Page 19

Chapter Nineteen

Tynan

I wrapped a towel around my waist, needing some kind of physical barrier to remind my cock that was all it was going to get tonight.

The rest was about her.

She rose and stripped with the silent authority of a queen sitting on her throne, discarding her clothes like she never needed their protection anyway. Piece by piece, she unwrapped the memory of my favorite fantasy and made it my reality.

The dim bathroom lights highlighted the soft curves of her upturned face. The full arcs of her lush mouth. The button peak of her nose. The glittering centers of her eyes, like diamonds surrounded by coal.

There was something about her gaze, I couldn’t tear myself away from it. Not when her shirt came off, baring her studded, dusky nipples. Nor when she shimmied out of the black leggings, her lack of underwear revealing the bare crease of her cunt. Even from here, I could see the glisten of wetness on the inside of her thighs.

My mouth dried. Like this, she looked too small to take me. Like I’d split her right down the seam of her pretty tattooed torso if she tried to fit my cock inside her. But she would…if she wanted.

I went closer to her, my cock straining against the terry towel. Her gaze never broke from mine, and when I was close enough, I cupped her face, holding it like a willing prisoner.

“Did seeing my cock make you wet, little wasp?”

Hell, if I were a betting man, I bet the nickname alone had her sweet little pussy dripping. She wasn’t used to protection or support, let alone the tender intimacy of a pet name.

Fuck, I wanted to give her everything she should’ve had—everything she could ever want.

I pressed my thumb on her chin, forcing her lips to part. “Answer.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Her eyes danced.

I lowered my head, her mouth straining up to meet mine, but I stopped before I kissed her. I stopped a breath away from ravaging her mouth and losing what was left of my sanity and instead praised her, “Good girl.”

I forced myself back, letting my eyes swing lower onto her chest. “Tell me about these.”

I pressed my finger to her sternum and then traced the tattoos mirrored on either side of her sternum that wrapped along the lower curve of each breast. Two dainty scorpions, the lines featherlight as they outlined a series of dots inside the bodies of the beasts.

Her eyes flashed wildly for a split second.

I was intoxicated by the fight in her; it was as simple as that. A fight to be seen. To be strong. To succeed. To survive. And to be loved.

“Trust me, little wasp,” I murmured. “Trust me to take care of you.”

This wasn’t about breaking her. This was like when the knights of old would bend a knee to their king and present their sword as a sign of submission. I didn’t want to break her of her fight; I just wanted her to choose to fight for me.

Goose bumps scattered over her skin as she let out a tremulous exhale. “Scorpius constellations.”

“Tell me why,” I coaxed and circled my finger around the swell of her breast, moving closer and closer to her nipple but never touching it no matter how she tried to arch into it.

It was common knowledge that people were afraid of the unknown. For many, violence and murder and grief and pain were the unknowns that made them shudder. But for some—the unlucky some who were acclimated to hurt and danger and defensiveness—it was tenderness and the risk of trusting that made them wary.

She whimpered, but I wouldn’t give in. Not without her answer.

“The legend,” she started, her voice threaded with something more than desire. “Orion boasted he would kill every animal on earth, and in retaliation, Apollo sent a scorpion to kill him.” She sighed in relief when I thumbed her pierced nipple. “Artemis, who favored Orion, asked Zeus to lift him to the sky, which he did, but Zeus lifted the scorpion, too. Now, Orion hunts the sky every winter night but flees come summer when the scorpion appears— ahh .”

I pinched her nipple, feeling the firmness of her piercing between the softness of her tender skin.

“Tynan…”

I growled.

“Daddy,” she whimpered.

The word unlocked my hand, and it closed over her breast. “And is that what you are? The scorpion who chases men who prey on women?”

I was no mythology scholar, but from what little there was written about the great huntsman, there remained a story of him assaulting a woman.

Her eyes sprung open, the dark orbs crystal clear like the surface of the ocean at night.

“Yes.”

Something flickered in the depths, but it was impossible to fully see it before it was gone.

“There’s more.” I rolled her nipple between my fingers, watching her practically melt into my touch.

Goddamn, she put up all these walls and layers, but as soon as she let me in, she was so fucking warm and soft and supplicant.

“Please, Daddy…”

“What else?” I pinched her nipple hard, savoring the way her gasp bit into the thick air. “You don’t get two scorpion tattoos framing your tits and a giant one inked to the whole of your back for mythology—for legend. Why do you have them?”

Pain etched her features, and it wasn’t from the way I tweaked her nipple. “Please…”

Rage seeded into my blood along with the thought—the suspicion of what I was missing. “Who hurt you?”

She fought to not answer me, her lips twitching with the effort to stay silent even though the rest of her body begged for release.

I tipped closer to her and let my hand slide slowly from her breast down her torso as I rasped low, “Who hurt you, little wasp?”

Her gaze shimmered when it found mine. “Every man I should’ve been able to trust.”

My hand stopped just above her pussy, but before I could say anything else, her next words destroyed me. “Every man except you, Daddy.”

“Fuck…” Air streamed through my lips, and I delved my fingers between her thighs, finding her soaked and her clit swollen and needy. One stroke over the tender bud, and she grabbed my arms for support. “Fuck, you’re so wet for me. So fucking turned on when I make you tell me your secrets. When I make you open up for me.”

Her nails dug into my skin, and I knew there’d be deep marks, if not scabs, in the morning. Good. I wanted her to mark me the same way I marked her.

I dipped my head, my mouth finding a spot close to her ear. “I’m going to taste your secrets from these lips now.”

I pushed one finger into her tight channel, my cock leaking again with how good she felt, and then I removed it, reveling in the way she clung to me.

“Please, Daddy.” Her head tipped up. “Please taste me.”

My jaw pulsed. “Sit on the bed and spread your legs.”

Heat oozed like burning embers in her stare as she went to the bedroom and positioned herself on the edge of the mattress. Without hesitation or question—hell, with the kind of power she seemed to know she held over me—Sutton spread her legs wide, again like a queen demanding I worship at the altar of her cunt.

And I went to her like a fucking slave.

I stood in front of her, my cock straining like I hadn’t just unloaded all over the shower. I cupped her chin, hungry for the blue fire in her stare. I breathed deep, my lungs burning with the sweet scent of her arousal, my mouth watering for a taste, and lowered to my knees.

“Good girl,” I murmured.

Her chin gave a small jerk, freeing me from her stare. I lowered my fingers from her face, following their path down the column of her throat, along the center of her sternum, over the edge of those tattoos, and the firm flat of her stomach until I reached her thighs.

With both hands, I gripped her soft flesh, holding her legs spread so I could look at my fill.

“Fuck,” I groaned, seeing her slick cunt spread in front of me. “That’s a wet fucking pussy you have for me, little wasp.”

And I’d just made it even wetter.

Slowly, I moved my hands higher, watching her expression start to crack under the weight of her want.

“Please,” she whimpered when my fingers reached the crease at the top of her legs.

“Please what?” My teeth were locked so tight it was a miracle my words were comprehensible.

“Please, Daddy.” Her eyes squeezed shut, like her need was a physical wound bleeding its vulnerability everywhere.

A low sound erupted from my chest. “Spread your legs wider. Let me see how much your tiny little cunt is weeping for me.”

Her feet scooted wider, giving my big shoulders a little more room to sink into as I lowered my head between her thighs.

At some point, I stopped breathing oxygen and started living only on the scent of her. Her heady, hot honey soaked not only the folds of her pussy but every breath I took, infusing my lungs with the vulnerability of a woman who should never be mine.

But I was too far gone. Too damned to do anything but enjoy the taste of eternal damnation as I devoured my best friend’s daughter.

My hand at the top of her thigh slid between us to spread her open for me. To bare the swollen berry of her clit to my touch.

“So fucking beautiful.”

I felt her sharp inhale underneath my palm, the frantic thud of her pulse barreling up the sides of her neck against my fingertips.

“Don’t forget I’m not done punishing you yet,” I rasped, a warning for her and a reminder to myself.

And then I set my mouth to her.

She was like a ripe fruit under my lips, split open and full of sweet juice, the skin so tender and bursting at the touch. For minutes, I knew nothing but the taste and feel of her. My mouth mapped every inch of her cunt like I was charting territory now marked as mine.

Like a wild animal, she bucked against me as I tongued her clit. She grabbed the back of my head with one hand, nails scoring my nape as she tried to pull me closer. But this wasn’t a fair fight, and her strength was no match for mine.

So instead, she suffered at the mercy of my mouth. Held prisoner by my hand around her throat and my hold on her waist, I licked and sucked my fill of her sweetness, groaning with pleasure until my own chest started to ache.

Every time she begged, I scored her clit with my teeth, causing her to hiss as her body entered the ether between pleasure and pain.

The ether where I’d resided for days.

Again and again, I drew her closer to pleasure as though I were casting a line and reeling her in only to set her free and start the chase all over.

I did that until she trembled. Until her body glistened with sweat. Until she begged.

“Please, Tynan,” she panted. “Please, Daddy. Please.”

Fuck. I could take a lot of things, but when she begged me like that—with that vulnerability in her voice—it was like a knife to my fucking soul.

And if I heard it again, I’d give her exactly what she wanted…but it wasn’t what she needed.

With a deep growl, I closed my fingers around her clit, the plump bud pulsing between my broad fingertips. And then I set my lips to the strained nub, sucking and pulling until I felt the fight in her—the war inside her finally give over to me.

Her neck slumped into my hold. Her hands clutched the back of my head like a life raft in a storm. Her aching cries grew louder and more desperate, and just when I felt all her limbs tense around me, I pulled my mouth away.

Her gasp was pained, but not as pained as when I released my fingers and let sensations stampede her clit, everything knocking in the door of release that I wasn’t going to open.

“No, Daddy,” she begged, slowly realizing what was happening and stumbling over her words. “Please…I can’t…I need…”

“Tell me the reason for the scorpions, Sutton.”

Murky black-blue eyes found mine through her fugue, desperation bruised with anger. “This is my punishment?” she choked out. “You’re not going to let me come unless I tell you?”

“Your punishment and mine,” I rasped tightly. “You have any idea how badly I want to feel you come on my tongue? To taste your fucking surrender on my lips?” I drew a deep, bone-quaking breath to steady myself and then notched my finger under her chin. “But I won’t settle for half truths and half trust. If you want a release, little wasp, you have to let it all go.”

“And if I don’t?” Even flushed and wanting, she fought it—she fought the safety of trust. Her throat bobbed, those onyx irises piercing me with their brash bravery.

My jaw tensed violently. “If you don’t, then you can finish yourself off. Something I know you’re well capable of,” I growled, the memory of her moans from the bedroom that night rattling around in my head. “I won’t take pieces of you, Sutton. You want me to be your Daddy, you obey me. You want me to take care of you, you trust me. You want me to end your punishment and give you what you want, you tell me the truth about your scorpion.”

Her expression took on a gorgeous fury—the kind of violence used to keep everyone away rather than risk losing them like she’d lost everyone else in her life.

“The truth?” She let out a husky, dangerous laugh and sat tall, her spine uncoiling like the tail of a scorpion about to strike. Our eyes locked, and she reached around my neck, tipping me back as her head lowered to mine. “The truth is that you don’t have to worry about me shooting that man at the house because he wasn’t the first man I’ve killed.”

I stiffened. Part of me was shocked to hear the words, but another part of me, the instinctual part, somehow already knew.

“The man who murdered your mother.” I knew without having to ask. When I’d read the reports on her mother’s death, the details had turned surprisingly sparse when it came to what exactly happened to the man responsible.

“Randy.” Her lip twitched. “He was with the Wah Ching. Started out as her dealer, and when she couldn’t pay for drugs, he took a different kind of compensation.”

The hot thrum of wrath began to infiltrate my veins. “Did he touch you?”

“He tried.” The anger in her eyes was fringed with lunacy. “I came home from Mara’s that day, and he was standing over Mom’s body, cursing at her. I knew she was dead the second I walked in. He regularly got violent with her, but he just gave her more drugs to forget about it.”

I started to lose control of my breath. Ragged inhales. Strained exhales. All my body’s genetic instincts were replaced one by one, word by word, with pure fucking rage.

“He came for me. Grabbing at me. Telling me all the things he was going to do to me—saying it was what he was owed,” she said, releasing a slow exhale. “We struggled. Ended up on the floor with him on top of me. He was bigger. Stronger. He thought one hand around my throat would be enough to hold me. He thought because I went limp it meant I was giving up.”

Motherfucker.

Sutton shivered, her expression completely flat for a second. “He was wrong.” One side of her mouth curved up. “I had a pocket knife on me. I flipped the blade open and stabbed him in the side of the neck as he was undoing his pants.”

Here she was, telling me about a man she’d killed who tried to rape her, and I was the one trembling.

“He was so fucking surprised. Like it never crossed his mind that his small, weak prey could kill him,” she said with a small laugh. “I still remember how wide his eyes went. I remember the warmth of his blood spurting on my fingers.”

“Sutton…”

Her hand tightened on my neck as though to remind me I was the one who’d asked for this—for her whole truth.

“I shoved him off of me. He was gurgling. Sputtering. And then I straddled him.” Her chin notched a little higher. “I pulled my knife from his neck, blood going everywhere, and ripped open his shirt. The last thing he saw in his pathetic life was me carving ‘PIG’ into his chest.”

She stared at me then, her nostrils flaring and the blue in her eyes fringed with what she wanted me to see as lunacy.

“I could’ve stabbed him anywhere to try and get away, but I went for his neck. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to punish him. And I wanted him to leave this world marked as the kind of monster he was.” Her tongue dragged over her lips, and then she drawled softly, “Do you still want to take care of me now?” The catch in her voice belied her bravado. “Because I don’t regret it. I’ll never regret it.”

I growled and framed her face with my hands so there was no questioning what I was about to say.

“What I want is to resurrect that piece of shit so I can kill him again,” I told her, watching the relief that seeped into her gaze.

How fucking long had she believed that what she’d done—what she’d wanted to do—had made her a villain. A criminal. Unworthy.

“But since my skills stop at necromancy, instead, I’ll settle for punishing your little clit.”

Her eyes went wide. “For what?” she gaped. “Killing him?”

“For thinking there was anything you could ever say or do that would make me not want to take care of you.”

Air whooshed from her lips. She was so shocked by my answer, she didn’t have time to stop the tears that glazed over her eyes.

“Tynan—” She broke off with a gasp as my fingers delved into her pussy.

“Tomorrow, you’re going to have a different kind of pain when you sit, little wasp,” I said, stroking her methodically and hearing her breath catch over and over again. “I’m going to make you come so many times, your clit will be so swollen and sensitive that every brush, every pressure, hell, even the air on your bare cunt will make you wince, and remember to never ever question how I will fucking care for you ever again.”

Whatever she was going to say turned into a garbled cry as I covered her sex with my mouth again and showed her no mercy.

My tongue lashed over her clit, my fingers thrusting inside her. She was drenched. Her pussy, like the rest of her, just begging to be taken care of.

“Please, Daddy… please… ” she begged, clutching my head to her and holding on for dear life.

My cock throbbed so fucking hard to be inside her, to be feeling the warm clutch of her tight, desperate cunt rippling on my length. But even though it might’ve shortened my lifespan to do it, I held myself back. Hell, even if I never got another chance to be inside her, I wouldn’t trade it for this moment.

I wouldn’t trade fucking her for the chance to know her—all of her—and show her just how fucking worthy she was.

I could feel the difference in her. I could feel the conscious and unconscious ways her body was no longer reserved—no longer hesitant to give over to me. The way her limbs turned to putty around me and the way she didn’t restrain her cries. She let me carry her to the crest of release on the tide of my tongue.

“Who takes care of you?” I said, my voice so low it was nothing more than a rumble.

“You,” she gasped, grinding against my mouth, desperate for me to bring her over the peak.

“Who?” I growled and took her clit between my teeth, closing my bite tighter and tighter until she detonated. Until she screamed.

“Daddy!”

She came the first time bucking and thrashing against my mouth, her cries turning into pants and then pants into whimpers, and whimpers into cries. But I didn’t let her come down. Not fully.

After her first orgasm, the next ones came easier. Quicker. Like she couldn’t give them to me fast enough now that she knew she was safe with me.

I lost count of how many times she soaked my tongue with her sweetness and only stopped when that last release brought her to the point of soul-quaking sobs. When I finally broke through the last of her armor and found the woman who’d never been given the chance to be vulnerable—who’d never had someone she could completely trust before.

“I’ve got you,” I murmured, drawing myself up and gathering her into my arms.

She was so fragile. So dangerous. So mine.

I shuddered at the thought, refusing to allow myself to linger on it because I knew it would eventually lead to the consequences I wanted to pretend didn’t exist for right now.

“I will always take care of you,” I promised, brushing the hair back where it stuck to her tear-stained face and pressing my lips to her forehead.

I held her like that and slowly rocked us on the edge of the bed until she finally settled. Carefully, I lifted her and then tucked her into my bed, my chest squeezing when she reached for me.

“Tynan,” she said groggily.

“Sleep. I’ll be back in the morning.” I couldn’t stay; my dick wouldn’t survive the night beside her.

Sutton whimpered in protest, but her eyes were already shut, her body succumbing to the demands of sleep.

When it came right down to it, what I wanted didn’t matter. How fucking bad I wanted her didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was her choice. To obey. To submit. To be cared for. To be mine.

And she couldn’t make that choice without knowing what happened to her father…and the role I’d played.