Page 12

12

Ravenous

The possessive claim should have enraged me. Instead, it ignited something dark and hungry inside—a need I’d spent fifteen years denying, suppressing, fearing.

“I’m not yours,” I said, the lie hollow even to my own ears.

“No?” His hand slid from my waist to my throat, fingers applying the lightest pressure—not restricting, just reminding. “Then why does your pulse jump when I touch you? Why do your pupils dilate when I get close?”

I set the spatula down, eggs forgotten. The scent of warming butter already beginning to brown at the edges. “Physical response doesn’t equal ownership.”

“True,” he acknowledged, turning me to face him. “But it’s a start.”

Before I could formulate a suitably cutting response, he gripped my shoulders and pressed down, the sudden pressure forcing me to my knees before him. I went willingly, the movement so instinctive it terrified me—muscle memory that fifteen years of captivity couldn’t erase. My body remembered him while my mind had tried desperately to forget.

There was nothing submissive in my position. Nothing subservient in the way I looked up at him, challenge in my gaze even as I knelt at his feet. This was a dance of power that transcended simple dynamics of dominance and submission. We were matched predators, circling each other, neither willing to show weakness first.

His smile was all teeth, all predator. “Good girl.”

Those two simple words sent an electric current down my spine – praise I shouldn’t crave but did, conditioning I should reject but couldn’t. The same words whispered into darkness by faceless men during my captivity now reignited something feral in me—but this time, I chose it. The distinction was razor-thin, but it was mine.

His hand moved to my face, thumb brushing across my lower lip in a gesture both tender and possessive.

“Open,” he commanded, voice dropping to something dark and dangerous.

I should have bitten him. Should have maintained the boundary I’d been fighting for since bringing him to this cabin. Instead, I found my lips parting, allowing his thumb to slip into my mouth in a preview of what was to come.

Permission. Surrender. Choice. Bland descriptors that haunted the line between trauma and healing, between victim and villain.

He growled his approval, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest as he withdrew his thumb and reached for the waistband of his borrowed sweatpants. “Do you remember how to take it, kitten? How to let me use that pretty throat?”

I wanted to deny it. Wanted to maintain the fiction that my body wasn’t responding to his words with shameful anticipation. The scent of burning butter drifted between us—a warning I deliberately ignored. Some things were meant to burn.

When he freed himself, already hard and imposing, the way my mouth watered was answer enough. I hated myself for it—hated that after everything, after all they’d done to me, I still craved this. Still wanted him. Still needed the darkness only he understood.

“Hands behind your back,” he instructed, watching as I complied without hesitation. “That’s it. Show me you remember.”

Fifteen years melted away as I assumed the position he’d taught me when we were both too young to understand the darkness we courted – kneeling, back straight, hands clasped behind me, mouth open and waiting. The muscle memory was disturbing in its precision, a reminder that some conditioning runs too deep to ever truly escape. What did it say about me that the positions forced upon me in captivity had been ones I’d willingly assumed for him years before?

He wrapped one hand around himself, the other fisting in my hair to hold me steady. “Look at me,” he demanded. “I want to see your eyes when I take your breath away.”

I forced my gaze upward, meeting his with a defiance that only seemed to inflame him further. The power dynamic was complex, fluid – me physically lower but maintaining a core of resistance, him physically dominant but desperate for my submission in a way that gave me my own form of power.

When he finally guided himself between my lips, the intrusion was both familiar and foreign. My body remembered this dance – how to relax my jaw, how to breathe through my nose, how to take him deeper than should be possible. But fifteen years of conditioning at other men’s hands had left new responses layered over old memories—reflexes that made me panic even as others made me yield more easily.

“That’s it,” he murmured, watching himself disappear into my mouth with predatory focus. “Take it all, kitten. Show me what they taught you.”

The deliberate reference to my captivity should have been a bucket of ice water. Should have snapped me back to reality, to hatred, to the revenge I’d come here to exact. Instead, it sent a perverse thrill through me—a sick validation that he acknowledged what I’d become without the pity I couldn’t stomach. No soft glances or gentle handling. Just acceptance of the shattered thing that had emerged from fifteen years of systematic breaking.

The scent of burning butter registered dimly somewhere in my consciousness—our forgotten meal turning to char while we consumed each other instead. I ignored it. Some things were meant to burn.

He began to move, shallow thrusts at first, testing boundaries like he was relearning territory once intimately known. But patience had never been Jace’s virtue, and soon he was pressing deeper, each invasion feeling like reclamation. His hand tightened in my hair, the pain grounding me in the present even as my mind threatened to splinter between then and now, them and him, force and choice.

His grip turned punishing as he drove to the back of my throat and beyond. My air cut off completely as he buried himself to the hilt, his groan of pleasure vibrating through my entire body. Darkness edged my vision as seconds ticked by without oxygen, my throat convulsing around him in a panic response that only seemed to heighten his pleasure.

Just when spots began to dance before my eyes, he withdrew, allowing me a desperate gasp of air before plunging deep again. The rhythm was calculated to keep me on edge – never enough air to feel safe, never without it long enough to pass out.

It was payback for the bag, but I didn’t care. Not with his taste on my tongue. Not with the control I’d found in surrender—a control my captors had never understood when they’d forced similar acts upon me. The difference was choice. The difference was him.

“Look at you,” he rasped, voice thick with arousal as tears streamed down my face involuntarily. “Taking it so beautifully. Your body remembers who you belong to, kitten.”

I should have hated the words, hated him, hated myself for the way my core throbbed with arousal even as I fought for breath. But somewhere in the space between oxygen and deprivation, between control and surrender, I found a terrible freedom. The choice to submit, to endure, to transform pain into something like pleasure—a skill I’d learned to survive, now wielded by choice.

The acrid smell of smoke had strengthened, the forgotten food on the stove now well beyond salvation. Like us. Beyond saving but perfect in our matched destruction.

His pace quickened, movements growing less controlled as he chased his release. “Touch yourself,” he commanded, a growl that brooked no argument. “I want to feel you moan around my cock when you come.”

My hands moved from behind my back without conscious thought, one sliding beneath the waistband of my sweatpants to find myself embarrassingly wet. The other gripped his thigh for balance as he continued his relentless assault on my throat. This should disgust me—how easily I responded to the same acts that had once been my torture. Instead, it felt like reclamation, taking back pleasure from what had only been pain for so long.

“That’s it,” he encouraged, watching my hand move between my legs with dark satisfaction. “Show me how much you like choking on my cock. Show me who you’ve become.”

This wasn’t the frantic coupling of the forest, driven by rage and adrenaline. This was deliberate, methodical—a claiming as precise as the scars I’d carved into his flesh. An acknowledgment of the guilt we both carried, as survivors of something horrific in our past.

Not only death, but the death of what we could have been.

I noticed the moment his plans changed, reflected in his intense eyes. He plucked my hand away from between my legs and stretched my fingers to his mouth before he licked them clean. He was the one that moaned.

His hands lifted me up as we reversed positions, my pants hitting the floor at the same time he did. He dove face first between my legs and I was forced to hold on, my ankles trapped for a moment, my balance precarious at best. The smoke alarm would start screaming soon, but we were already too far gone to care.

He growled as he sucked at my clit and freed one leg to toss over his broad shoulder. His thumbs spread me open as he licked and I ground against his face wanting more. Needing more.

He was so good at this, skilled beyond what any man should be. His technique, the pressure and intensity precise. The pleasure was euphoric, not like at his clubhouse days before, when my emotions were more chaotic. This almost felt like the first time he ate me out.

In Luke’s bathroom, while his father and my mother slept in his bed a few feet away. Jace’s hand muffled my mouth so we wouldn’t wake them, but it was the thrill of possibly being caught that made it so damn good. Young and reckless and already so drawn to danger.

“Jace,” I gasped, hands fisting in his hair, uncertain whether I was trying to pull him closer or push him away as the pleasure built to unbearable heights. The smoke filling the kitchen now, the haze like a physical manifestation of the fog in my brain.

He growled against me, the vibration sending shocks of sensation throughout my body. One hand left my thigh, sliding up to cover my mouth in a gesture so familiar it hurt—a callback to who we’d been before everything shattered. Was he remembering it too? The thrill of forbidden pleasure, now transformed into something darker by all that had come between us?

The dual sensation of his mouth between my legs and his hand over my lips pushed me toward the edge with frightening speed. I’d forgotten how well he knew my body, how easily he could play me like an instrument tuned specifically to his touch. Some things time couldn’t erase, couldn’t corrupt.

“Oh shit,” I gasped, not ready for this to end. Not ready to face the aftermath, the smoking kitchen, the shattered boundaries.

He ignored me, doubling his efforts until I was trembling on the precipice, every muscle taut with impending release. Just as I was about to fall, he pulled back, denying me at the last possible second. Control. Always control with him.

I nearly sobbed with frustration. “You sadistic—”

“Careful, kitten,” he warned, rising smoothly to his feet, hand still wrapped loosely around my throat. “You’re in no position to be making accusations.”

Before I could respond, he spun me around, bending me over the counter with my back to his chest, his arousal evident against my lower back. The smoke from the stove now visible, the pan sending up black plumes we both continued to ignore. What was a little more destruction?

“Hands on the counter,” he ordered, voice rough with desire. “Don’t move.”

I complied, not out of submission but out of curiosity—wanting to see where this power play would lead, how far he would push, how much I would allow. Where once I had no choice, now I chose this—chose him, chose us, chose the darkness that threatened to consume us both.

The answer, it seemed, was everything.

I expected him to enter me immediately, to claim me with the same brutal efficiency he’d displayed in the forest. Instead, he dropped to his knees again, this time behind me.

“What are you—” My question dissolved into a shocked gasp as his mouth made contact with my most intimate places, tongue exploring with devastating thoroughness… again.

The position was obscene, vulnerable in a way that made my cheeks burn with equal parts shame and arousal. His hands gripped my hips, holding me in place as he feasted, claiming both holes as his territory with a thoroughness that left no room for misinterpretation. In my captivity, such acts had been about degradation. With him, it felt like worship—a twisted devotion only we could understand.

The taboo nature of it, combined with the absolute possession it represented, sent me spiraling toward release with embarrassing speed. This time, when I approached the edge, he didn’t deny me—just increased his efforts until I shattered completely, crying out his name in a voice I barely recognized as my own.

Before I could recover, he was standing again, spinning me to face him with predatory efficiency. Without a word, he lifted me, carrying me the few steps to the kitchen table where he’d been cleaning his gun earlier.

He swept everything to the floor with one arm—gun, cleaning supplies, my carefully arranged groceries—the crash of items hitting the wood planks punctuating the heaviness of our breathing. The chaos a perfect reflection of what we did to each other, to ourselves.

He laid back on the table, still fully clothed except for the evident bulge straining against his borrowed sweatpants.

“Come here,” he commanded, gesturing to his face in a way that left no room for misinterpretation.

I hesitated, not out of reluctance but out of a need to assert some small measure of control in this dance of dominance and submission. The smoke alarm finally began its shrill warning, the sound barely registering through the haze of desire.

“Now, Naomi,” he added, voice dropping to something dangerous and soft. “Unless you want me to come get you.”

The threat sent a thrill down my spine—the predator reminding the prey that escape was an illusion he permitted rather than a possibility he feared. The alarm screamed on, ignored like all other warnings in our lives.

I moved forward, allowing him to guide me into position—straddling his face while facing his lower body, the sixty-nine position placing us in perfect alignment to devour each other simultaneously. Consuming each other as the kitchen burned around us.

When I took him in my mouth, his groan vibrated against my core where his tongue was already working with renewed vigor. The position created a feedback loop of pleasure—each sensation I gave him reflected back to me, each trick of my tongue echoed by his. We fed each other’s darkness, amplified each other’s hunger.

I took him deeper, testing my limits, pushing until he hit the back of my throat. Instead of backing off, I pressed further, letting him cut off my air in a perverse mirror of what I’d done to him days ago with the plastic bag. The symmetry wasn’t lost on me—how easily we weaponized pleasure, how readily we chose pain.

His hands gripped my thighs hard enough to bruise, recognizing the symmetry of the moment—both of us choosing to be exactly where we were, both of us finding pleasure in pain, control in submission. Both of us ignoring the smoke alarm, the burning food, the danger we courted with every touch, every breath.

When his fingers dug into my flesh, urging me to take him impossibly deeper, I complied without hesitation—my gag reflex suppressed by years of conditioning, my body responding to the familiar sensation of controlled asphyxiation with a rush of endorphins that heightened every touch. What once had been forced upon me, I now claimed willingly. The choice made all the difference.

We moved together with increasing urgency, each pushing the other toward completion with single-minded determination. I lost track of where my pleasure ended and his began, our bodies synced in a cancerous rhythm that transcended the boundaries between us. So damn greedy. The smoke alarm screamed on, its warning drowned by our shared hunger.

When release came, it was simultaneous—his body tensing beneath me as mine convulsed above him, each of us consuming the other’s pleasure as greedily as we’d consumed each other’s pain over the past week. For a moment, the boundaries between us dissolved completely—no captor, no victim, no hunter, no prey. Just two broken people finding wholeness in their shared destruction.

For endless moments we remained locked together, trembling with aftershocks, the smoke from the burning pan having triggered the alarm, which now pierced through our haze of satisfaction.

“Shit,” I gasped, pulling away to see thick black smoke rising from the forgotten pan on the stove. “The food—”

Jace laughed, the sound unexpectedly light, almost boyish. “Let it burn, kitten. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

He pulled me down beside him on the table, both of us lying on our backs, staring at the ceiling as our breathing gradually slowed. The alarm continued its shrill warning, the smoke thickening. Neither of us moved.

“So much for breakfast for dinner,” I murmured, a strange calm settling over me despite the chaos we’d created. The broken pieces of my psyche temporarily falling into alignment, the contradiction of finding peace with the man partly responsible for my destruction not lost on me.

“Worth it,” he replied, fingers finding mine on the hard surface of the table, intertwining with casual possessiveness. “We can always cook again tomorrow.”

The simple statement—the assumption of continuity, of a future beyond this moment—should have alarmed me. Instead, I found myself nodding, even as a voice in the back of my mind reminded me that people like us didn’t get tomorrows. People like us burned everything we touched, including each other. Especially each other.

As post-orgasmic lassitude combined with days of sleep deprivation to pull me toward unconsciousness, I wondered which would consume us first—the fire we’d started in the kitchen, or the one we’d ignited between us. Either way, I knew we’d go down in flames. And somehow, that felt exactly right.