Page 41 of Forbidden Empire

I bit down on his shoulder to muffle the sound tearing from my throat, my thighs trembling as they locked around his hips. My body clenched around him, greedy, desperate, a vise of need that had him hissing through clenched teeth.

"Look at me," he commanded, withdrawing.

The emptiness was unbearable, a hollow ache that had me clawing at his back.

When he thrust back in, the fullness bordered on pain, stretching me to my limits. Stars burst behind my eyelids. Sweat slicked between our bodies as we found a rhythm, my hips rising to meet each punishing drive of his. His teeth scraped my neck, my pulse hammering against his tongue.

The headboard slammed against the wall, each crack punctuating a thrust that drove me further up the mattress.

I tasted blood; his or mine, I couldn't tell.

The sheets twisted beneath us, damp with sweat and arousal. His hands gripped my thighs, spreading me wider, angling deeper, hitting places inside me that had tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

"Fuck, Esme." I clenched around him. "You feel like—" He couldn't finish, his words dissolving into a groan that vibrated through my sternum.

The world beyond our tangled limbs ceased to exist. There was nothing but this—the slick slide of him inside me, the bruising grip of his fingers on my hips, the salt of his skin against my tongue.

The danger of what we were doing, of what we were to each other, hovered at the edges of my consciousness, but I couldn't reach it through the haze of pleasure.

Something cracked open in my chest when he slowed, his forehead pressed to mine, our breath mingling in the scant space between us.

For a heartbeat, we weren't enemies or rivals or whatever twisted thing we'd become. We were just two people drowning in each other.

His eyes locked on mine as he moved inside me, pupils blown so wide the midnight blue was just a thin ring around bottomless black.

I couldn't look away even as something primal in me screamed to hide, to protect the raw, bleeding parts of myself his gaze was excavating with each brutal thrust. My chest constricted, lungs fighting for air that wouldn't come.

"What are you looking for?" I whispered, as he hit that spot deep inside that made my vision blur.

His answer was to grip my jaw, forcing my face up, denying me even the small mercy of turning away.

Let him look. Let him search. The truth was written in the tremble of my thighs, the desperate arch of my spine, the wetness coating his cock each time he withdrew, just to drive back in deeper.

For now, I would let him think he'd won.

I dug my heels into the mattress and arched up, taking him beyond deeper, my inner walls clenching around him like a vise.

His rhythm faltered, a choking sound escaping his throat. The headboard slammed against the wall, each crack punctuating the wet, obscene sound of our bodies colliding.

"Fuck," he hissed, his fingers digging bruises into my hipbones as he yanked me down onto his cock.

The new angle sent lightning bolts of pleasure-pain up my spine, my body seizing around him.

Sweat dripped from his forehead onto my collarbone, sliding between my breasts. The salt of it stung the scratches on my skin.

Each thrust now knocked the air from my lungs in short, desperate pants. My nails carved crescents into his shoulders, drawing pinpricks of blood that smeared between us.

"Is this—" Each word punctuated by the snap of his hips "—what you—wanted?"

I couldn't answer as the pressure built low in my core and made me tremble.

The world beyond our tangled limbs ceased to exist, narrowing to the slick slide of him inside me, the bruising grip of his hands, the salt of his skin against my tongue.

My head thrashed against the pillow, hair wild and damp with sweat, as the first shockwaves of release threatened to tear me apart.

My spine arched with such violent force I thought it might snap, every nerve ending raw and exposed.

"Don't stop," I gasped. "Harder, Aidon. Please—" My plea dissolved into a broken moan.