Page 71

I just watched Aidan kill a man, and my libido is on hyperdrive. I’m starting to realize that maybe I’m built different. Did Aidan sense something in me that didn’t quite color inside the lines of normalcy? Is that why he’s been so obsessed all this time?
A moan escapes my lips as he unhooks my bra. It’s a front clasp, and he handles it as though he’s become familiar with lingerie from a thousand women. As though he understands every hook, every ribbon, every corset, every hidden button of every piece of clothing meant to display a woman for the pleasure of his hungry gaze. Like he went to a special school for it and graduated with honors.
“I won’t let you give yourself to me while pretending I’m someone else,” he says.
“Who else could I possibly pretend you are?”
“You know what I mean, Maddie.”
He’s the one who put up the illusion, the mask of charm. He’s the one who has been seducing me, wrapping me up in the soft glow of candlelight. But now he’s not happy with that. It’s not enough for him anymore. He wants me to really see him. He wants to drag me into the cold hard day, make me see his true form, all while demanding my desire remain steady in the face of that awful truth.
And the fucked up part is… it does.
“You know you’ve won,” I say, my hips moving desperately with his fingers. He pulls away, and I nearly cry at the loss of contact. He backs up a few steps.
I take those same steps toward him. Those first thoughts I had when I saw him in the alley come back to me, and now I am the lamb desperate for the wolf to feast. His gaze is entirely predatory, but he lures. He doesn’t stalk.
For once.
He wants me to agree to every step along the path to this madness. And I know that once he’s inside me the possession he feels will only grow. Because then he’ll have really claimed me, really marked me somehow, deflowered me, stripped me of the last bit of innocence to drag me into the darkened woods with him so he can finish consuming me at his leisure.
“Undress,” he says. His voice has turned animal, barely human.
I take the top off, the bra, the skirt, the panties. My gaze never leaves him. He inches away, and I inch forward as my clothing drops in a trail behind me.
When I reach him, he says it again. “Beg me, Maddie.”
“Please, fuck me,” I whisper. It’s so breathy. How can this be me?
I control the air you breathe. The words dance around in my brain, wrapping around me, pulling me closer to my fate.
He pushes me back onto the table. This is sick, twisted, grotesque. I should be horrified that I’m lying in the still warm blood of the man Aidan just killed. Pain and pleasure. Life and death. All these lines and edges blur. I feel hypnotized, out of control, spreading my legs for him, as he undoes his pants.
He doesn’t undress for this. He doesn’t allow me to see the smooth perfection of his body, the tattoos—and the scars that should mar him, but somehow only enhance him.
“Good girl,” he finally says.
A flush of warmth spreads through me, and I know I am forever lost to the man I’ve run from practically my entire life, that I have willingly just walked to my destruction, begging him to take my innocence in a pool of someone else’s blood.
“It’s going to hurt for a moment,” he says.
I don’t care. But I don’t say this out loud. I hold this thought inside, unwilling to let him see everything. Somehow I know, I should have fought him harder, hated him more, held onto every second of our past and every ounce of revulsion, because this is the end of me.
He pushes inside. There’s a sharp rip of pain, and I cry out. He stills inside me, cradling me in his arms.
“Shhhh,” he says, stroking my hair. Aidan surrounds me, the soft cashmere blend of his suit pressing against my naked skin like a comforting blanket.
And then he’s moving again, savage thrusts, erasing the softness of only a moment before. His mouth is on my throat, kissing, sucking, biting, as his hands move feverishly over me. He moves a hand between us to stroke my clit as he drives harder and faster.
His thrusts are brutal, punishing, claiming. I know I’ll be sore for a while… I’ll feel him still inside me even after he’s finished. But any sense of pain or rawness is swept away by the pleasure from his fingers as he drives me farther, higher, pulling me deeper into his carnal web.
He bites and sucks and kisses at my throat, and then he pulls back and lets out a guttural roar, spilling his release inside me. But even though he’s finished, he’s not finished with me. He continues to stroke me, demanding and pulling my pleasure from me. Just like every time he’s touched me before, when I scream out my release it’s not enough for him. It’s never enough for him until he has every last ounce he can take from me, until I’ve skated fully through pleasure and am just at the edge of pain. That’s the moment he finally gathers me in his arms, pulling my soft naked body against the smoothness of his suit.
“My very good girl,” he murmurs against my hair.
He finally pulls out of me, and zips himself up. He softly strokes my sex, my blood on his fingers. There is something primal in his gaze as he looks at what he’s done, as though the blood of my broken innocence is his greatest achievement in life.
He scoops me up, and carries me down the hall and up the stairs to his room. There are guards, but they wisely avert their gazes. He takes me into his bathroom and runs a warm bath. He removes his jacket and proceeds to carefully bathe me.