Page 4 of Bastard

I attempt to lift my head, but he shoves it back down.

It’s apparent he’s accustomed to being in control.

It’s a disturbing thought. One I quickly abandon when his arm snakes around my waist and his cock is replaced by his fingers. With one hand, he turns me into a quivering ball of need. Playing me like I’m his instrument, masterfully working me toward a crescendo. Why he feels inclined to get me off with his fingers instead of actually fucking me confuses me. But I relax into the glide of his thumb across my clit and the masterful rhythm of his fingers.

Still, I stop him before I reach completion.

“No. Not like this. It has to be you inside me.”Show me what it feels like to come while fucking someone else.

He curses in Italian beneath his breath.

He places one hand on my hip and the other beneath my breast, controlling my movements, my body, as he drives back into me hard enough I see stars.

“Sí. I’m close.”

He smacks my ass, and I try to lift my hips for another. And it’s in that moment, when I’m three thrusts away from finding oblivion and truly fulfilling my New Year’s resolution, that he slides his hand down and over my bare abdomen to rest his palm flush against my scars.

I buck wildly, desperate to shake him free.

He pins me in place, not having it, though every inch of his body tenses.

I squeeze my eyes shut, cursinghim. For ruining my night, for the cuts his men made while drawing their knives across my skin, for the physical and emotional scars from lovinghimso deeply, for his brutal betrayal.

Ever so gently, he touches me, gliding his fingers first across one diagonal mark then another, outlining the X-shaped pattern scarring the skin of my lower abdomen. His touch might be gentle, but it hurts almost as much as the pain did that night. The night Hayden’s men tied me to a bed and taught me a harsh lesson about loving a man likehim.

I can’t move—he won’t let me.

I can’t breathe—the memory of his betrayal as fresh as the night it happened.

I came so close to forgetting.

How many years need to pass before I’m whole again? How many more trips down memory lane must I endure before it happens? It’s been two years. What if I can’t get there?

No. No. No. It’s tonight or never.

I pry his hand off my stomach.

“Finish.” My command is harsh. I can’t even look at him. Reaching behind me, I grasp hold of his cock. Wrapping my fingers around him, I give him several hard strokes until he hardens beneath my palm then press him back inside me.

“Do it,” I repeat. “And don’t you dare stop until I come.”

He makes a noise in his throat. A grunt? A growl? I don’t really care. He’s probably thinking I’m the worst choice in New Year’s Eve hookups. Again, I don’t really care.

I rock back and forth, taking him into my body.

But while I’m harsh, he’s surprisingly gentle, taking his time while feeding me inch by glorious inch of himself. I’m tight—it’s been a while—and the delicious stretch of him feels incredible. He drags himself out at the same maddening pace, slowly and deliberately, allowing time for my mind to settle on the blissful union of our bodies. I don’t want sweet or gentle, yet this is what he’s giving me.

I’m too close to orgasming to care.

“Sí. Oh, yes.”

He lowers his lips to my nape, licking and sucking his way along the same path he’d taken earlier. My neck has always been sensitive, the thin cord of nerves from below my ear to my shoulders an erogenous zone. Hayden loved to kiss me there ... now this stranger does too.

He cups my breast, his fingers scissoring my nipple. Not hard or aggressive, enough to cause tiny sparks of sensation to join with the delicious tension building up at a now frantic pace within me.

I focus on feeling, the way my pussy clenches around his cock, the building tension in the way he’s suckling my neck. I’ll be sporting a hickey for sure. Another mark, from another man.

So be it.