CHAPTER FOUR
Emery
Did I hear Clarke right?
When I accidentally called him the D word, I expected him to turn away from me with disgust or worse, laugh at me. I should have known better. I should have trusted my heart. Clarke Carroway is perfect for me in every way, just like I always dreamed.
I can barely believe this is reality. Clarke stands shirtless in front of me, his physique something straight out of the Greek mythology books Karen keeps on her shelf, wedged in between the romance novels. He is Zeus. Powerful, observant, mighty. Strong. Behind me, the city he practically owns offers the only light in the room. Twinkling lights that highlight the solid planes of his pectorals, the ridges of his stomach, the twining black hair that grows thicker, before vanishing into his waistband. A waistband that he’s reaching inside of now, his forearm flexing. And oh my God. My God.
When he brings his erection into view, full to bursting in a tight fist, a sob is wrenched out of me, my fingers flying to my nipples. Playing with them in a way I never found necessary before, but I can’t help it. I can’t stop touching my body. It’s coming alive and I’m suddenly on the verge of extinction unless Clarke touches me. Uses me. Makes love to me. The secret place between my legs is pulsing, growing more and more damp. It hurts. Doesn’t want to be empty anymore.
“Please,” I whimper, arching my back and pinching my nipples, hoping to entice him. “Please take the ache away.”
“Jesus,” he groans, licking his lips, his fist traveling up and down the turgid flesh that juts from between his thighs. “You’re a revelation. How have you managed to remain untouched this long?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, how have you reached nineteen without a man taking you for his own? Many must have tried to touch what’s mine before I could find you, Emery. You’re not just smart and sweet, you’re too goddamn beautiful for this earth.”
“Oh. Thank you.” My cheeks feel flush. “I guess that’s why my friend Karen didn’t think I’d be safe on my own in New York. She made me cover my hair every day and wear clothes that didn’t fit. Until this morning, anyway.” I smile. “Today was the first time I’ve worn a dress since…since I can remember.”
“I owe her a great debt,” I say, shaking my head and looking her over, top to bottom. “How will I control myself?”
I open my knees wider on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to.”
Moisture spurts from the top of Clarke’s arousal and drips down his wrist. Before I can throw myself to the floor and lick up every blessed drop, Clarke steps closer, closer, resting his gigantic manhood on my belly. His thumb tugs down my chin, leaving my mouth open for the invasion of his tongue and he tucks it deep, so deep between my lips. Claiming me, stroking our tongues together in a manner that speaks of promises.
Maybe even something more.
By the time he lets me breathe, I’ve created a damp spot on the bedspread. I’m shameless and I don’t have the capacity to care anymore. I can only stare adoringly into the eyes of the man I love to the point of obsession and let him dictate to me. I’m his to command. His. His. His. His. His.
“Did you like that kiss, Emery?”
“Yes.”
His fingers tighten on my chin. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I gasp, a sense of completion crashing down on me. “I love your kisses.”
“Good girl. Now lie back so I can give you the same kiss to your pretty cunt.”
I don’t so much lie back as I do fall, my body having gone boneless. My dreams are coming true, right in the very bed where I’ve imagined them all. If I’ve fantasized so much and so often about Clarke that I’ve disappeared into one of my dreams, I never want to wake up.
One second later, I realize I knew nothing about fantasies. Clarke’s tongue jiggling the nub of flesh between my folds is an explosion of sensation I never could have imagined in all my fevered ideas of sex. Within moments, I’m on the verge of an orgasm, simply from knowing my beloved’s mouth is there. On my female flesh. The place I’ve touched time and time again while thinking of his big body rocking above me. But my climax is beautifully thwarted when he begins to lick every slick fold with harsh growls, tucking his tongue inside me and twisting, twisting, using his thumb on my clitoris at the same time. My hands tear at the comforter and I cry out like an untamed animal, begging and whining and babbling.
His hands slide beneath me and grip the cheeks of my bottom, holding me like a feast of which he’s the only diner. True to his word, he kisses the lips between my legs the same way he kissed my mouth, tilting his head to the right and working his tongue in and out, in and out, until my hips are writhing on the bedclothes and my thighs are shaking violently where he’s rested them on his broad shoulders.
“Daddy!”
My sob of his title makes Clarke pause in his torture—and then he’s looming above me, his roar still echoing in the air. He clasps his hands around my waist and drags me to the center of the bed, his thick sex bobbing between us like a warning. An inevitability.
“Christ. I can’t wait any longer, angel,” he grits out, settling himself between my thighs. “The taste of you has broken me. Open wide and let Daddy give Emery her first fuck.”
I raise my hands up above my head, crossing my wrists together. And I spread my legs as far open as they can go. Just like I’ve always been inside my own mind, I’m his dutiful little girl and I want nothing more in this world than to make Daddy happy. “I’ll take all of you. Every inch, even if it hurts,” I whisper. “I was born to give you pleasure, Daddy. Take it.”
Clarke stares at me in heat and wonder for a beat, before guiding his erection to my untried entrance, his fist unsteady as he positions the bulging head of his sex, sneaking just the tip of it into my hole. “We were born to give each other pleasure, angel,” he says, hoarsely. “And I will. My life is about satisfying you now. But God help me, I’ve waited so long for you.” He sinks a single inch into me and I whimper, my back arching on its own. “I’ve waited years and my body isn’t listening to my heart. Forgive me for what I’m about to do.”
Daddy’s body flattens me on the bed, knocking the wind out of me—and I’m filled in one savage thrust of his hips. My mouth opens to scream against his shoulder and no sound comes out. I’m flooded with rightness, a sense of homecoming, even as pain blooms in my middle. There’s no time to grow accustomed to Clarke’s girth stretching me past capacity, because he’s rutting me into the mattress with great, heaving drives of his body.
It’s the greatest moment of my life.
I’m Clarke’s pleasure vessel. He’s a man of strict discipline and I’ve snapped it. Thoroughly. There is nothing more gratifying than listening to his strangled growls or the groan of the bedframe as he fucks into my womanhood with his long, thick inches. He’s a snarling, possessive beast and I’m the prey he’s been seeking. His open mouth drops to the crook of my neck and he feasts on me, sucking until my skin bruises and dragging his teeth over me in every direction while his hips pump, pump, pump.
“Your taste did this, little girl,” he shouts into my neck. “Daddy was going to be sweet with his angel. But you dripped that virgin juice all over my tongue and made my cock impatient. Knew you’d be so tight for Daddy, and I was right. Just like fucking a soft, little keyhole. And I’m the only one who gets to turn my cock in this cunt and unlock you.” His teeth sink into the curve of my shoulder. “Aren’t I, angel?”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whimper, my view of the ceiling beginning to blur as a climax races closer. Desperate to feel the floor of his satisfaction inside me first, I work my hips to meet his bone-shaking thrusts. “No one else will ever touch me. Just you.”
“Fuck touching you. I’ll kill anyone who looks.” I only have a second to revel in his words when Clarke reaches between us and begins to circle my clit with his thumb. “Jesus Christ. You’re tightening up even more. Daddy can’t hold on to his come when you’re strangling his cock, little girl.” His hips increase their pace and his jaw goes slack, his moan mingling with the sound of his sex smacking into mine. “God, Emery. Your pussy is begging for a load. My little girl is good and fertile, isn’t she? I’m a lucky man.”
I can barely speak around the pressure in my throat, in my middle—everywhere. I’m lost in the grind of our bodies and the bad words he says into the darkness. If what we’re doing is bad, that’s what I am. I’m a bad, bad girl and I want my Daddy to get me pregnant. “Fill me up, Daddy. I want everyone to know I’m yours.”
Clarke’s mouth lands on mine and our lips begin a frantic dance of teeth and tongues. They’re mating as much as our lower bodies are. Hot breath, moisture, grunting, moaning. A quickening begins in my belly and I cry out, undulating beneath the unstoppable force of Clarke’s pounding body. His teeth snap at my lips when I start to orgasm and he plunges in his tongue deep, so deep, as if to absorb my climax in every way possible. My sex shakes and squeezes around his thrusting manhood, slicking the pathway for an extra-violent drive—
“Emery. My angel. Goddamn it, the taste of you. The tight, little suck of your pussy is driving me insane.” He shakes the bed with another ramming blow of his body into mine and I feel the hot rapids of his seed spew forth inside of me. My body is only capable of accepting a fraction of what he drains from his loins into mine, and the excess goes creaming down my thighs, splattering onto the comforter—and still he bellows into the opulent bedroom, shaking the chandelier that hangs above us, pumping his powerful hips in uneven movements, before eventually collapsing on top of me, big body shuddering with the power of what we’ve done.
I’m shaking, too, trying to breathe around the weight of Clarke on top of me. Not that I want him to move. I would rather suffocate than lose the perfect, glorious weight of Clarke on top of me, but I swallow my protests as he rolls to one side, gathering me against him and crooning words of praise into my hair.
“Angel. My angel, are you okay?” He crushes me to his chest. “The only thing stopping me from losing my mind is knowing I gave you pleasure. Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
I find Clarke’s eyes with mine and let him see the full scope of my happiness. This incredible man just made love to me and it was so much more than I ever could have dreamed. My heart won’t stay still in my chest, alternating between my throat and simply bouncing around like an overinflated ball. “You didn’t hurt me. I’ve never been happier,” I murmur, laying a soft kiss on his lips. “And I’ll never feel this way about another man. Not as long as I live, Clarke. I promise.”
“Thank God, angel. Thank God.” Clarke searches my eyes, his hands running over my body as if he can’t believe I’m still there. He gives me several long, thorough kisses before leaving the bed and returning with a washcloth to clean the red stickiness from my thighs. The visible proof of my virginity has an effect on his body, his erection rising swiftly, pupils dilating and crowding out the irises of his eyes. But he shakes his head firmly when I give him a questioning look. “I’ve been enough of an animal for one night,” he rasps, lying down on the bed beside me and tucking me into the warmth of his chest. His thumb rubs circles into the base of my neck and meanders down my spine, massaging every inch of me.
“I feel like I’ve known you for a million years,” he says, pulling me close. “I’m going to give you everything, angel. I’m going to give you all of…me, too. Everything inside me. If you want it.”
My smile fades, my pulse thudding dully in my temples. “Of course I want it,” I say. “Of course I do.”
But as Clarke falls into a deep sleep behind me, all I can think about is how I’ve duped him. He’s ready to trust me, give me everything—but he doesn’t know the real me. I’ve lied. I’m a fraud. Oh God, I don’t deserve him. And I’m not just talking about Clarke Carroway, the superhero I’ve been worshipping from afar. I’ve fallen in love with the real him, too. The man behind the appealing exterior. I can’t hurt the man who holds me like a treasure. I can’t.
Moreover, I don’t think I’ll survive his hurt and disappointment when he finds out I’ve been violating his privacy for years. Not to mention papering my room with his face and talking to his image like it was the real thing. He’ll think I’m crazy.
He won’t feel the same about me once he finds out.
If I leave now, at least I’ll have this one perfect night to keep me warm for the rest of my life. Living without Clarke will be agonizing now that I really know him. But I don’t see another way. I don’t see how this can last when him finding out the truth about me is inevitable.
With tears clogging my throat, I slip out from beneath his arm and dress silently in the dark. And I walk out of the life of my dreams, clinging to the one perfect night I was given.