Chapter Twenty-Six
Damon doesn’t exactly agree I can come, but he does change his plans.
Instead of immediately making the two-hour drive from the small airstrip to the asylum, alone, he rides with our entourage to a small bed and breakfast, the kind with quilts thrown over the sofas and a long-haired cat staring at us moodily from the carpeted stairs.
An older woman greets us at the door, her smile fading when she takes us in.
Hiro steps forward. “We spoke on the phone a few minutes ago.”
The woman attempts to recover, but she can’t quite meet anyone’s eyes. “Yes, of course. I’m so glad you called. We have three rooms available. I hope that will be all right.”
“We’ll make it work,” Hiro says, her voice brusque.
“Thank you,” I offer, knowing the woman is a little afraid. Her instincts are telling her that we’re dangerous, and she’s right. We’re just not dangerous to her.
She gives me a faint smile before bustling to an antique desk. “Here are the keys. The family suite has two rooms, one with a king-sized bed and the connecting room with two double beds.”
Hiro accepts the keys with a nod. “The boys and I will take that one.”
“And then there’s the honeymoon suite. It’s got a California king bed.” She smiles in a motherly way. “We call it the Queen of Hearts room. You’ll understand why when you see it.”
Damon gives her his signature smile, which makes her blush. “I’m sure we’ll love it.”
The woman is still smiling when we head up the stairs. And immediately find out why the Honeymoon Suite is called the Queen of Hearts. Because there are hearts stitched into the bedspread. Painted on a canvas against the far wall. Hanging along the edge of the ceiling in little heart-shaped lights. I stare at the room from the open door, somewhat in shock.
From behind me Damon whistles. “Wow.”
“It’s absolutely insane.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a cynic,” Damon says, laughter in his voice.
Something brushes against my legs, and I look down to see the cat winding its way in figure eights through Damon’s legs, leaving white fur on black slacks. “Do you charm every female you meet?”
“Do you solve every math problem you see?”
“Yes.”
I take a step into the room, wondering how I ended up sharing a bed with Damon Scott. There isn’t a little servant’s room available now. Maybe I can bunk with the woman who owns the place, wherever she sleeps. When we pulled into the gravel drive, there’d been nothing around for miles.
Damon follows me inside, nudging the cat out before closing the door, eliciting a plaintive meow.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I mutter, unable to look at him directly.
He laughs softly. “Are you afraid of me, sweetheart?”
“No.” The tremble in my chest calls me a liar.
His body covers my back. His mouth lowers to my ear. “Are you shy? Did you forget what we did? Did you forget that I tasted your pretty pink cunt, that I licked you until you came all over my face?”
My cheeks must be on fire. That’s how they feel. “I didn’t forget,” I say, my voice high-pitched.
“Don’t worry,” he says, his mouth brushing the side of my neck. “I have no plans to touch you tonight. So you can stop shaking. In fact I’m going downstairs.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling faint. Disappointment knots itself in my stomach. It’s more than disappointment. I want him to touch me again. He’s become my addiction, more intensely and more dangerously than numbers ever have been.
“Go to sleep. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”
I turn to face him. “You aren’t going to leave tonight, are you? Promise me.”
He flashes a quick smile. “Would you believe a promise from me? I’m a notorious liar. A criminal. I’m not a good person, sweetheart. You know that best of all.”
“I believe you,” I say solemnly.
He looks away, studying a clock shaped like a heart on the mantel. “I don’t know why I’m even considering letting you come with me.”
In some ways it might be crazy that I want to come, but it feels right. Deep in my bones, it feels more than right. It feels necessary. “Because you believe in me,” I say softly.
“Of course I do,” he says sadly. “It’s not you that’s the problem. It never has been. My father likes tests. He likes mind games. He likes moving people around on his own personal chessboard.”
I try to make my voice light. “So you should definitely bring me. I love tests.”
Dark eyes flash. “And if we get slowed down, if we fail, those soldiers are going to blast the asylum into a pile of rubble. With both of us inside. Understand? They’re the failsafe. I can’t risk him escaping. That’s the one variable that can’t change.”
“Then we’ll have to be quick.”
“God,” he mutters. “You drive me insane.”
The word rings in the air, heavy now that we’re faced with going to an actual asylum. That’s where Jonathan Scott was tortured as a child, part of what made him twisted. Or would he have turned out that way no matter what? He tried to make his son a monster, but he failed. No matter what Damon Scott believes about himself, he’s a good man.
I take a step closer to him. “Then punish me,” I whisper.
Except I know he won’t. He flinches away from the words, which only proves how much he wants that. Dominance and desire vibrate from him, almost tangible in the air. Did that come from his dark past or would Damon have been this way no matter what? People aren’t equations. I thought I was the one who misunderstood, but it’s Damon who thinks people are the sum of their past.
“Go to bed,” he says, his voice harsh.
“Come with me,” I counter, my chin high. Inside I’m terrified, but I know better than to let him see that. “You don’t need to go downstairs. You only wanted to get away from me.”
He makes a growling sound. “Don’t test me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I say softly, because I’m tired of watching Damon deny himself.
Reaching for the hem of my shirt, I pull it over my head. My jeans come off next. And the entire time I’m undressing my gaze doesn’t leave his, trying to convey both threat and warning. Trying to convey the same malice he sends me. I’m going to make him feel good, feel safe, for once in his godforsaken life.
He swallows hard. “Stop. Don’t.”
I have to smile, because even his protests feel half-hearted. The way he’s looking at my body… I know he wants me. He more than wants me. He’s dying for me, eating me up with his eyes.
When his lips part, I know he’s remembering licking me, thinking he’s going to do it again.
Instead I drop to my knees on the hardwood floor, looking up at him in only my bra and my panties. It took heavy courage to get to this point, so maybe that’s why I’m suddenly feeling weak. “You can tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”
“Christ,” he mutters. “You don’t want to do this. Not for me. Not for any man.”
“Why not?” I ask, working the placket of his slacks. Already he’s hard beneath my touch. The backs of my fingers brush his rigid length as I pull down the zipper, making it flex inside.
He speaks between gritted teeth, as if I’m hurting him—and maybe I am. He’s so twisted up, as if pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain. “Because we’re selfish. We’ll use you and hurt you and get so deep inside you just so we can feel good.”
I don’t know if he’s talking about me or him. My darker suspicion is that he’s talking about his father.
With his slacks open, there’s only black briefs cupping his erection. I run my palm over the warm cotton. He sucks in a breath. There’s a sense of power as I stroke him through the fabric. A sense of pride as I make him buck into my hand.
“Don’t deserve it,” he gasps as I mouth him through the briefs. “We don’t fucking—God, sweetheart. I don’t fucking deserve you, and I definitely don’t deserve this.”
He pushes back against the closed door, slamming his fists against it, making the whole wall shudder. It’s a denial, but not for me. For himself. He looks like some kind of dream, his head thrown back, his slacks open to reveal a thick erection. He would be the very picture of masculine sexuality except I don’t think most men are so tormented about it. I don’t think most men fight themselves.
I curl my fingers into the waistband of his briefs, tugging downward. His cock springs forward, even larger once it’s released from its confines. My throat feels thick at the sight of it. The dark head and the smeared wetness at the tip. The vein running along the smooth length.
The scent of him makes me lightheaded—salt and faint sweat. I turn liquid inside. For once my mind falls silent from its calculations and its worry. There’s only his maleness, his beautiful selfishness.
There’s only making him feel good.
Grasping him at the base, I tilt his cock toward me. And press a single kiss to the tip.
He makes a startled sound, like he didn’t expect this. Couldn’t have predicted this. And maybe that’s true. He’s pushed me away so hard and so often that maybe I should have gone. Except for the way his hips push out, reaching for my mouth even as his back presses against the door.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” I whisper again.
His breath shifts. “I’m going to hurt you, sweetheart. Don’t let me hurt you.”
But it doesn’t hurt to slick my tongue over the tip. It doesn’t hurt to wrap my mouth around the thick knob of him, to stretch my jaw to take him deeper. It isn’t quite pleasure either, nothing like when he forced my thighs apart and made me cry out. This is something different, the act of service, the feeling of surrender as I use my body to please his. Selfish, selfish, and how is that a good thing? How is that sexy and alluring? I don’t know the math behind it, but that’s okay. My body understands. It makes me warm and hot at my core. It makes me clench my thighs in helpless anticipation.
I take him into my mouth again and again, using the same rhythm he used on me, feeling it in every throb of my body. A small spurt of saltiness appears on my tongue, slicking the way as he pushes in deeper. “Fuck,” he says. “No. I can’t. I shouldn’t.”
It suddenly seems like the worst kind of tragedy. Not even every scar on his body, as terrible as they are. It’s this, the way he can’t let himself feel pleasure. The way he can’t even undress in a room full of undulating bodies, the way he can’t let one of them touch him.
A sense of urgency overcomes me, and I put my other fist on his cock. They’re both there, holding the part of him that’s too far down for me to reach with my mouth. Even with both hands around him, there’s enough of his cock to fill my mouth. To bump gently against the back of my throat.
My throat convulses, and the sound of my gag fills the room. My eyes water. Humiliation sweeps up my chest, for not being able to do this right, for being so bad at it, but he makes a helpless groan.
He wants that, I realize with a soft exhalation. Those fists against the door. They aren’t about protecting himself from pleasure. They’re about protecting me from pain.
Don’t let me hurt you.
I lean back until he’s not in my mouth, until my lips rest against the silk-smooth tip. And then my hands fall to my side, loose and defenseless.
“Hurt me,” I whisper.
He stares down at me, struggling with himself. With his impulses. His past.
And then he grabs me in a sudden, terrifying rush. He turns me so that it’s my back against to the door. My fists against the wood. Somehow I keep from pushing him away from me, even when he presses his cock to my lips. He probably expects me to do that. He probably would stop if I did.
Instead I open to him, letting him press into my mouth harder and faster and deeper than I ever would have done it myself. He goes far enough that I’m gagging on the very first thrust, the back of my head knocking gently against the door.
One of his hands cups my jaw, holding me steady so that he can pull out and push back in.
There’s no exploration like before, not tasting him or feeling him with my tongue. It happens too fast for that, too forcefully. I can only stare up at him with wide eyes, struggling to breathe.
“Is this what you wanted?” he says, sounding breathless. Sounding angry. “You wanted me to push my cock between your gorgeous, fuckable lips? You want me to make you choke?”
My eyes widen, but there’s no time to protest. No time to do anything but suck in a breath as he pushes in deep enough that it feels like he’s splitting open my throat, stretching tender flesh beyond its boundaries. Blocking the only path to air. My lungs burn, but nothing happens until he decides to pull out again. I’m completely at his mercy.
When he pushes back inside, I brace himself for another hard invasion.
Instead he holds himself in my mouth, enough to make me feel full but still with room to breathe. Still able to move my tongue. And that’s what I do, flicking lightly along the ridge I can feel.
He swears softly. “That’s beautiful. I’m going to take you deeper. Do you think you can take it?”
Deeper? God, I don’t know if I can. The question is a course of electricity through my body. And the answer has to be yes. However it will fit. However it will feel—yes.
All I can do is nod, my lips still stretched around him.
He nods, his eyes intense, a dark sky with flashing lightning. He pushes in again, slowly, inexorably. Breaching a barrier I didn’t know existed. My body revolts against the intrusion, bucking on its own. It doesn’t make him flinch, my fight. He expected it. He accepts it, keeping his cock in my throat even as I convulse around him, reflexes trying to push him out.
My hands are up around my head, pressing back against the door in tight fists. Slowly I unclench them. Even with Damon’s cock in my throat, I make my body relax.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “So beautiful like that. So beautiful, and you’re mine.”
He grasps the base of his cock as he pulls away. With the heavy tip resting on my tongue, he strokes himself hard and fast. Once. Twice. And then he comes in large pulses, thick salt pushing against the back of my tongue, so intense it makes my eyes water. I swallow again and again, but there’s still more of him. The taste of him so deep inside me I’ll never forget it.
I pant against the door as he pulls away and zips back up. I half expect him to walk away from me. To gently set me aside so he can leave like he wanted to do.
Instead he crouches in front of me, his eyes knowing and sympathetic. He slips two fingers into my panties, reaching down until he finds the wet core of me. “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”
And it’s true, I am. He said he would hurt me. My ache is sharp and relentless, only heightened by the calloused fingertips he rubs against my clit.
“Too much,” I say, my hips rocking to get away, to get closer.
He silences me with a kiss, sliding his tongue against mine. He must taste himself in my mouth. I can only taste him as he devours me. As he thrusts two fingers inside me and rubs his thumb against my clit, hard enough that it hurts—and still I don’t want him to stop.
There are starbursts in my eyes as he pushes me over the edge. I gasp into his mouth, hoping he can understand the message of my body—the need and the relief. His touch carries me through a long and airless orgasm as he murmurs, “I know. I’m sorry. It’s over now.”