“Next time I tell you to do something—you do it. Immediately, remember?” Spanking me, he grabbed my waist, and practically threw me on the bed. Crawling with bound wrists wasn’t easy, but I did as he’d asked and moved to the center of the bed.
There was nothing vulnerable about this man. He was there to take and not give anything in return.
“Spread your legs,” Kill ordered.
The bed creaked as he climbed behind me, the heat of his naked thighs warming my backside. I jolted as his fingers dug into my hips, tugging at the yellow G-string.
Slowly, he dragged them down my thighs, letting them imprison my knees on the bedspread. I waited to see if he would tell me to remove them, but he only spanked me again—not hard, but enough to keep me very obedient. The heat on my skin ensured I would jump to his next instruction.
“Wider.”
I opened wider, fighting against the tightness of the panties wrapped around my knees. The degradation of not seeing what he was doing and being kept in the dark as to what he planned made my heart gallop like a feral pony.
He leaned to the side of the bed and with long arms and pulled out a blue wrapper from his bedside table.
I tensed. He was going to take me so soon?
What happened to the passionate man in the changing room? What happened to his fiery touch and insanely possessive kisses?
My tummy clenched at the thought of being used like this.
Kill placed the condom on the mattress beside my knee. His breathing hitched and my head lolled forward as his touch landed between my legs. He stroked my pussy, going from clit to entrance. There was nothing tentative about his fingers. This wasn’t even foreplay—it was a means to an end.
I bit my lip as he stroked me again, dragging his large fingers through my wetness—the wetness he’d conjured when he’d kissed me so damn passionately.
What was this? This impersonal act reeked of self-preservation on his part. He didn’t want me to face him, touch him—give any hint that I had feelings for him other than sexual.
He’s protecting himself.
“Fuck, you’re so ready for me.” I didn’t know if that was awe or disgust in his voice.
My mind was intrigued with what was happening but my heart was revolted. I didn’t sign up to be used like a plaything. I’d agreed to let him connect with me.
Every second that connection faded, until we might’ve been strangers and money was about to exchange hands.
Stop this.
The word echoed in my brain.
You can’t.
My hair stuck to my neck as my body flushed. I had to go through with this. I had to break inside his heart if I had any hope at learning more. Maybe sex was the key.
Deciding to take what this was—a release for both of us and nothing more—I murmured, “I was ready for you the moment you kissed me in the changing room.”
He made a noise in his chest. “Yes, that was a mistake on my part.”
“A mistake?” My voice turned soft. “A kiss can never be a mistake. I loved it.”
He growled low. “I don’t kiss. I have my reasons why.”
The sadness in his tone drove me wild.
Tell me!
He suddenly inserted a finger deep inside me, causing my back to bow and my skin to break out in goose bumps.
Oh God.
There were no butterflies or sparks. His touch was a spear, fast and swift, building need in an instant.
He withdrew, smearing my wetness around my clit, stroking me hard, fast, and with expert precision.
My legs trembled and my arms burned with the awkwardness of staying on all fours. I wanted to collapse from pleasure.
“Have you had sex before?”
I struggled to understand the question while he touched me so exquisitely. I racked my brain, trying hard to remember. Surely, I should remember something like that—something so basic?
You don’t even know your age. How could you know if you’ve had sex when your name and birth date are more important than lovers?
I hung my head. “I don’t know.”
Kill grunted, moving his fingers from my clit and sliding back inside me. The delicious pressure and rocking of his touch unspooled me. I panted, my hips moving on their own accord.
“God—please… more…” The words spilled from my mouth.
Obeying, he added another finger, stretching me with delicious dominance. I cried out as he sank deep and wriggled his digits inside, spreading intensity through my pussy.
My legs tried to scissor together, but he pressed on my lower back, keeping my legs spread and at his mercy. “I don’t think you’re a virgin. You’re tight but two fingers shouldn’t bring you such pleasure.”
I shook my head, gritting my teeth, wishing it didn’t feel so good—not when he was analyzing me as a piece of equipment rather than a woman.
“Please…” I murmured again, not even sure what I was begging for. A hug? A kiss? A kind word?
Kill drove his fingers harder, his voice full of sin. “A few things you should know about me, sweetheart.”
He expected me to listen? When all I could do was feel.
“I’m going to fuck you. I’ll fuck you until I come, and I’ll be grateful for the release. But I will never kiss you, tongue you, stroke you, or snuggle. I don’t want your lips around my cock. I don’t want your arms around my neck. And I certainly don’t want your love.” He brought his fingers up to my clit again, pressing hard and almost cruelly against me.
Sparks erupted; my nipples throbbed.
The pressure was good. Too good. The unhurried but fast pace was mind-blowing; the sensation of being hated, all while being turned on, twisted my moral compass until I couldn’t understand where I stood in this new world.
“Do you agree to those terms?”
I panted, stars popping behind my eyes. An orgasm built from nowhere and I forced my pussy harder into his hand.
He gasped, rubbing hard and fast, his other hand gripping my hip and rubbing his hard cock against the crack of my ass. “Come, sweetheart. I won’t wait for you once I’m inside you. This will be fast—a means to an end. I want to be inside you, but mark my words, this is not making love.”
His touch turned even more brutal, and I had no choice but to propel myself down the slippery slope and leap into the nether, where fireworks, symphonies, and crashing waves of passion ignited between my legs.
“God, oh God… shit!”
My entire body spindled then unraveled in a cataclysmic release. I moaned loudly, collapsing from my elbows and face-planting into the covers.
The vague sound of foil tearing, the angry grunt of Kill as he rolled the condom onto his length, and then the pinching, possessing, consuming pressure of being taken smashed through my senses.
His heat smothered me; the long, thick intrusion of his cock stretched me with no softness or shyness. He took me as if I’d always belonged to him.
The instant he sank inside, he hissed, “Fuck.”
The power of that little word, and the violent reaction he had, set my body aching with the need to release. Again.
Shuddering, his hand squeezed the base of himself as he sank farther and farther. Inch by inch, he sheathed himself until I couldn’t move without feeling him everywhere.
With no warning, he pulled out and slammed back inside me. A ragged grunt exploded from his throat as he drove fast and deep.
My heart burst with feeling. There wasn’t anything sweet about this, but despite his rules of no touching, looking, or any connection whatsoever, he couldn’t stop the sublime way our bodies moved. The perfect synchronicity of pace and pressure.
The second he’d thrust inside, we’d locked together like two out of place beings who found their true home. No words could ever dispel the certainty of that.
I cried out as he drove deeper. “Fuck, you look so good with my cock inside you.”
My stomach flipped and I grasped the sheet to propel
myself backward to meet his speed. “More,” I moaned.
Decorum didn’t exist in the room. Civilization and conversation were moot points as Kill lost himself and fucked me.
There was no way to explain the frantic way he clutched my hips—diving into my wet heat as if he was born to take me. He fucked me as if I would disappear. He fucked me as if he couldn’t stand himself. Self-hatred oozed from him with every perfectly driven thrust.
“Fuck. Why do you have to feel so fucking good?” The curses dripped from his lips.
I relished in anguish, knowing he must feel something and it was killing him to be unfaithful to the memory of his ghost girl.
But he had to move on.
I’ll help you move on.
His fingernails dug into my flesh as he brought me back, slamming against him as he thrust harder and faster.
“Shit,” he gasped. “Goddammit, you feel fucking amazing.”
“Oh, baby, you feel so amazing.”
I smiled with tight lips and stared at the ceiling as I rode out the pain of losing my virginity. I refused to look into his sweet brown eyes.
He pressed butterfly kisses all over my brow. “I’m so happy we’re each other’s first. So special. I’ll always remember you.”
I nodded and kissed him back and moved my hips and moaned as he thrust for a few seconds then came.
I stroked his back and kissed his flushed cheeks and lay silently below him.
All the while I screamed inside. I cried with dry eyes for another.
The flashback came and went, so full of emotion and heartache, I choked on a sob. I couldn’t contain the pain. The boy who’d taken my innocence had been so tender, so kind, so in love with me.
Yet I’d felt endlessly trapped.
He wasn’t him.
But here… with a man I didn’t know driving into me with reckless uncaring, I felt… free.
Free from a past shrouded deep in my brain. Free from wrong decisions. I was unshackled and taken and possessed.
I loved it.
My lips parted as I breathed hard, my knees digging into the covers as Killian rocked viciously. He was the opposite of caring, the polar eclipse of gentle, yet he made my heart spread its atrophied wings and fly.
“Yes,” I moaned. “Don’t stop.”
His hot balls slapped against my clit as he rode me harder and faster than I thought possible.
“Shut up,” he growled, slapping an open palm against my ass. The punishment sent my blood arching to the surface of my skin, making everything blister in intensity.
I wanted more. I wanted to be alive.
“Arthur…” I looked over my shoulder. The image of his tight eyes and pleasure-flushed face sent another clench through my core.
“Shit, you don’t learn.” His large hand came down, clamping around my neck, forcing my face away and my eyes to focus on the plain wall. “My name is not yours to use. Shut the fuck up while I take you.”
Why?
Because you don’t like to be reminded that you’re human? A man who needs companionship?
He groaned in a mixture of guilt and bliss. My stomach twisted and another orgasm sparked as he drove upward, hitting my G-spot.
Not letting go of my neck, he grunted as he thrust again and again. I squirmed beneath his grip to look at him. I wanted to see this animal consuming me.
But his fingers tightened around my nape, pressing my cheek harder into the bed. “Don’t look. Don’t fucking look at me with her eyes.”
My heart broke as his voice cracked. The pain inside, the misery—it was all wrapped up in anger and rage. My eyes fluttered as a throb in my core took me completely by surprise. Yes, he was demanding and stripped me of dignity, but at the same time he’d given me himself to pleasure and please.
The fierce, slightly unstable Arthur Killian became a simple-minded creature. He surrendered to me completely as I wriggled my hips and lavished the feeling of being taken. The heat of his flesh scalded my thighs; the rush of his breath tickled my back.
I wanted him to come. I wanted his release. I wanted to have that power.
He panted in time with his thrusts. His hand on my neck pushed harder, forcing me to take more and more. My eyes watered as he took me to heights I’d never explored.
Suddenly, he bent over me, pressing his body along the length of mine.
I barely had time to suck in a breath when he thrust harder from behind, gliding deep and fast. I was so turned on. Soaking for his violence.
His large hand spanned my hip, while the hand on the back of my neck never stopped gripping me. He half throttled me from behind as he fucked me hard, so damn hard. And ruthless, so damn ruthless.
It was the hardest I’d ever taken—at least I thought it was—but he still held something back. Still didn’t give me his all. I jerked my hips, encouraging him to go deeper. I wanted to come again. I wanted to own his pleasure.
His cock stroked me until my mind filled with sparks. His fingers tightened around my neck and then he came—spurting inside, fucking me into mind-flipping oblivion.
His body jerked as the waves of his orgasm wracked his frame. He groaned long and low, shuddering as the last ripple drained him dry. The moment he finished, he pulled out and rolled away.
I collapsed onto my stomach, bruised, tingling, and struggling with the mixture of emotions squeezing my heart.
Kill bent over me, undid the tie around my wrists in a quick release, and then climbed off the bed.
Nothing was said. Nothing was mentioned.
Silence was absolute. And we both had no courage to break it.
I lay in artificial darkness with an unbearable throbbing between my legs as Kill strode naked from the room and didn’t come back.
Chapter Ten
Happiness was not permitted in my world.
I couldn’t afford to think of softness or weakness or want.
I hurt more than any other time I’d been unfaithful to her memory. Worse than any moment of disgusting sexual need.
I cheated on the woman who owned me. I wanted to howl at the moon, curse the gods, and reap havoc on the earth for what they’d done to us.
I was so damn alone, so fucking broken, so hauntingly lonely.
And I would never find peace until I was with her again.
Death was my one salvation.
But not yet.
I couldn’t join my lover until I’d taken care of a few things.
Carnage.
Payback.
Retribution.
—Kill
“No, you got it wrong again.” He leaned over me and snatched the pencil from my fingers. Turning it upside down, he used the barely there eraser to rub out the equation.
Once my answer had disappeared, he passed me back my pencil. “You need a better eraser. You make more mistakes than anyone I know.”
I pouted, brushing off the eraser shavings from my homework. “You could be a little nicer about it.”
He scoffed. “Nicer? You asked me to be hard on you. How else will you get the grades you want to be a vet?”
I looked into his green eyes. “You don’t have to rub your geniusness in my face, though. I feel stupid next to you.”
His cheeks pinked.
Was this our first fight? My heart rabbited and I felt sick, so sick to think we weren’t as perfect for each other as I’d hoped.
Then he smiled, pulling me into his embrace. “I might have a brain more adapted to numbers than you, but you… One look from you… and I’m the stupidest boy alive.”
I froze. “I make you stupid?”
He kissed me ever so softly. “Crazy stupid. Insanely stupid. Want to know why?”
“Why?” I breathed into his mouth.
“Because when you’re around, I never think with my head, I only think with my heart, and it only knows one thing—how much it adores you.”The sunshine stole me from the wonderful dream, shoving aside teenage crushes and depositing me back into a body th
at burned from sexual overuse.
My muscles creaked and groaned as if I were a derelict house after withstanding a brutal earthquake.
I stretched, wallowing in the sadness of missing a boy I didn’t know was real. I still hadn’t seen him. The dream had been crisp apart from the deliberate fuzziness around his image. My brain seemed to enjoy teasing me with snippets but never giving me the full clue.
Kill had never returned last night and I’d spent the witching hour full of loathing one minute and victory the next. He’d taken me—in that I had power. But he’d left—so I was nothing more than a body to use.
I needed to find a way to obliterate his protective rage and explore what he kept hidden beneath.
But first, I had to do the same to myself. I refused to be blind in a world with so many secrets. It was time for Operation Smash Through Amnesia.
Staring at the white ceiling, I balled my hands. Breathing deep, I said out loud, “What is your name?”
I paused. Waiting for my brain to search through the mess, unlock doors I had no keys to, and deliver an answer. Buttercup was the only thing that came. Even Sagittarius wasn’t strong, as I somehow knew he’d called me Buttercup, too.
“Where do you live?”
I waited.
And waited.
“What’s your best friend’s name?”
Corrine.
My heart rate spiked.
“Corrine.”
Oh my God, I remembered her. Pixie-cut blonde hair, slim, energetic. She’d been studying veterinary science with me at…
I growled in frustration and skipped to my next question. “How old are you?”
You’re three and a half years younger than him. He thought it was too much of a difference. That’s why he refused to take your virginity.
I slapped a hand over my mouth. I willed more to come. Nothing but blankness returned.
The shrill sound of ringing drifted in through the open door. A doorbell? A phone?
Last night, after I’d come alive beneath the man who held my very existence in his hands, I’d welcomed the dawn in an empty bed.
Kill had gone and I’d battled with the urge to follow. I’d wanted to go after him, but managed to stay in bed—his bed. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to chase him, not with how complex his emotions were. I had no right to pry into his heart.