Page 9 of Cruel Pawn (Cruel Duet #1)
Priya
R eal, pretence, real, pretence—it flipped like a seesaw, teetering right on the edge of being in my control before Arden kissed me hard or taunted me with his teeth or said something that scrambled my brain and thoroughly stole that control from me.
I knew this was a bad idea. Knew it would complicate my job and be the exact opposite of clean and discreet, but Arden’s mouth had found the weakness on my neck and his cock ground against me, and it felt too good to stop.
I directed him to my bedroom with jagged, breathless words, and the next thing I knew I was flying, air carding its fingers through my hair, and my back landed on the mattress.
My temperature flared hotter as Arden stood at the end of the bed and watched me, surveying me like I was his kingdom and he the king I swore fealty to.
I swallowed, not quite able to take my eyes off him as he unfastened the buttons of his white shirt, letting it fall open over his chest.
He was a masterpiece of corded muscle, slender strength, and abs even cut into his torso.
I’d never seen a man with abs before. I was momentarily transfixed, my tongue tingling as I considered dragging it over every muscle, tasting his strength.
Arden made a soft sound in the back of his throat as he slid his shirt off, discarding it on the chair by the window, a delicious cockiness twisting his mouth into a dark smile as he watched me watch him.
“No,” he said when I reached for the hem of my dress, a new intensity to his stare that both thrilled and threatened me. “Stay exactly as you are. I want to undress you with my own hands.” A dangerous smile shaped his mouth. “My own teeth.”
The bed sank as he pressed a knee to the mattress, prowling closer, making me feel like prey he’d hunted and captured beneath sharp claws.
My heart beat faster. I didn’t enjoy feeling at the mercy of a predator, but I was so wet I could feel the lace clinging to my pussy.
I didn’t move an inch as his hands slid the red velvet up my thighs.
As his face neared my skin. As his lips burned a path up my thigh, making my breath freeze in the back of my throat.
As his teeth caught lace, his eyes stroking their way up my body to lock with mine before he dragged my underwear down.
I was beginning to fear Arden was a different breed of man than I usually slept with. I didn’t know what to do with a man who held eye contact as he folded my underwear and tucked them into his pocket.
“You’re not keeping those,” I said, far too breathily.
His lips hooked higher on one side, baring a sharp, pearly canine. “Watch me.”
Then hands were on my inner thighs, fingertips scalding as they pressed into my skin, so possessive they dimpled flesh. I might have died when he settled between my legs, staring at where I ached and dripped for him, and murmured, “Such a pretty pussy.”
My face grew hot, my ears burning. I wasn’t immune to compliments, but this one did something new, crept into my chest and sank teeth into my heart, reached into my stomach and tangled all my organs.
It touched places usually off limits, and that made me scowl.
This was all fake, a con to reel him in so I could kill—
My head dropped back onto the bed when soft, warm lips wrapped around my clit. Slow, gentle sucks made me lose my damn mind after being so turned on by his kisses, and I lost myself again.
“Even your moans sound like music, my opera,” he breathed, almost reverent as he returned his mouth to me, the heat, the suction, the purposeful strokes of his tongue reducing me to a gasping, throbbing mess in minutes. It would be a shame to kill a mouth this talented.
I sank my fingers into his hair, getting a good grip to guide his mouth a fraction higher and fuck.
My loud moan had a disastrous effect: Arden focused on what I liked with a lethal intensity, keeping the stroke of his tongue impeccable, the angle of his licks and sucks like a spiritual experience. And god, I was seeing stars.
His hands dimpled my thighs as he pushed them wider, and a little thrill went through me at the thought of him leaving marks.
Which was insanity. I must really be losing my mind if I—oh fuck, he groaned against my clit and all thoughts eddied out of my head.
My breath ruptured. My hips jolted off the bed.
He did it again, intentional and dangerous, and pleasure coiled in my lower belly like a threat.
I pressed my lips into a flat line to trap more moans, afraid of the words cluttered on the tip of my tongue, not sure what shape they’d take if they exploded into sound.
I needed to sink my claws into control and never let it go, needed to remember I was Carmen, not Priya, even if he assaulted me with so much pleasure that I couldn’t even remember why I was pretending to be someone else.
He caressed two fingers through tingling, too-sensitive flesh, the wet sound that accompanied them both carnal and obscene.
My face was on fire, the flush moving down to my chest. I bit my lip hard, keeping all my noises trapped, but when he slid those fingers inside me and stroked so expertly, using every gasp and whimper I made to find the fastest way to ruin me, the cry burst free.
“Arden,” I moaned, electric heat racing through me. I gripped his hair so hard it must have hurt, and for some reason I loved the thought of hurting him. A little payback for the way he ripped my control away from me.
“That’s it, my pretty opera,” he groaned against my pussy, devouring me with a frenzy and desperation that matched my own, like he could almost taste my release, so damn close to the surface I couldn’t think of anything else.
I didn’t know if I loved or hated the name, loved or hated him.
“You feel like heaven squeezing my fingers. But the taste of this perfect pussy?” He slicked a broad stripe from where his fingers fucked me fast now, all the way up to my clit.
“This is pure sin. If I have to burn in hell to taste you for the rest of my life, I’ll bring the matches. Let me burn.”
My hips shot off the mattress of their own accord, his velvet voice every bit as ruinous as his fingers, knowing just where to stroke to make my toes curl.
He licked ever-nearing circles around my clit until my pleasure was a tidal wave I had no hope of holding back.
All my control fled. Worse, it fell into his hands until he was the one with all the power.
I shuddered, my treacherous hands reaching for his shoulders and gripping with a desperation that betrayed me. And all I could think in that moment was that he’d reduced me from a weapon to a woman.
“Don’t stop,” I pleaded, mania invading my brain until orgasm was all I cared about. “Arden, fuck, don’t stop.”
“The only thing that could stop me now is a bullet,” he groaned against my pussy, his words pushing me right to the edge. “And even a gunshot wound wouldn’t be enough to stop me, not until I feel this sweet little pussy come around my fingers, not until I taste your cum.”
My hips snapped up, my eyes rolled back, and I was done. It was a lot like dying. The release was deep and vicious and consuming enough to kill me, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to piece myself back together again. And worse, the absolute worst—I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.
Wave after wave of pleasure poured through me like fire, both purifying and destructive, and I shook under the onslaught, my eyes slammed shut, breaths broken, inner muscles squeezing around Arden’s fingers as he stroked every weak spot.
He didn’t stop until I was trembling and wrecked.
Muscles I kept tense relaxed until I was limp and pliant, a knot unwound from its home in my chest, and my head floated, pleasantly quiet.
“What a good girl,” he murmured, curling his fingers into my g-spot one last time before he slid them out, “coming for me just like I asked.”
He kissed my opening, kissed a winding path over sensitised skin, kissed my clit before he rose up my body and kissed my lips. His tongue stroked the full length of mine, imprinting the taste of him and the taste of me on my senses until I’d never forget it.
“My pretty little opera,” he murmured, tilting my head back so he could plunge his tongue deeper, kissing me truly senseless.
He had the nerve to smile as I clung to him, my hands grabbing desperately at his arms, his hips, his back.
Trying, I realised with a sinking heart, to get him closer. To own him as he’d owned me.
I was still dazed from my orgasm, still hazy-headed and far too willing, when he stripped off his trousers and thrust inside me.
I was so wet that he slid all the way, his hips flush with mine.
My eyes widened at the stretch, the fullness, the absolute insanity of the feeling.
Clearly it had been too long since I got laid.
That was all it was. Not a life-altering moment where the world splintered into before and after.
But god, the slide of his thighs against mine, the stroke of his chest over my nipples, the way his hands clasped my hips and held on hard as he withdrew, so fucking slowly, to slam back in… it felt lifechanging.
He withdrew from my lips only far enough to lock eyes with me, his dark and lit from within, like his pleasure was so strong it had to physically manifest. “That’s it, Carmen. You hold onto your future husband while he fucks you into another orgasm.”
Oh shit, it wasn’t pleasure glowing from him—it was ownership gleaming in those dark eyes.
Possession and obsession so vast I hadn’t seen it until it was too late, and he was balls deep inside me.
Alarm burst to life, but it was crushed by a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest. Oh, I wanted it, loved it, craved affection so dark and intense that it would either complete me or kill me.
Arden was more dangerous to me than I’d realised.
I was grateful he’d be dead by morning, that—
A cry burst from me when he curved my thigh around his hip and thrust in an angle so callous and pleasurable it should be illegal. His low, smug laugh needed to be banned immediately.
“Is that the spot, my pretty opera?”
Stop calling me that, I wanted to snap. But fuck, fuck, that really was the spot, and I could only sink my teeth into my bottom lip as my face burned, and nod.
“I think my future wife’s going to come again, isn’t she?” he asked in a low, velvet voice that caressed my senses, crawled into my brain, and made itself a permanent home there. I’d never had sex like this; never known it could be like this. I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
The next thrust stroked the length of my body with his, setting all of me burning and tingling, my body so completely alive. He did it again, keeping that wicked angle inside me, and I bit deeper into my lip until a bead of blood welled up.
The sound that came from the back of Arden’s throat made me feral.
I snapped my hips up to meet the next thrust, my eyes flashing wide at how close that single thrust pushed me.
Then Arden’s teeth closed around my bottom lip, tugging it from between my own teeth so he could capture it, his tongue licking over the tiny wound, lapping up my blood with a sinuous motion that echoed the way he moved within me.
“Arden,” I breathed, my voice high and unrecognisable.
“I know, pretty girl,” he said with a rough kiss. “Your pussy’s clutching my cock so tightly, you must be close.”
I nodded fast, my breaths deep, heavy, rapid.
There was a darkness to the way he watched me, and my heart thundered at the sight of it.
“Come for me, my opera, and make me come so I can fill you up with cum. All of this is for you.” He thrust harder, a declaration and warning.
“What?” I gasped. “No.”
“Oh, yes, my future wife.” His hands found my wrists and pressed them into the bed as his hips bore down on mine, thrusting so fucking perfectly that I couldn’t remember my objections.
Did it even matter when it felt this good?
“I’m going to fill your perfect cunt to the brim, and you’re going to take it all like a good girl. ”
His thrusts grew rougher, obliterating whatever thoughts I had left, and all I could do was writhe under him and plead, over and over.
“Fuck,” he grunted. “Your lips might say no, but this pussy is begging me to fulfil my promises. I never break a promise, my opera, so when I tell you I’m going to breed this throbbing, dripping cunt, that you’re going to marry me, and we’ll live happily ever after, you know I mean it.”
My next moan was almost a sob. He released my left wrist to sweep his thumb over my clit, and the world fell apart.
I had a vague notion that I was crying out his name, that I was screaming it as he fucked me like a madman and spilled inside me, but there was only blinding light and stars and pleasure so intense my whole body shook as I came back down.
My breath caught on my next inhale, then again, a shivery instability in my arms that I didn’t recognise. A tightness formed in my chest that wasn’t quite my regular anxiety.
“Come here, my opera,” Arden said in a voice so tender I thought I must be dreaming. “You were so perfect for me,” he murmured, gently withdrawing his cock and tucking me into his chest, his arms secure around me. “Everything I dreamed of and more.”
His lips feathered across my temple, and a rough sigh expelled from my chest. What the hell was happening?
I felt completely out of flux, shaken and…
needy. And what I needed was more of those forehead kisses, his arms tighter around me, the steady thump of his heartbeat against my chest. This was a travesty.
“My dream girl,” he praised, stroking his fingertips up and down the bare arch of my spine. I melted against him like ice cream on a scorching summer day.
Arden rearranged us so I was splayed on top of him, my head on his chest at the perfect height for more of those sweet kisses, and I let out another deep sigh, the shaking finally easing its grip on my limbs.
He wasn’t supposed to be holding me as I trembled under a rush of foreign and unwanted chemicals in my brain; I was supposed to be ending his life right now.
But his next kiss to my temple lingered, like he’d noticed how much I loved them, and my eyelids grew heavy.
I’d kill him in the morning.