Chapter Seven
Erin turned in Blake’s arms. She knew they had things to discuss. Important things, like whatever doubts she still harbored that had let Bel mess with her head. They needed to talk about them and deal with them… but right now she didn’t have the strength for that. She’d used all she had standing up for herself and holding her head up high in the few minutes it took them to leave the house. And Blake’s arms felt too good—warm and strong and secure. Like she could let go and be completely safe.
And so that was all she wanted to do, let go in the most carnal way, to pant and rock and fuck until she’d lost all thought, until her body was a mindless mass of pleasure.
Blake’s eyes were dark with concern. “Are you sure—”
She silenced him with a hand on his cock. He was already hard as steel in his jeans. She rubbed the taut denim, savoring his rough groan. “Are you?” she asked.
She didn’t mean sex. She meant sure about them. About their marriage. She meant all the deep things she hadn’t wanted to discuss yet.
He grunted and closed his eyes. “Fuck yes.”
He might have meant sex or he might have meant everything. It didn’t matter. Right answer.
She made quick work of his jeans, unzipping them and shoving them down his hips. His cock sprang out, thick and heavy in her hands. “Someone might see,” he warned.
“Let them.” She wanted them to see, the whole city watching. She wanted everyone to know that Blake Morris was hers. And most of all, she needed to show herself it was still true.
He groaned, leaning down for a kiss. It was blunt, that kiss. A little messy. She loved the way he was with her—raw and unchecked. Except he wasn’t really unchecked. Even now, as carnal as he was, he held something back. She’d always assumed it had to do with him. With his time in the army or his perception of himself as a monster.
But a new thought occurred to her, especially after the events of the day, after the careful and cruel incision into her fears. What if he held back because of her. Because he didn’t know if she could handle him.
There was a time she would have scoffed at the idea. Of course she could handle anything he did to her body, her mind. She craved it. But now, feeling stripped down and abraded, she wasn’t so sure. And yet that didn’t stop her from wanting him.
If she was going to break, she wanted him to be the one to break her.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“What?” He pulled back to meet her eyes. It wasn’t the language she usually used with him, and there was a question in his eyes. Did she really want this? Was she too upset to make decisions for herself?
It made her angry. And it made her sad. She shoved at his chest with her fists. “I said fuck me.”
“Erin, baby. I’ll make you feel good.”
That was him, making her come, making her shudder and scream her way through climax. Let me take care of you. He was such a good man. But for tonight, she wanted him to be bad.
She shoved him again, her forearms against his body. “Not good, Blake. Hard. Do it hard.”
His eyes flashed with something dangerous—and seductive. “You don’t want it like this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want. I want to feel…” She considered all the things she wanted to feel. Pain. Pleasure. The soul-deep uncertainty that she had somehow named love. In the end, it was simpler than that. “I just want to feel.”
He took a step back. “I love you.”
She followed him, placing a hand on his chest, petting him, apologizing if she’d hurt him. “Then fuck me like you mean it. Do whatever you want with me.”
The decision came faster than she was expecting. And it came in the form of his hand in her hair, pulling back, turning her face up to the sky. She gasped but let her body hang by his touch.
“You want me to be rough, is that it?” His words were soft against her cheek.
“Yes,” she managed.
“You want to see what I’m really like when I don’t hold back.”
“Yes.”
“Because you still don’t know me.” His words sounded more sad than offended. “You still think there’s going to be something sweet and loving. That I can just give you a spanking on the soft part of your ass, like this is a game, and I’ll be able to stop there.”
She shivered. “Show me then.”
His hand tightened in her hair. “It’s not a fucking game.”
He bent his head and licked at her throat. Then he bit her, teeth scraping along her jaw as she cried out to the moon. Her hands fumbled for his shoulders, his arms, trying to hold on.
“No,” he said coldly. “You don’t get to hug me and cuddle me, not when you want me to fuck you. Not when you want me to show you the real me.”
He dragged her by her hair in one hand, and her upper arm in the other, to a tree. Then he pushed her against it, face first. He positioned her arms around the tree as if she were a doll, making her hug the tree. He undid her jeans and yanked them down to her knees, using them like a rope, tying her still. And he shoved her shirt and bra up, exposing her skin to the air and the tree.
“Like that,” he said, a hardness in his voice she didn’t understand. “You stay just like that no matter what I do to you. And when I’m done, your breasts will be red and raw, and I won’t even have touched them. Understand?”
She whimpered, aroused and nervous and somehow floating. It was freeing for him to speak to her this way, for him to hurt her like this. It was freeing not to know what would happen next.
What happened next was a blunt finger pressing inside her pussy from behind. She gasped, her mouth open against the tree.
“Wet,” he murmured. “Are you always this wet? Do you walk around all day during class or work with your pussy slick as a waterfall? Or is that just for me, every fucking time?”
She shuddered. “For you,” she said, her voice high and thin. “It’s for you.”
Then his fingers were at her mouth. “Taste yourself,” he demanded.
Before she had a chance to respond, to even think about saying no, he pushed inside. She sucked on his fingers obediently, licking her juices off his coarse skin. When he was satisfied, he removed his hand. Then his heat was at her back, his cock nudging her entrance.
“You want me to scare you,” he whispered. “That way you can walk away tomorrow for what happened today.”
Dark realization washed over her. He thought she was doing this because she wanted out. He thought she was using his sexuality—his pain—against him. “No,” she cried.
“Yes,” he gritted out, thrust inside her. The fullness shocked her, and she lifted up on her toes, trying to escape. Her breasts shoved against the bark of the tree, making her whimper. There was no escape, only invasion, only pain. Only the knowledge that he was finally letting her in.
“Blake. Blake.”
“I shouldn’t touch you when you’re like this, when it’s going to be the last fucking time, but I can’t help it. You pushed me and pushed me, and now you’re getting it. How does it feel, baby? How does the bark feel on your skin? How does my dick feel in your cunt?” As if to punctuate his words, he slipped his hand around and pinched her clit—hard. “This is what I want to do to you, all the fucking time. This is how it would be if I didn’t hold back. Fucking you, using you, tearing you up.”
He pulled back and thrust inside, and she couldn’t deny that she was being fucked and used. It even felt like being torn, rent into two parts from the inside, his cock so deep and thick inside her.
“I never want this to end,” she gasped.
“You will,” he promised.
And then he sped up, moving quickly as he thrust, his cock pulling far out only to slam back inside, her breasts bouncing against the rough curve of the tree, her cries echoing around the clearing and over the city.
“Tell me what she said to you,” he gritted out. “Tell me why you’re hurting.”
And it hurt more than the bark, more than his cock, to answer him. “She said I wasn’t good enough for you. That I was trash. That I would always be trash.”
“Fuck,” he growled, sounding savage. Like he could rip her apart. “That’s not fucking true.”
“I know,” she sobbed, but she didn’t know, not really. And it was hard to talk with him still fucking her, not as fast as before, but still enough that each word rode on a breath, choppy and short. Because as hard as it was to talk like this, it was the only way she could talk. “But I thought… I didn’t know… God, we’re so different, Blake.”
Another growl, this one wordless and animalistic. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’re the same, you and me. I’ll fucking make us the same.”
It seemed impossible that it could work, that he could somehow fuck them into the same person. But that was how it felt, his cock impaling her, the incredible wet friction between their bodies fusing them together.
His other hand slapped her ass, the sound resounding in the stillness. “Moan,” he said, guttural. “I want to hear you.”
So she let herself moan—and also talk and babble and cry against that cry, hugging it and being hugged by Blake, even while he brutally fucked her. There were words and apologies and explanations. There were garbled sounds even she couldn’t make out. And then there was only a steady litany. “I love you I love you I love you.”
His hips jerked roughly as he came, and it was the feel of him coming, his hips gripping her hips, surely leaving bruises, a hot gush of seed deep inside, that made her come too. She rocked her hips, humping the tree, as her orgasm slammed into her.
He rode the last of the pulses with languid patience, letting her pulse and spasm around his cock, feeling his seed slide down on him. When she had finished and slumped against the tree, he gently pulled away. He righted his clothes, and then hers, and then placed a kiss on her nape.
“Thank you for telling me.”
She smiled into the dark, her face half hidden by the tree. “Thank you for fucking me.”
“It’s bullshit, you know. The idea that we’re so different. That you’re not good enough.” He turned her around and leaned her back against the tree, letting her rest against it but looking her right in the eye. “When I look at you, I see everything I want to be.”
She let her eyes fall shut as he kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you too, baby.” He ran a finger over the curve of her breast. “Are you sore?”
Her breasts would be tender for days. She loved it. “As awful as this day was, it might be worth it for the tree sex.”
He laughed softly. “You know, there are a lot of trees on the property back home.”
“We should probably draw a map. For surveying purposes.”
“Mhmm. We wouldn’t want to miss one.”