Page 9 of Martyr (Sterling Falls Rogues #3)

Tem takes me back to her room. Sneaking through the shadows, keeping her close while hugging the wall, gives me strange flashbacks to my military training. I brush it aside and memorize where we’re going.

Just in case I need to find her again in the middle of the night…

Or get her out of here in a hurry.

We go up a flight of stairs, and she hesitates outside of a closed door. Whatever internal debate she has is lost on me, and before I can ask, she turns the handle and steps inside.

I follow.

This room lacks the warmth of Lyssa’s. The sleeping girl’s room has so much stuff . Things that were sent by loved ones—who I now know is Kade, and maybe even Gabriel. When she wakes up, maybe she’ll feel the power of that love.

Tem’s room is painfully bare.

My chest pinches, and I have the urge to throw her over my shoulder and get her the fuck out of here.

This room is clearly meant to be a double. There’s a bare mattress and empty desk pushed off to one side. Tem’s bed is made, and some pens litter the desktop. There’s a notepad of yellow legal paper, too, and it looks like some pages have been ripped out.

Things I don’t question.

“How are things back home?” she asks, turning to face me. Her lower lip is trapped between her teeth.

I finally have her alone, and she wants to talk about home?

“How about…” I grab the desk chair and carry it to the door. I wedge it under the handle. “I strip you bare and show you how much I missed you, then we talk about Sterling Falls?”

Her eyes widen.

I tsk. “Come on, Tem. You didn’t think I’d let you escape me so easily?”

She shakes her head. “Didn’t expect anything.”

“I’m glad we changed locations.” I toe off my shoes. “Fucking in front of an unconscious girl would’ve been…”

Not cool.

Kinda cringe.

She laughs under her breath. “Yeah.”

“Take your shirt off.”

Her laughter dies, but she does what I say. She drops her shirt to the floor by her feet, then goes a step further. She folds forward, removing her sweatpants and panties. Her shoes and socks go with it, kicked away to a pile with the shirt.

She straightens. Hands on her hips.

The moonlight is the only thing illuminating her room, and her back is to the window. The shadows hide the important details, like the curve of her stomach, her breasts. The bars through her nipples.

My dick stiffens, waking back up and tenting my jeans.

I move around her, and she shifts to face me.

The moonlight gleams off the nipple piercings. I want to touch her, but right now, she seems like a golden statue. Still, waiting, appraising. There’s goosebumps on her skin.

She almost doesn’t look like herself. She’s missing the layers of necklaces, the makeup, the fire . Being here has dulled her, perhaps. Or just the toll of coming off the drugs. There are dark circles under her eyes.

“I need to see you, too,” she whispers.

I nod. I peel off my jacket, then my shirt. My jeans and boxers follow. My socks. Naked, my dick pointing at her once again, I flash back to Terror. To standing in front of her. Waiting. Unsure. There as some sick lesson by my parents, some experiment to see if I’m twisted in the head.

Therapy would’ve been less traumatic.

“How do you want me?” Her husky voice goes straight through me.

I tilt my head.

“On the bed?” She goes back and perches on the edge, slowly parting her legs. She doesn’t touch herself, but I can see her arousal from here. “Like this? Or perhaps from behind…”

Another shift, and she kneels facing the wall.

No .

“Turn back around.”

Her head drops for a moment, but then she does. She rolls, her legs still parted.

I grasp my length and bite back a groan. Now’s not the time to be loud—our voices haven’t risen above a whisper since we got up here. I’m aware of how thin the walls probably are.

A chair under the doorknob wouldn’t stop someone from breaking it down to stop us.

I shake my head and pump myself slowly. “I don’t want you on that bed, golden girl.”

I pull the thin, flimsy mattress from the extra bed. It barely makes a noise hitting the rug-covered floor, and it’ll save us from the giveaway of a headboard banging against the wall when I finally thrust into her.

She bites her lip again but drops silently to her knees. She crawls toward me, not stopping until she’s planted her hands on my thighs and is once again eye level with my dick. She pushes my hand away from it.

I hadn’t even realized I held it again, stroking it slowly.

She licks the precum oozing from my tip, just once, to make it twitch even harder.

“I’m burning up for you,” I admit.

“Then come and take me.” She shifts onto her back, propped up by her forearms.

Her gaze sears, and it’s all the invitation I need to drop down to her level. I crawl over her, my body not yet touching hers. It will soon, in all the most satisfying places, but something holds me back.

I search her gaze.

“One hundred percent sober,” she whispers.

This isn’t a quick fuck with a girl I’m hot for. I notch myself at her entrance, still only a whisper of skin contact. She’s wet, and it makes it easy to thrust inside just a little. The tip is swallowed by her cunt, and I let out a shaky breath.

I pull back and inch forward, testing my resolve.

Her muscles grip at me, but she doesn’t even seem to breathe. She seems as captivated by the sight as me. When I stay still, her hips flex.

“Please get inside me right now,” she begs. “This teasing shit is going to kill me.”

I smirk. “Sorry, golden girl. Teasing isn’t what I was trying to do.”

I slide in deeper, inch by inch, until I’m fully sheathed.

Fuck . It’s been too long. Weeks without has left me sensitive—I can only imagine how it’s been for her. I doubt Saint has been helping her in that regard.

Or at all.

I bet help is a foreign word to him right now.

Knowing he had forgotten his shared past with Artemis is one thing—seeing his asshole behavior in person is quite another. Did her brother know how awful he was to her?

Her nails dig into my back, dragging my focus away from his treatment of her—and, ew, her brother —back to what I’m doing. Which is still, apparently, driving her nuts.

“More,” she whispers.

I oblige. My abdomen ripples with every thrust, and I stay off her body enough to look at her. To shift onto one forearm and run my hand up her side and cup her breast. I brush my thumb over her nipple, tweaking the jewelry.

Her legs come up around me, and her heels dig into my ass. I lean down and kiss her.

Can’t help it.

Maybe she wants a fast fuck, but I feel like I’m reacquainting myself with her after far too long. Her lips are still under mine for a moment, almost long enough to let a trickle of doubt in, and then she comes to life. She wraps her arms around my neck and draws me down.

My weight presses onto hers, chest to chest. Her mouth opens, allowing our tongues to meet. The kiss, the way she feels around my cock, the warmth of her body—it’s all too much.

I could go back to thinking about her brother to hold off my orgasm…

Her teeth score my lower lip, and I groan. I roll my hips and hit a new position, and she whimpers.

Oh, fuck.

I chase that noise, repeating what I did before. I hit a spot deep inside her over and over again. She gives it to me. I take my hand from her breast and drift it down between our legs, feeling where I slide into her. Then up, to the bud of nerves just waiting to be touched.

Our kiss breaks off, our lips hovering, so close we’re still nearly touching. I open my eyes to find her already looking at me. Her dark-brown eyes are wide. She seems younger without the makeup. More like an innocent twenty-five-year-old who hasn’t been fucked over by the world on repeat.

Not that she looks like a harried old lady with makeup—this is just a kind of vulnerability I appreciate. Her makeup is a shield.

And right now, there’s nothing between us.

No condom either.

Ah, shit.

That thought alone seems to trigger some insane bodily response. My balls tighten, and the pleasure that is natural to chase—the tingling forewarning that it’s coming—starts at the base of my spine.

I pull out.

Try to anyway. But her heels keep me trapped, and her nails dig into the back of my neck.

“Tem, I’m not wearing?—”

“I’m on birth control. Don’t worry about it.” She rises and captures my lower lip in her teeth again, tugging.

I’m a fucking goner.

I work her clit with my finger, and I thrust into her with renewed vigor, chasing the high of climax. Both of ours.

She breaks before me. Her back arches, pushing her breasts into my chest, and her pussy clamps down on my cock. The sight of her unraveling, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open, does me in.

My head falls into the crook of her shoulder when I come, filling her up. My strokes turn lazy, slow. I milk out every last ounce of feeling, until I shudder and stop, resting inside her.

How am I supposed to leave her after that?

“Thank you.” She strokes my hair.

Thank you?

“For?” My voice, muffled against her neck, is gruff.

“For not letting me suffer this place alone.”

I let out a quiet chuckle. “Golden girl, I’m about to enroll here myself just to do this to you more often.”

I don’t say the thought that directly follows: that this place would absolutely beat the shitshow Sterling Falls is going through right now.

Instead, I keep my mouth shut. And I’ll stay here as long as I can, wrapped in Tem’s embrace.