Yes! Yes!”
He slapped her again, because he could. Because he wanted to. Because he knew she wanted it.
She came, and then came again.
He pulled his aching cock out of her, and knee-walked up her body until his erection was poised over her face.
She looked up at him with unfocused eyes, but as soon as his cock touched her lips she was on it like a starving thing.
He grabbed her by the hair again, and held her head still.
“No, bitch.” He pulled his cock from her mouth and began stroking it with his free hand. “You don’t get to suck it . . .”
“Please . . .” She looked up at him, breathing hard. “Yes, please . . . cum on my face . . .”
He jerked harder, feeling his balls contract. It was sweet to use her like this, to force his will on her until she became this depraved slut eager for his cum.
Jism shot from the head of his cock and landed in heavy strands over her chin and mouth. He watched her tongue greedily lap it up, until there was no more, and he was left spent and panting.
Dear Christ, what had she done to him? What had he done to her?
He fell back onto his ass and looked down in horror as her body began to convulse in sobs. He thought he might puke. He began to scuttle away, but her hand landed on his ankle.
“Please,” she said in a tiny voice. “Please . . .”
He didn’t understand, just sat there looking at her helplessly, until she dragged herself toward him. She curled against his ribs, pulling his arm around her.
“Please. Just hold me.”
He lay back down on the floor, afraid to touch her. Her arms were around him, her face rubbing against his shirt as her breathing began to slow.
When she finally looked up at him, her tear-stained smile took his breath away.
“That.” She sighed. “That was just what I needed.”
“I don’t know what the hell came over me.”
They were in her bed. Hanson marveled over the sensation of flesh against flesh. It had been so long since he’d held a woman in his arms like this.
She was as drowsy as a puppy, her lips moving blindly against his chest as she snuggled closer.
“Don’t think too much,” she mumbled. “Can I have another slice of cheese, please?”
He fed her another cracker with a sliver of Gouda. Starving after their violent lovemaking—if that was what he could call it—he’d carried the only food he could find into bed with them.
The most confusing part was that he felt so ridiculously tender toward her now. And he was pretty certain it wasn’t just out of guilt for having raped her. He watched her nibble at the cracker between his fingers, and liked the way it felt to be feeding her like a pet.
“I was just so damned angry. I wanted to hurt you.”
“And I got off on it.” She smiled lazily.
“I didn’t care whether you did or not. There’s something wrong with that.”
She sighed.
“You say you didn’t care, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you’re capable of that. We’ve pushed those limits before, and I was doing my damnedest to provoke you—”
“You were?”
She laughed, an easy sound.
“Do you really think I couldn’t have stopped you if I’d wanted to?”
“No, I don’t. I’m a man, and I’m bigger than you.”
“Really?” She sat up and pushed her hair over her shoulder with a shrug. “Why do you think I took my clothes off and paraded around naked? I knew you’d never be able to get the damned corset off.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better. This can’t be . . . It can’t be . . .”
His voice trailed off, unsure how to say it.
This can’t be right. It can’t be normal.
“I’m sorry, I was wrong,” she said. All teasing was gone from her voice. “Wrong for doing it this way.”
“This way? Is there a right way?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” She looked him full in the face, her eyes holding his. “If I were playing by the rules, I should have sat you down and told you what I wanted. I should have explained that I needed to fight you, that I needed you to force me. I should have negotiated the scene with you.”
“The scene? You make it sound like a play.”
“It is, really. That’s the downside of ‘safe, sane, and consensual. ’ All these carefully orchestrated rules, they suck the magic out of it. It takes something wild and primitive, and turns it into something tame and careful. I didn’t want tame and careful. But now I’ve dumped something on you that you weren’t prepared for. And that’s breaking a rule I do take seriously, pushing someone beyond their limits. Can you forgive me?”
She was watching him intently. He knew that whatever he said now might change everything. He could wipe out the last two years if he told her what she wanted—what she needed—to hear.
The thing was, what she needed to hear was what he needed to say. What had happened between them tonight had been wild and primitive and . . . magical. Wasn’t that what Quinn had said? That BDSM was a powerful magic?
“If I gave you what you wanted and what you needed,” he said, stroking the side of her face, “there’s nothing to forgive.”
“And you can forgive yourself?”
From the way she seemed to be almost holding her breath, he knew it was a test, and he smiled at her.
“Nothing to forgive there, either. Isn’t that what you always tried to tell me? That I don’t have to feel dirty and ashamed of making us both happy?”
“And it made you happy? Truly? I was cruel provoking you like that . . .”
Now it was his turn to peer into her face, asking his own question.
“Why were you trying to provoke me? Why now?”
She looked away.
“Because I was a fucking mess after seeing Quinn.”
“Do you still love him that much?” He hated himself for asking, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
“No,” she said flatly. “What I feel—what I felt—for Quinn was way more complicated than love.”
“I don’t get it,” he said, stroking her back to soften his words. “What’s more complicated than love?”
She was silent for so long that Hanson thought she wasn’t going to answer the question. She rolled onto her side, snuggling her ass up against his hip, and he spooned against her back. He could feel each intake of breath, and the soft, slow release of it.
He thought she might have gone to sleep, but then she finally spoke.
“Complicated is knowing for most of your life that you’re not quite the same as most other people,” she said softly. “Having the darkest, most desperate desires that you can hardly admit to yourself, and wondering if you’re somehow . . . damaged. Sick, in your mind and in your soul. And you don’t dare tell anyone because then they’ll know you’re different, and they will never, ever love you if they know what you really are. They’ll look at you the way you try so hard not to look at yourself—as something twisted and wrong.”
She took the arm he draped over her shoulder and pulled it down closer around her, bringing his hand to her cheek and rubbing against it like a cat. He lay still against her, fearing any movement from him might stop her from continuing. He needed to hear this as much as he feared it.
“So you keep these dark secrets locked away for years and years,” she went on, still in that same soft, somehow distant voice, “and all the while you’re wanting those things—those dark, scary things—more and more, so much that it’s like a physical ache.”
He wished he could see her face, but realized that she had turned away precisely so he couldn’t. Maybe she could only say these things without being seen.
“Normal sex is fine, it’s wonderful, but it just isn’t quite . . .
enough,
and you begin to wonder if you will ever feel anything as deeply, as passionately, as you so desperately want to. You feel as if everyone you have sex with—make love to—is only touching half of you.
“Imagine having sex for years without anyone ever kissing you. Don’t laugh. Just try to imagine it. Imagine dreaming about being kissed all your life, but no one has ever pressed their lips against yours, never explored your mouth with their tongue, never pulled your tongue into their hot, wet mouth . . .
“They’ve stroked every inch of your body, fucked you, made you cum, eaten your pussy or sucked your cock, stuck their fingers inside you, wrapped their body around yours, but no one has ever kissed your mouth. Imagine that.
“That’s what it’s like. Having a part of you that no one has ever touched, or even thought about exploring. As if you didn’t have a mouth or lips at all.
“And then one day, you meet someone who sees that you do have lips made to be kissed. Hot, slow kisses that go on and on, and hard, fast kisses that devour you.
“That’s what it’s like when someone recognizes that twisted desire in you. He sees it and calls to it, and for the first time in your life, you let that part of you out of the cage you’ve locked it in. For the first time in your life, someone is making love to all of you.”