Temptation’s Edge (19 page)

“Take another breath, sweetheart,” he said, his teeth clenched in pleasure—she could hear it in his voice.

She inhaled, and he moved deeper. She trembled with need. She wanted to take all of him. Wanted him to fill her completely.

“Connor…”

“Shh. Stay quiet, darlin’. Follow my lead. Only tell me if it’s truly too much.”

She calmed herself. Waited, her body wanting, wanting.
Finally he thrust in slowly. There was the smallest bit of pain, and only because of his size. But the pleasure was an aftershock that rocked her.

“Oh…”

He pulled his hips back, his cock slipping almost all the way out, then he arched into her again. She pressed back against him, taking the length of him into her.

“Ah, that’s perfect,” he murmured. “So damn good. Your ass is unbelievable. The way it feels. The way it looks. Making me damn crazy. I just need to fuck you. To really fuck you. Talk to me now, Mischa. Can you take it?”

“I can take it, yes. Just do it, Connor. Fuck me.”

“Ah…”

He began a slow thrusting motion. Surging in, pulling out. With each thrust pleasure moved through her, first in liquid, undulating waves, then building into something sharper. She loved the pulling sensation as his cock slid out. The enormous pressure as he filled her in a way she’d never been filled before. She could almost come just from this…almost.

And once more he read her mind, read the need in her body. He reached around her and began to roll her tight clit between his fingers.

“Oh God, Connor.”

“I want you to come. I want you to come as I do. And it’s going to be soon, you feel so good.” He gave a sharp jerk of his hips, pleasure and a lovely shard of pain driving into her. But the pain only made the pleasure more keen, lent it a sharper, deeper edge. “I’m just going to…fuck you. Until we both come…”

He drove into her, his fingers working her clit as mercilessly as his big cock was working her ass. Her body was soaring with sensation, flying higher and higher. She was arching back against
his impaling cock, forward into his hand on her needy clitoris. She couldn’t get enough. It was too much. Overwhelming.

He angled his hand and pressed two fingers inside her, thrusting deep. His hips ground against her, his cock pushing, pushing, into her ass. She’d never felt so filled in her life, stretched tight. He curved the fingers inside her until they hit her G-spot. And she came hard, her climax like the dazzling light of the sun going off in her head, her body.

“Connor!”

“Ah, I’m coming, darlin’…coming so damn hard…”

He was driving into her, his hips jerking. And she kept coming, her climax shivering through her body like a small earthquake, shaking her to the core.

Maybe it was being filled, ass and pussy simultaneously. Maybe it was that sense of being so absolutely taken over. Maybe it was the dark, earthy scent that was
Connor
, wild in her lungs as she panted out her pleasure. Panted in time with him. With his plunging cock, his fingers still surging in her clenching pussy. She felt as if she might lose her mind, lose herself and never come back.

Indescribable pleasure, being with this man, the things he did to her.

Too much, maybe.

As the last of her orgasm echoed in her body, faded away, she felt tears sting her eyes.

What the hell was wrong with her?

She sniffed, clenched her teeth. But the tears came, anyway.

Damn it.

“Mischa?”

Connor pulled out of her, which only made it worse, somehow. There was a brief pause, and she was vaguely aware of him
grabbing some paper towels from the roll she’d left on the counter. Then he was turning her in his arms. She tried to fight her way out of his embrace, knowing it was futile, but she had to try. To get away from him. Or from herself. Her head was spinning, her body still pulsing with sensation. She couldn’t make any sense out of what was happening to her.

“Mischa, talk to me.”

“No.”

She ground her jaw harder. It didn’t help. The fucking tears were falling down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them.

She tried to yank her way out of his hold, but he grabbed her wrists.

“Mischa, look at me.”

She’d never heard him so stern. It made her want to melt into him. It made her want to fight him all the more.

He said very quietly, “God damn it, Mischa. Look at me. Do it.”

She moved her gaze to his, meaning to argue, but all that came out was a gasping sob.

He lowered his head, evening his gaze with hers.

“This is bottoming out. That’s all. You’re going to be fine. But you have to stop struggling. With me. With whatever it is you’re feeling.”

“I don’t know what it is. It’s…fucking alien to me. I don’t know…” she repeated. “I don’t know how to handle this.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I don’t want your help. I want you to let me go.”

She knew she was being childish. She couldn’t help it. She felt totally out of control. Scared as hell.

He said more gently, “Come on, darlin’. You know I’m not going to do that until I know you’re feeling better.”

“Because it’s your duty as a good dominant? I’m not somebody’s
duty! I never have been.” Fury burned in her veins. She knew he didn’t deserve all of it, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “I’m not somebody’s…anything. I don’t belong to you, Connor.”

“I never said you did.” His tone had gone a little flat, a shadow passing over his face.

What did that mean? She couldn’t figure it out right now.

“But it is my job to take care of you when we’re together,” he went on. “And I intend to, whether you want me to or not. That’s something I won’t compromise on.”

He gave her a small shake, and anger surged through her. But she was paying attention to him, which was probably why he’d done it, she realized in some vague way.

“I am not going anywhere while you’re like this,” he told her. “I won’t leave you alone to deal with this. Do you understand me? We’re going to draw you a bath and you’re going to get in it. You’re going to do exactly as I say. I know you don’t want to.”

Another small sob that she couldn’t help before she was able to answer stubbornly. “I don’t.”

“But you will do it.”

He wasn’t budging an inch, his hands still hard on her shoulders, his fingers biting into the flesh. But that hard hold, the force of his tone, made her feel better. Safer.

“Connor…I’m so…I’m just so
mad
. I am not this emotional, childish person, God damn it. This is not who I am.”

She wiped at her teary eyes with both fists, her fingers clenched so tight the nails dug into her palms.

“I think you’ve never been allowed to be,” he said quietly.

“No. Never. Because Evie has always been the child in our family. And Raine, for a while, until she was old enough to feel the same sense of hyper-responsibility I have ever since…as long as I can remember. I’ve had to take care of everything. Making
sure everyone ate, and the rent got paid. But it didn’t half the time because how the hell was I supposed to make that happen when I was ten years old? God! I’ve never been able to be a child, and I don’t want to be one now. I don’t want to do this. But I can’t seem to help myself and it’s all your fault!”

He didn’t even blink as she hurled the accusation at him she knew was ridiculous the moment it left her lips.

Instead, he picked her up, and although she couldn’t relax in his arms, she let him do it. Let him carry her to the bathroom, set her on her feet. She’d begun to shiver, and he pulled her robe from the hook on the back of the door and wrapped her up in it before he let her go only long enough to turn on the taps in the tub. He came back to her, rubbing her arms with his big hands.

He was watching her quietly as the water ran, the room filling with steam. He handed her a tissue and she wiped her eyes, her nose. He took it from her and tossed it into the wastebasket. Through it all he was naked, she realized. Totally unself-conscious about it. No less commanding.

She was beginning to calm down. The tears stopped, for which she was grateful.

When the tub was full he slipped the robe from her shoulders and helped her step into the warm, soothing water. She sat down, pulled her knees to her chest. Connor knelt on the bath mat next to the tub. He grabbed a sage-green washcloth from a wicker basket on the floor and dipped it in the water, squeezed it out and began to smooth it over her back.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his tone a low rumble. His dark brows were drawn together.

“What? No. Not at all. That’s not what this is about.” Strange that he seemed to need reassurance from her now. But he obviously did.

“You’re sure?”

She understood what he was asking. Understood the difference between the pain play that was all about elevated levels of sensation and really being hurt.

“I’m sure. Absolutely.”

He let out a long breath. “Okay. Okay, then.”

They were both quiet as he moved the washcloth to the back of her neck, holding her hair up with one hand. It felt lovely. She still felt raw. Wide open. Scared. But she was beginning to relax a little, her shoulders loosening under his tender ministrations, her gaze on the small ripples in the water.

He
was
being tender with her. Unbelievable. Confusing.

“Why are you being so nice to me? After I’ve been…so…” She stopped, shook her head.

“You’ve been fine. This happens sometimes.”

“But we weren’t even doing any real pain play.”

“That’s not always what brings it out. Some people reach this space just having a massage.”

“The tears?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t cry. I didn’t even as a kid. This is not normal for me.”

“Nothing is normal for me right now,” he said quietly.

“What?” She turned to look at him. His face was perfectly serious, a study in concentration.

He stroked the wet washcloth over her back a few more times before answering. “Mischa…I don’t know what’s going on here, between us. But it’s different. I don’t believe I’m imaging it.”

She bit her lip. “No. You’re not.”

“There’s a connection…”

“Yes.”

Her heart did a small flip in her chest as she waited to hear what he would say.

“That might be why you’re bottoming out so hard.”

“Maybe. Maybe it is. I really don’t ever cry, Connor. Even when I broke my arm when I was nine…I sat in the emergency room, totally quiet. The nurse told me I was brave but…I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” he asked.

“I don’t think it was bravery. It was because Evie was sitting there with me, wringing her hands, her face looking…like she was going to break, just fall apart like she did after one of her men left her. She kept asking me over and over if I was okay. As if I was supposed to just say I was fine and it would all go away. And Raine, she must have been six at the time…she was in the chair next to her, looking so small. Crying. And I was…the only one there who could handle it.”

“Christ, Mischa. That’s a lot for a nine-year-old.”

She shrugged, but she still felt the pain of it, of the other things about her childhood she usually did her best not to think about.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said finally.

“Because of that connection, maybe. Look, Mischa, you need to know that it’s okay to tell me these things. I’m not here to judge. I won’t hold it over your head, ever. I can promise you that. And the tears…that’s not something you have to fight so hard to hold back.”

“But I do have to.”

“Why?”

Her heart was racing. She had to push to get the words out, and even then it was a small whisper. “Because letting go is too scary.”

“Ah, for me, as well.”

They remained quiet for a while. He started dipping the washcloth into the water, squeezing it out over her back again, and she watched the small ripples in the water. He was giving her
time to calm, to absorb everything that had gone on. Everything they’d said. Maybe to calm himself, as well. And she felt as cocooned by her admissions to him, by his calm voice, as she did by the steam, moist and warm in the air. She felt emptied out, a little raw. But she also understood, at least to some extent, that it had been necessary. For her. For whatever this was between them, maybe.

After some time had passed, long enough that the water in the bath had started to cool a bit, he asked, “Do you need anything? Can I get you a drink of water?”

“No. Just…stay with me.”

She looked at him, found his steady green gaze on hers as he nodded. He picked up her hand, curling her fingers around his, brushed a kiss there.

“Whatever you want, darlin’.”

How strange that he should say those words to her. That he should
mean
it. Even stranger that this was all she wanted. For him to simply be there. With a fierceness she’d never felt before. It was strange. Wonderful. Scary.

She didn’t want to be caught up in the fear. She wanted to revel in the wonderful part. Wanted to let herself have this for the first time in her life. To relax a little. Not question any of it: the rawness, the honesty they’d shared.

Right now, she would allow herself this moment.