Page 70 of Dirty Game

He takes my hand, leads me to his bedroom.

I haven’t been inside his bedroom here at the safehouse. Varrick’s been pushing me away.

It's simple, masculine, dominated by a large bed with dark sheets. He turns on a single lamp, casting everything in warm gold that makes his skin glow and throws the planes of his face into sharp relief.

"Sit," he says, guiding me to the edge of the bed.

I sit, hands twisting in my lap, suddenly nervous.

My whole body is trembling—not from fear but from anticipation, from need, from the weight of what's about to happen.

He kneels in front of me—Varrick Bane, who kneels for no one, on his knees before me.

"We're going to go very slow," he says, hands resting on my knees, not moving higher. The heat of his palms burns through the shirt. "I'm going to worship every inch of you, learn every sound you make, every way you respond. But first, I need you to understand something."

"What?"

"No one takes from you here. Everything that happens in this bed is something you give. You don't want something, we don't do it. You want to stop, we stop. You want more, you ask. This is about you learning for your own pleasure as much as me giving it to you."

"I don't understand giving in... in sex," I admit quietly, my voice barely a whisper. "My family always made it seem likesomething that would be done to me. Like violence with a different name."

His jaw clenches, and for a moment, rage flashes in his eyes—not at me, but at them. "Your family was wrong. About everything, especially about this." His hands move slightly higher, just above my knees, still over the shirt. "May I?"

The request surprises me. "You're asking?"

"I'll always ask, until you tell me I don't need to anymore."

Something in my chest cracks open, warm and overwhelming. "Yes."

His hands slide higher, pushing the shirt up slowly, revealing my thighs inch by inch.

When he sees the faded bruises—old ones from Marco, nearly gone but still visible in the lamplight—his movements stop.

"These are from your brother?"

"Does it matter?"

"Everything about you matters." He leans down, presses his lips to the first mark, so gently I barely feel it. "Every mark they left, I'm going to kiss away. Every bit of hurt and pain, every moment they made you feel less than precious."

He works his way up one thigh, lips brushing over each shadow of violence.

When he reaches a particularly dark bruise near the top of my thigh—one I'd forgotten about, from being shoved into a table corner—he spends extra time there, his tongue soothing the ache I didn't know still lingered.

"Beautiful," he murmurs against my skin, and I realize I'm trembling harder now, my breathing coming in short gasps. "So fucking beautiful."

"I'm not?—"

He looks up at me, eyes fierce. "Youare. Every scar, every mark, every part of you. Beautiful."

He continues his worship, kissing across to my other thigh, finding bruises I'd forgotten existed.

When he reaches the edge of where my thighs meet, he pauses and looks up at me.

"I want to taste you," he says, voice rough. "Want to show you how good it can be. Will you let me?"

My face burns. "Is that... is that normal?"

"Fuck normal. This is about what feels good. What you want. Do you trust me?"