Page 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sutton

“ W hat the hell do you think you’re doing?” The door banging against the wall punctuated his angry question.

I turned my head slowly. I didn’t need the pounding footsteps, nor the thud of the door, nor his deadly tone to warn me of his presence. The hot, sparking fuse that chewed its way down my spine was more than enough warning of the ache about to blow through me.

I still wanted him. No, not wanted. Hungered—starved. I was starved for him. For his touch. For the sound of his voice. For the heat of his nearness. For the comfort of his control. And I hated him for it. I hated him for making me want him so viciously, only to confess that he felt responsible for my father’s death—a responsibility that carried over to me.

So, I ignored him. Avoided him. Spent my days in the gym or cleaning bikes in the garage like Mr. Miyagi was my spirit animal. Spent my night listing out all the reasons I shouldn’t—didn’t care.

But apparently, I didn’t hate him enough to stop wanting him. I didn’t hate him enough to move to a different cabin or not think of him when I climbed into his bed each night. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that the only person I could trust to care about me was myself, every time I put my fingers between my thighs, my touch fell flat. There was no heat. No buzz. No him.

Even when I imagined him. His hands on me. His mouth between my thighs. The promise of release he’d spelled out with his tongue—there was nothing but ache for the real thing.

Which was why Creed’s information on Mara’s whereabouts couldn’t be more welcome. The sooner we found her and she was safe, the sooner I could leave here and pretend like Tynan Bates had been nothing more than that white knight for a six-year-old princess.

My nails bit into the skin of my palm as I turned slowly to face him. My chest squeezed. This was why I avoided him. The steady heat of his eyes, the firm set of his mouth—it made me want to let go of everything and run to him. To claim each and every promise he’d made. To choose to be his.

But to fall for someone who made those promises out of guilt…

I lifted my chin slightly and willed my voice to stay stable as I said blandly, “Getting ready for bed and then going to sleep so I can be rested for tomorrow.”

Bullshit .

I hadn’t been rested for days. A week. Over a week. Not since Tynan had taken a knife for me had I been able to sleep soundly. I guess a man completely upending my entire belief system around men…and then still breaking me…could do that.

“Because you intend to go with us,” he said without question, his hand flexing at his side.

Of course, he knew—was going to have to know. I was just hoping the realization could hold off until tomorrow morning when everyone else was around.

“She’s my friend. This is my fight. Of course, I’m going,” I said and turned away, striding into the bedroom because I couldn’t bear the way he looked at me a second longer—like by going, I was risking his most precious possession.

His penance, I reminded myself.

I pulled the tie from my hair, combing the wet waves free with my fingers, when I heard the door slam again, a pang echoing in my chest.

Good. It was better that he left—better if he thought he could convince Rob to not let me go with them rather than trying to argue with me.

I hooked my thumbs under the waist of my leggings and shoved them down, the cool air hitting my bare legs just as I heard his thundering footsteps come close.

He hadn’t left.

My heart thudded, and I straightened just when his big body filled the doorway to the bedroom.

He stilled, his gaze dropping down on me like a hot anchor, making my skin pebble with goose bumps and my nipples harden against my shirt.

I might be his penance, but my body willingly played the part of his prey.

“Was there something else you needed?” I kicked off my leggings, the fabric landing on top of my duffel bag.

His eyes followed the movement and then flashed with fury. “What’s that?”

I couldn’t stop the way I stiffened. I didn’t want to rehash this conversation, especially when it was for no other reason than to assuage his tormented guilt.

“My bag?” I cocked my hip and arched my eyebrow. “If you don’t remember it, maybe Dr. Nilsen should come check you for a head injury…or early onset dementia.”

Tynan moved so fast I swore he stopped the air from going into my lungs, the effect making my breath catch as he yanked my bag from the floor.

“I know what it is. Why the hell is it still packed?” he demanded, holding it up in front of me.

“Because—hey!” I tried to snatch it back, but he lifted it out of my reach and then stalked to the closet on the other side of the room.

I followed, grabbing at his arms and then pounding my fist into his back as he barricaded himself in front of the drawer and started dumping my things into it. “That’s my stuff. You can’t just take it?—”

“Watch me.” He shook out the last of the clothes, my copy of The Art of War landing with a thud on top of it all, and then tossed the bag onto the floor.

“I’m not staying here,” I charged, ignoring the tightness in my chest as he whipped around. “As soon as we find Mara, I’m gone.”

He jerked like I’d struck him. Not like a slap across the face but like a sling shotted stone, the most basic weapon taking down the towering giant.

Like the idea of my leaving was all it took to make him crumble.

His shoulders lowered, his breath coming harder and heavier as he faced me fully, pain marring the gorgeous lines of his face.

“Dammit, Sutton.” He let out a groan that took me right back to when Dr. Nilsen was cleaning his wound, the sound nothing short of pure, unadulterated agony. “I’m sorry about your father, Sutton. I’m sorry that it’s my fault he’s gone?—”

“Bullshit,” I choked out, backpedaling because I didn’t want to be swallowed up in his diatribe of guilt.

Tynan jerked. “What do you mean, bullshit?”

I stopped and gaped. Was he being purposely obtuse? Was he purposely trying to screw with me? But the longer I stared, the more I realized he wasn’t.

“I mean that it’s not your fucking fault my dad decided to play hero. It’s who he was—who he’d always been.” My head tipped. For a man who’d, without question, known Jon Brant far better than me, I couldn’t fathom why he was looking at me like this was new news. “I mean, you obviously can continue to blame yourself if you want, but I don’t. And I definitely won’t stick around to be your path to salvation.”

A dark cloud started to form over Tynan’s face, and like before, he seemed to move with inhuman speed as he stepped toward me and locked a hand around the side of my neck, my ragged pulse confessing my anticipation to the meat of his palm.

“What did you just say?” His thumb pushed under my chin, forcing my head higher.

My breath caught, and the air in the entire room seemed to shift.

“I said I’m not here to be your penance. You want to guilt yourself over the death of a man who couldn’t control his hero complex? That’s your decision. But I’m not going to stick around and be the checkmate in your redemption plan.”

He stared at me, his pupils blown out, his nostrils flared, but it was the twitch of his tight mouth that made me feel like I’d just poked the beast.

“Is that what you think?” he demanded low, his stare piercing the very depths of my soul. “That everything I’ve done…everything I offered…everything I want…is out of guilt?”

“I’m not a child,” I snapped back, hating the emotion that bubbled into my voice. I wanted to fight him. Rage at him. Make him hurt like I hurt. But he’d opened up something inside me that I hadn’t quite managed to close. So instead, all I could muster was the edge of bitterness to my tone. “I didn’t need it spelled out for me in the car that you blame yourself for my dad’s death and everything that happened after. And now, you just want me here—want to take care of me as some kind of attempt to ease your conscience?—”

I cried out as he spun us, his grip like a guiding vise around my neck, hauling me toward the bed and then pulling me down over his lap.

As much as I wanted to focus on what was happening to me—my body suddenly prone over his thighs in a position that only promised one thing—all I could focus on was him.

The deep, audible breaths that sounded torn from his lungs. The subtle vibration of even the smallest muscles in his fingers where they held the back of my neck and his other hand rested on my lower back. The steel of his thighs supporting my chest and hips. And the length of his cock, growing thicker and longer against my ribcage.

“Let me go.”

He ignored me. “You think I want to take care of you…out of guilt?”

Why did he sound so offended by the idea? So enraged? He was the one who said he blamed himself. He was the one who looked so fucking remorseful—so fucking broken—I’d almost been tempted to sacrifice myself on the altar of his retribution.

And that was what I hated most.

That in such a short amount of time, he’d made me feel so much…made me want so much with him, that I’d considered becoming his prey.

“You’re the one who said it?—”

Smack.

The first slap on my ass was so fucking shocking and so fucking hard, I screamed and then gasped for air. No. I felt the pressure welling in my chest. The pain, his control, the safety of his body—it started the freight train of submission rolling through me. Heavy, powerful, and picking up speed.

I gathered the surge and tried to redirect it toward anger rather than ache. Rather than anticipation.

“What the hell?—”

Smack.

I stiffened and let out a yelp this time.

“You think wanting you…the way I do…eases my guilt?” he said in a low, ragged tone, his palm rubbing a slow circle on my burning skin.

But it was his question that stung me. His question that oozed doubt into my veins like a solvent against my surety.

“You think wanting to spank his daughter until she screams and then fuck her until she cries is the way to ease a conscience?”

Oh. God.

Smack.

I’d been so struck by the pain on his face—so sure that the pain when he looked at me was because I was his guilt’s last resort, and now, I saw it for what it was.

I wasn’t the thing that would make his pain better. I was the thing he wanted so badly, he’d risk, in his mind, desecrating Dad’s memory and destroying any shot at forgiveness in order to have me.

“No—”

Smack.

I cried out again, my chest heaving into his thigh.

“You think getting so fucking turned on I can’t think straight when his daughter calls me Daddy is the way to ease my guilt for my part in his death?”

I didn’t even try to answer this time, my mouth only opened in anticipation of the cry that released when his palm landed hard on my burning ass.

“You think it eases my conscience that I imagine my cock filling each and every one of your hot, tight holes every minute of the day?”

Smack.

Every blow of his hand was like another wall knocked down, and before long, it wasn’t the hot sting on my skin I felt, but a burning path of tears that streaked down my face.

“Do you think forgiveness would be on your dad’s mind if he knew how fucking bad I wanted to fuck you? How fucking bad I needed to possess you?”

Smack.

I let out a sob then, hearing just how tortured he sounded—knowing that was the final blow.

“I’m s-sorry,” I whimpered. “I was wrong.”

My ass was on fire. My core, turned on by the brutal confession, clenched so painfully I found it hard to breathe.

“You were wrong, my little wasp,” he croaked, his palm moving tenderly over my brutalized flesh. “You were so fucking wrong.”

And if his words weren’t honest enough about how badly he wanted me for himself, the thick length of his cock where it pulsed into my stomach was. I wasn’t the only one hurting—aching right now. And with his piercings, it didn’t take much to imagine just how painful this was for him, too.

I shuddered. “I’m sorry.” The words were so soft, once I’d spoken them, I questioned whether I’d said them at all.

Tynan’s ragged groan made me shiver. “Are you wet from this, little wasp? Wet from hearing what a terrible fucking friend I am for wanting you?”

I whimpered and nodded against his leg.

His fingers dipped between my thighs—not on my underwear or my pussy that throbbed with the same beat as the flesh of my ass—but along the inner top of my thighs, sliding along where my desire coated the skin.

“Fucking drenched for me.”

For seconds that felt like they spanned centuries, his fingers skated along the slickness, close but never touching my sex. It wasn’t so much hesitation I felt from him, but a sense that he was slowly pushing the final nail into the coffin of his guilt.

His fingertips dipped close again, drawing a thick streak of wet onto the back of my thigh with a low groan. “Is this from me punishing you…or hearing how the simple act of wanting you is punishment for me?”

A shiver spilled down the length of my spine, the whole of me ready to dissolve into nothing if he didn’t touch me, but somehow, I managed to breathe out a single word. An answer. A plea.

“Both.”

My teeth captured my bottom lip, biting harder and harder as his fingers swirled then along the back of my thigh, the bottom curve of my ass, the seam of my sore cheeks all the way to where my thong rested at the top?—

Snap.

I gasped, my body thinking for a moment he’d smacked me again, but it was only my underwear that suffered the brunt of his brutality, the string ripped at the seam. And then they were gone, the air hitting my bared, slick center as his big fingers skated up the back of my thigh once more.

“I want you,” I breathed out, desperation driving the words from my lips before his hand got close enough to tease me. To torture me. I couldn’t bear it anymore. Not after days of convincing myself of something that couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I can smell it. I can smell how fucking soaked you are for me.” The raw need in his voice was mirrored by the firm drag of two fingers along my slit. “Fucking drenched.”

I jerked, pleasure igniting on the accelerant of pain he’d just levied on my ass.

“I want you, little wasp, in spite of my guilt,” Tynan groaned, and he pushed his long middle finger inside me. “I want to take care of you, in spite of my conscience.”

My eyes rolled back, the whole of my body suddenly seeming to be held together by his one finger. His one single, long, thick finger.

“Tynan…” I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t think—couldn’t do anything but want this man.

He started to stroke me, and coherent thought crumbled.

“It’s not retribution I’m going to find in your sweet cunt but eternal damnation.”

Oh god.

I whimpered and shook as he pushed another finger inside me, savoring the stretch and then gasping as he worked them in slow, purposeful strokes against my front wall and that tight bundle of nerves buried there. And my body, which had me convinced all week that it had gone numb, suddenly came back to life with the furious, gnawing hunger for release.

With every stroke, my body churned for more. It raced for what it had been denied, panicked that it would be left bereft again. I knew better. I knew he wasn’t letting me go this time, and I wished I could convince it to savor his touch. To slow down. To not ravage me from the inside out.

I let out a strangled cry, his fingers working a kind of dark magic inside my sex.

“Did you hate me enough to get yourself off these last few nights?” he ground out. “Did you curse my name even as it made you come?”

My heart beat erratically against his thigh. “No,” I choked out, having nothing left to obscure the truth. “I couldn’t…”

He didn’t bother to hide his relief, nor could he hide how my answer made him even harder. And my reward was another delicious drag of his fingers over my G-spot.

“Because you wanted me to take care of you?” His voice trembled.

“Yes,” I panted, feeling another rush of heat leak onto his fingers.

“Because you wanted to come all over Daddy’s cock?”

I sobbed. I couldn’t control it. I wanted him so bad—ached for him so bad and had worked so hard to convince myself I’d never had him that now, all my weapons tumbled to the ground, revealing that they were nothing more than the broken pieces of my heart.

“Yes,” I choked out and tried to push myself harder onto his fingers. “Yes, Daddy. Please.”

“Fuck,” Tynan groaned, and then the twist of his fingers was gone.

I wanted to cry out at the loss, but before I could, I felt myself lifted, easily—carefully—into his arms and then set on my knees on the bed. At first, I faced him, his hand cupping my face and holding my forehead to his, a potent dose of tenderness amid the swirling lust.

“Forgive me,” Tynan begged low, his voice hoarse, his warm breath teasing my lips. “Forgive me for not saving him…and for forgive me for trying and failing to feel guilty for the way I need you.”

A small cry tore from my chest, and then I started to shake my head, my strung-up body unable to contain the surge of emotions.

“Never be sorry for that,” I told him thickly, tears welling hotly in the corners of my eyes. “Never.”

“Sutton…”

“Please, Daddy,” I begged, tipping my face forward, my lips in search of his. “I want you to take care of me. I need you to take care of me. I need you…please…”

The sound he made was like the heavens inside him had torn in two, and then his mouth crushed to mine. His tongue was brutal in the way it claimed the entirety of my mouth as though he wanted to make me swear to those words in blood. But it wasn’t blood I tasted but tears. The healing salt of relief and desperation thrown on the fires of lust.

“You’re mine now, little wasp,” he rumbled, his lips burning a path along my cheek to my ear. His hand curled in my wet hair, tipping my head back to add, “ Mine.”

And then he spun me—manhandled me—so I was in front of him with my back to his chest. The steady rise and fall of the solid heat of him was almost as impressive as the hard length that pushed against my ass.

“Bend forward,” he ordered, releasing my hair to put his palm firmly on my back, guiding me to comply. “I want you on your knees for me, little wasp. Your red ass gleaming as your tight cunt takes my big, pierced cock.”

Some kind of sound ended up strangled in the center of my throat as I slid one knee and then the other onto the mattress and then bent forward onto my elbows, my heart racing as I offered him a spread view of everything he wanted.

“Fuck.” He breathed out the curse, but when I felt his hands pull away, I turned my head, my eyes finding him behind me just as he pulled his shirt over his head.

Once again, I was struck speechless by the breadth of his chest. The stack and swell of muscles that had been strengthened for an entire lifetime before I even came into the world. The small but unmistakable numbers printed into his skin, a mark of duty to the friends he’d lost that would never leave him.

And then there was the red, puckered flesh slowly molting into a scar on his side. My mark. Jagged and rough and not neat at all yet.

His belt came next, and I didn’t miss the way he stared at my ass as the leather threaded through his fingers, itching to leave its lash on my skin.

But it was the pop and peel of his zipper that did him in. The feel of freedom for his cock that made his eyes grow hooded and the veins on the side of his neck gallop with their own beat.

And for me, I was panting by the time he lowered his jeans and underwear. The length of him hung heavy, the metal studs winking in the light.

I groaned and blurted out, “I have an IUD,” when I saw his eyes flick to his nightstand.

Those hot, dark eyes snapped to me.

My jaw went slack, watching him move back behind me as long as I could until the only view I had was along my trembling stomach and between my spread thighs.

I arched my back higher, greedy for the sight of his big cock hanging between them.

“You want me bare inside you, little wasp?”

I’d long ago decided that I’d never view sex or sexuality as a weakness, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a few weeks ago, the idea of being in this position for a man—of wanting to be on my knees and spread wide on display for him—would’ve been something I would’ve considered a vulnerability.

But now here with him, hearing the ragged exhale of his breath and seeing the desperation of his grip as it closed around his naked cock, I felt nothing short of absolute power.

“Yes,” I whimpered as he placed his other hand on my sore ass, his fingers sliding down to

“I’ve never been bare inside anyone before,” he rumbled low, and I choked first on the thought and then on the feeling of his blunt head pressing to my entrance.

“Please, Daddy,” I begged, feeling another tear leak down my cheek as I tried to rock back onto him.

His hand on my ass tightened, the pressure on the sore flesh enough to make me wince.

“Stay still for me,” he ordered. “You’re too tight, and I’m too fucking hard. I have to go slow.” As if to convince me, he pushed inside me, the warm bloom of pressure spreading out from my core. “That’s it, my little wasp. Take me slow so I don’t rip apart your perfect cunt.”

I didn’t know how I was still breathing—if I was still breathing. His words overwhelmed me just as much as the feel of him entering me did.

I didn’t get a chance to wonder what to expect with his piercings before I felt the first metal stud slip inside me, hot and hard in a completely different way than his cock.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he growled, and before he could stop himself, I felt his hips jerk and the second bar stretch inside me.

I gasped, pleasure and pain rioting in my core.

“Shit,” he grunted. “You’ve got to relax for me, little wasp, or I won’t fit.”

I whimpered, unsure how to relax. There was no room to relax. He was too big to relax.

“Rub your clit.”

My hand moved soundlessly to where we were joined, finding the swollen bud so sensitive at the first brush. With just a few strokes, pleasure oozed over me in waves of warm tingles.

“That’s it,” he cooed. “Good girl.”

His praise had my body melting even further, enough that the pressure built again as he pushed deeper.

“How many bars was that, little wasp?” he ground out. “Count them for me if you want them all.”

My mouth worked open and shut for a second before it formed the answer that I immediately second-guessed. “Three.”

Was it only three? Was it possible it was only three?

“Good girl.” His praise made me exhale in relief. My reward—another inch and another bar pushed inside me, and I stiffened. “Fuck, you’re so tight.” He breathed like he was in pain, too. “Don’t stop rubbing.”

My hand jolted back into action, swirling around my clit with a frantic kind of rhythm.

“How many?”

“Four.” I was sure this time. Breathless but sure.

“Four…”

“Four, Daddy.” My voice cracked.

“God,” he groaned low. “You have no fuckin’ idea how perfect you look taking Daddy’s fat cock. How good your sweet little cunt looks all wet and swollen around me.”

The pleasure running through me suddenly surged, like into a storm. The pain from the pressure was either gone or I just no longer cared because the sound of him losing control made me lose mine.

I felt my core start to clench, my muscles greedy for more as they worked me even wetter.

“Fuck, little wasp.” He sounded destroyed. “You’re practically pulling me into you.”

I let out a cry. “Yes, Daddy.”

With a fractured groan, he pushed forward and bottomed out inside me. For a single, blissful second, I felt nothing but the extreme fullness of him inside me. The kiss of his cock against my womb. The indent of his piercings into my muscles. The hard heat of his length stretching me to the brink.

“Six,” I breathed out, a small, victorious smile tugging the corner of my lips.

Air whooshed from his lungs, his voice then sounding like he was in more discomfort than I was.

“All six,” he rumbled, and I felt his torso tip forward. “All of me.” And then his lips pressed a kiss to the middle of my back, the brand just as searing as if his mouth had touched the deepest part of my soul.

“Please, Daddy.” I shuddered, my fingers still toying with my clit that seemed stubbornly waiting for his cock to move before allowing me to climb any higher.

“I’ll take care of you,” he promised low as he straightened, his hands finding purchase on the side of my hips. “I’m going to fuck you now until you’re coming all over my cock, little wasp,” he ground out. “And then Daddy’s going to come onto your beautiful back—onto your scorpion—because all of you is mine now. Your beauty and your beast.”

At any other moment, his words alone would’ve torn me asunder, but the strength of them was toppled by the power of his actions. He drew back and then tunneled his cock in again.

“Yes,” I cried. I begged. I touched myself and arched into his thrusts, mindless for more of whatever he would give me. “Please, yes.”

“You’re mine now,” he growled through tight teeth, his hands having to tighten—to bruise my skin to hold me steady against his drives.

“Yes,” I sobbed, my arms and legs straining and clawing at the tension that barricaded the torrent of pleasure from taking me under.

He cursed and drove harder into me, my tight heat spreading and clenching each time he filled me, welcoming the strain on my muscles—welcoming the sensations of his piercings as they played the front wall of my pussy like an erogenous instrument.

“Who do you belong to?” he demanded, shunting faster like he knew my release was coming.

“You, Daddy.” My voice was a broken mess of want and submission. Tears streaked my face, and I didn’t even care that I was a sobbing mess underneath him, a puppet to the pleasure he wrecked between my thighs.

“Who?”

“You.” I gasped as the intensity built, chasing my release like a hunter.

“Who?”

“You.” Each you drove him faster. Harder. Deeper. And whipped me over the edge of release.

I came. And for once, I was both the hunter and the prey. I screamed so loud it felt like my lungs had worked into my throat, my body shaking and convulsing and ultimately failing under the wave of pleasure that went through me.

Tynan’s curses wrapped around me, as tight as his arm that slung under my waist to hold me up so he could continue to shunt into me.

He weathered the storm of my orgasm for two deep thrusts before he pulled out of my still-fracturing body, and my body flattened into the cloud-like softness of the bed.

My pussy continued to spasm as I listened to his low grunts. The slick sound of fist over flesh as he worked his cum-soaked cock to release. And then he let out a savage shout, and I felt the warm splash of his orgasm hit the bare skin of my back.

“Fuck, little wasp,” he groaned low, painting thick ropes of his cum like a different, more indelible tattoo all over my scorpion.

I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, him standing over my body that was ravaged from pleasure, his own pleasure soaking into my skin.

“Beautiful,” he muttered hoarsely, and I felt his finger take a leisurely drag through his cum and trace it to every corner of the design, from the claws at the edge of my ass to the stinger. “Don’t move.”

I didn’t even have the strength to tell him I couldn’t, but that didn’t matter because I didn’t want to.

My eyes blinked slowly, catching disjointed images of him in the bathroom, running water onto a cloth, grabbing lotion. And then he was behind me again, taking care of me.

With painstaking tenderness, he cleaned my back and the tender juncture of my thighs. Then he lotioned the sore skin of my ass, making sure every possible hurt has some kind of balm. And only when I felt the fresh prick of tears in my eyes at how gentle and careful he was did he step back to clean himself.

I didn’t want to look as affected as I was. I didn’t want him or even myself to think that sex had the power to completely unravel me. So, on wobbly arms, I tried to push myself up from the bed and gain my bearings.

“I said don’t move.” His low growl rumbled close just before I was weightless and in his arms.

I couldn’t help but sag into his chest—into his hold as he tucked us both into the bed.

“You’re mine, little wasp,” he rasped and pressed his lips to my forehead. “All mine.”

I shuddered, feeling the quake all the way in my bones. He risked atonement to be with me, and I risked being unbreakable to be with him. We’d both risked what had been most important to us for this…for each other. And strangely enough, it hadn’t felt like a risk at all.

“Yes,” came my soft mumble as I snuggled deeper into the warmth of his chest.

I was all his. There was no question. But I was also still…me.

And as sleep quickly claimed me, it was as I wondered what that would mean come tomorrow morning when I still planned on going with them to find my friend.