Page 31

OPHELIA

I wake up moaning.

Out of nowhere. I didn’t even feel the sound ripping out of my throat.

I feel it now. I feel everything.

My pussy is hot. Pressure keeps building there, pulling me out of my dreamless sleep.

There’s a man between my legs, I realize, as my eyes flutter open.

Bedridden brown hair. Icy glare. Bare shoulders and chest.

Strong fingers pressing my legs apart.

His tongue is on my clit. Teasing me.

Just the tip of it flicking on the most sensitive part of me.

This is torture, how James taunts and torments me. How he stares at me like I’m his to devour. A dull ache grows in my core from this barely-there touch.

He was an asshole to me the entire day. Resurrected the wall between us. He was also hot. I’ll always be seduced by his bossiness. I’ve been desperate for someone to care so deeply that they take over my life.

My heart stopped hurting sometime before I fell asleep. I was going to tell him I was done with the silent treatment in the morning.

He’s beaten me to it.

He’s punishing me for it.

I squirm, trying to escape the featherlight pleasure. From him. He’s doing it to hurt me. He’s pinning me to the bed. Glaring at me and telling me through his body that I’m never going to get off. That he’ll edge me for eternity.

“Why?” When pushing him away fails, I lift my hips. Attempting to, at least, reach him.

He shoves me down. Grips me harder. His fingers bite into my flesh. He knows it turns me on, his viciousness.

He’s driving me mad by not giving me what I want. What I need.

“James, please.” My muscles burn with the effort to get closer to him.

But no matter how hard I try to raise my ass off the bed, all the pressure I put on his hair when I pull on it with my free hand, he won’t let me have him.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you punishing me? For the silent treatment? It’s not fair. I told you everything.”

Chipping away at my sanity, he licks me, teasing me. His dark eyes grow darker by the second.

He doesn’t just own me. He owns this bed—this scene.

The world.

I release his hair and clutch onto the sheets instead. I’m soaking. Panting. Clenching. He can see everything. He can smell my need for him.

He won’t get to hear my desperation.

He won’t.

“Ophelia.”

Fire spreads through me, frying my brain. It’s the way he’s saying my name against my clit. So cold. So commanding.

That’s a whole other level of torture. Worse than before. To have him this close, when every nerve ending throughout my body is sensitive. I’ve never been this vulnerable in my life. This needy.

And it feels safe. Being vulnerable around him.

“You owe me something.” Another flick of his tongue. More pressure from his fingers.

My toes curl, and my eyes roll to the back of my head. He swirls his tongue next, another suggestion of a touch.

At this rate, I think I’m going to black out.

“Anything.” I’m failing myself. Staring at him like he holds the answers to life. Like he’s actually my master. “Please, whatever you need, I’ll do it.”

He pulls back an inch. Enough to make me squirm. Enough to allow me a glimpse of all of him.

The lamp’s light casts a warm glow on his handsome face, on his day-old stubble.

The corner of his lips tugs up.

He’s gorgeous.

That’s not accurate. I don’t think he’s gorgeous.

I think he’s more. He’s a gift, created especially for me.

Ever since I lost my parents, I’ve been chasing this feeling. This person who’d care for me as much as I care for him. To have someone consumed by me. Envelop me into his darkness where I’d never want to leave.

Fuck, it’s as if I’ve been manifesting him my entire life.

“You’ve been…” He traces his hand to the space between my thighs, dragging his thumb along my slit. I scream. I shudder. It’s not anyone I’ve needed; I see that now. I’ve needed him. “Good, mostly. A good little property.”

“What do you want? Stop teasing me. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” I gasp, burying my heels into the mattress, lifting my ass. James pushes me back down where he wants me. Where I belong. “Other than torturing me, you bastard, what do you want?”

“You’re a clever girl.” Storm clouds gather over his face. His smirk is gone. The grip on my thighs is unbearable. “You know what I’m asking for.”

“No.” Yes. Maybe. If I had air in my lungs, if my throat weren’t so tight, choked by desire, maybe I would’ve remembered. “I-I don’t. Please.” When he spits on my clit, my entire body breaks into tremors. After being teased for an eternity, it’s too much. “Oh God. Oh, Jesus.”

“Beg for me.” With his tattooed hand, he nudges his thumb into my pussy. Only up to the first knuckle. Another form of torture. “Beg me to make you come. To fuck you.”

Nothing and no one could’ve prepared me for this. For this deep desire he’s sparked within me. He threatened me. Told me what would happen after he fucked me. After I became pregnant with his baby.

I should be terrified. I should shut the hell up and never speak again. He might throw me back into the cell or force himself on me.

Or.

Or he could change his mind. Rewrite his history. Make me his forever.

I need him to do it. I’ll beg him for it. Not because I need to survive this.

Because I can’t imagine a life without him in it.

“Please.” The covers crumple between my fingers. My voice is strained. “Please, James.”

“Not good enough.” His spit trickles down my pussy and he licks it off me. One swipe of his tongue that sends electricity through me. “You can do better than that. You will do better than that.”

“Please, I—” I hate him. I’m falling for him. If he doesn’t do something soon, I’ll cry for him. “Touch me. Make me come. Let me stay with you.”

“Not good enough.” He purses his lips, blowing hot air on me. I’m dying. I’m seriously dying. Being edged and teased until my heart stops working. “Do. Better.”

All the need in my body transforms into a ball of rage.

Since he’s stronger, I can’t shove him off me. Can’t force his cock inside me. His lips on me.

But I can hit him where it hurts. My lungs burn. The need for him is making me lightheaded. Still, I snarl. “Topher would’ve never done this to me.”

That earns me a growl as he shoves his thumb deeper, forcefully, no teasing this time.

I’ve gotten to him. He’s finally losing control.

“Topher wouldn’t have the first idea. He’d never know what to do with you.”

His lips are on me. His teeth. James bites and sucks on my clit. Both his hands are on my hips. He’s using my body to fuck his mouth.

Pleasure crashes into me, and I can’t get two breaths in before I come on his tongue.

“Oh God.” This is the most intense, most powerful orgasm of my life.

The teasing, the anticipation. This desire that’s been building up within me. They explode inside me, reaching to the back of my neck, behind my eyes.

“Oh God,” I repeat. I’m saying other things, like James’s name and stop and more and please .

“Topher.” James pulls back, running his tongue along his wet lips. Tasting my orgasm. “You want the truth about Topher, Ophelia?”

He rises to sit on his knees, his hands still firm on my thighs. His cock pushes against his black boxers, hard and terrifying.

James doesn’t do anything about it. Nothing other than glower at me.

He’s composed. Feral. Possessed.

Jealous.

My owner.

“What?” I whisper, trying to come down from this high. From being so lost to him. “Stop hiding things from me. Just stop.”

“After the first time I saw you, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.

I hoped he’d set you free. Wished he would’ve chosen another woman.

” He climbs up my body, wrapping a hand around my throat.

His thumb strokes my jawline. “One look at you, and I knew. Knew I wanted you. Knew you deserved better. Better than going through the auction, even if I had plans to save you by the end of it. You made me reconsider my plans. I waited for Topher to do it, and he didn’t.

Then I gave him another chance. I held onto hope that the look in his eyes would stop reminding me of my father.

That he’d come to his senses. He never did. ”

I just lie there, shocked. Horrified. Mesmerized.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He lowers his voice. “I might’ve been brought up on violence, but I’ve only murdered one man. A man who should’ve never been alive in the first place. Topher, on the other hand, would torture you for fun. He begged me to do it. He’s as bad as the rest of them.”

Them? Who is them? Oliver and his son?

Although, really, their identity doesn’t matter.

What matters is, “Wait, so, you were acting back there? How you threw me into the cell? You’re not going to kill me?”

“No.”

He isn’t a rapist, then, either. He didn’t kill Topher’s mom.

But he put a girl up for auction. Then again, if his father was anything like him—strong, powerful, commanding—I can’t see how he had a choice in the matter.

He never wanted anything with any of this.

Yet here I am. Alive and his.

It’s obvious that I wasn’t supposed to happen. My being here was not planned.

He might regret his decision. Might not let me stay. He might dispose of me somehow.

No. No. I’m his. He can’t do that to me. I belong here by his side.

I open my mouth to speak. To scream at him.

His thundering stare and the pressure on my throat silence me.

“There’s only one way to stop what our families had started.

” This sick tradition. These men. Of course there is.

It’s him. James is more powerful than the three of them combined.

“I was supposed to let someone kidnap you. A man who’d set you free, like I rescued the other ones.

He’d make you disappear, give you enough money to live your happily ever after away from here.

But, I couldn’t go through with it. I don’t even know what I’m doing.

What I do know is this: no one will kill you.

I’ll hang their heads in my backyard before I let that happen. ”