Chapter Twelve
A SOUND JARRED me from sleep, something low and resonant, an animal sound of ferocity. The hair was raised on the back of my neck. My eyes snapped open in the dark. Blackness sharpened into shadows, into waves.
The metal tang of blood came back to me first, its echo still hanging in the air.
Memory hit me with a sudden, sharp ache—of finding Philip when I’d thought I’d never see him again.
He was here now, and he was hurting. The sound he made was an animal cornered, a wolf backed into a canyon crevice, snapping and snarling in his final moments. It was the sound of defeat. It was the sound of a man who would never back down, who would fight to the death.
Right now he was fighting in his sleep, head tossing, hands clenched around nothing.
It was still dark outside, still night.
The bandages I had put over his wounds were no replacement for stitches—and he had already ripped them off the way he was moving. I put a hand on his arm to calm him.
“Philip,” I whispered. “Wake up.”
He tossed again, a guttural sound filling the air. A shiver ran over my skin, and I didn’t know if the neighbors would hear him. Didn’t know if they’d call the floor advisor to check on me. Maybe even the police.
“Philip.” The urgency in my voice was real. “It’s me. Ella.”
I shook his shoulder, hoping I didn’t make his injury worse.
A hand clamped around my wrist. Then I was falling, twisting, landing breathlessly on his chest with an oomph. “Oh God,” I muttered. “Oh no. Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”
Of course he wasn’t okay. My entire body had just fallen on top of him when he had a gaping wound.
“Ella.” The word was grated out, rocks sliding against each other, a rumble in the hard body beneath me. I pressed up, trying to back off him—but his hands held me down. They did more than that. They shifted me, adjusted me so that my legs slung on either side of him.
“Let me go. You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to—” Bleed. He was going to bleed. He was probably already bleeding, dying on my dorm-room bed. My eyes pricked with a surge of emotion. “You need to rest.”
“Like that,” he said so low that it took me a minute to understand. He was hard everywhere—the chest beneath my palms, the hands around my arms. The hips that pushed my legs wide as I straddled him. He was so hard that only when I took a deep breath did I feel the ridge, thick and hot, beneath his slacks.
“Now?” I said, more from shock than refusal. He was losing blood. He was weak from injury.
Except he didn’t feel weak, throbbing beneath me. He felt strong, virile. He felt powerful despite his injury. Or maybe because of it, as if the cut in his skin had broken through his careful, civilized veneer. This was the real man underneath, the one with his large hands on my hips, rocking me against his erection.
There was something animalistic about the way he moved, something instinctive about the way he used me. The cut on his side must have hurt him. It must have been agony. And we didn’t have any painkillers—we only had this, the slide of my body over his cock, the stroke stroke stroke until he groaned with pleasure.
The sound touched something deep inside me, and I twisted my hips to ease the ache. Except the movement, the friction only made it worse. Soon I was moving to the rhythm he gave me.
“Yes,” he whispered, dark satisfaction thick in his voice. “Take what you need, kitten.”
Oh God, the word kitten was like a tongue against my clit. I moaned, a loud sound in the room.
He gave me more. “Yeah, yeah. Fuck yourself with my cock. Make yourself come.”
It was like I had turned to liquid, and I swayed with him, rode with him, just a conduit for his heat. My head fell back, and pleasure turned into sparks behind my closed eyes. I’d had boys kiss me and grope me. I even had one unfortunate incident during the dark times, before Shelly—and Philip—saved me. But through all of that, I’d never felt as controlled as I did now, as under his thumb, not from the strength of his body but the force of his will. He could tell me to do anything in that low, pleased tone: to undress, to suck his cock.
What he told me instead was somehow more humiliating. “I can feel how wet you are,” he said. “Give me more, kitten. Come for me.”
My whole body tightened at his words, my secret muscles clenching around nothing. I could feel him there, stiff and throbbing even through his suit pants and my jeans. I could feel him, and he could feel me, even though we were completely clothed. And the more I pressed against him, the harder it was to resist.
The climax didn’t come in a rush. It came inch by inch, vines wrapping around my ankles and dragging me down, scraping my nails along the ground in a desperate bid for freedom. It came with the breath squeezed out of me, every nerve ending attuned to the darkness beneath me.
And when I hit the bottom, it was a sweet relief. I didn’t have a choice. Couldn’t fight him, fight this.
My body knew who it belonged to, and its master groaned in dark satisfaction.
He was still hard between my legs. He hadn’t climaxed yet, but I had. With a gentle shove he rolled me to his side—barely a foot of space on the bed by his uninjured side. I curled up there instinctively, my mind already hazy, drifting back to sleep.
“That’s good,” he murmured, his voice thick. “You’re perfect.”
Even with my cheek tucked against his chest, I could see the broad plane of him—and the erection that hadn’t subsided, barely contained by the fabric of his slacks. He must have been aching. He must have wanted to come.
I could have helped him. I could have touched him.
I could have taken him out and tasted him.
But I wasn’t that forward. I wouldn’t even have known how to be. A hard teenage facade and brief stint in the Chicago underworld hadn’t change me at my core. I was still the innocent girl, the one who didn’t know how to please people, the one who didn’t really belong. I needed the roughness of his grip, the confidence of his tacit commands to tell me what to do.
His hand stroked my hair slowly, and that command at least was clear. Sleep.
I obeyed.