My experience with interrogations told me what torture did to a person. It split a life cleanly in two. There was always a before and an after.
But watching her now, standing there between my spread thighs, a little hesitant but still choosingthis,choosingme…
Maybe she was beginning to find her way back to the woman she had been before.
I decided then and there I wasn’t going to treat her like she was broken anymore.
I wasn’t going to handle her with that tentative, stifled restraint people used when they were afraid to make things worse. No careful gentleness just for the sake of her trauma.
No.
Not like Knox, who tried to bury his urges behind patience and soft-spoken reassurances. Not like the careful way he watched her, always giving her room to retreat.
Lena didn’t need that from me.
She needed the opposite.
She needed someone who wouldn’t let her run.
Someone who would make her fight the instinct to flinch.
Someone who would drown that fear beneath something stronger.
Desire.
Her body needed to be claimed so completely that doubt had no space left to fester. That the instinct to pull away would be buried beneath sensation and release until the only thing left was the choice she had already made.
She had just stood in front of me, stripped herself bare, and chosenthis.
Chosenus.
And I wasn’t going to insult the strength of that choice by pretending she was fragile. I wasn’t going to give her some half-ass version of me after her mark had already claimed me.
No.
If she wanted me, she was going to get the real thing.
"Kneel," I commanded, pointing to the floor between my thighs.
She obeyed, dropping quickly and licking her lips. A little impatient whimper left her, so I appeased her hunger, gilding my cock between her lush lips, and pushing inside.
Her lips molded around my shaft, and for a moment shestayed there, warm and soft, as if savoring the feel of it. She looked up at me through her thick, dark lashes, eyes heavy with emotion deeper than simple desire.
Then she moved.
Just like she had with that sandwich in the jail cell, she devoured me with a quiet desperation, a hunger that had clearly been building for far too long. It was a raw and consuming need, as if she had been starved of touch, of wanting, of the freedom to give in to her own arousal, and now that she finally could, she had no intention of holding back.
I groaned as she took me deeper, swallowing around my girth until I was buried in her throat.
“Fuck, little mute,” I breathed, threading my fingers through her dark hair. My hand settled there, tangled in the strands, but I didn't push or pull. I just rested, letting her set the pace.
Then she took too much of me, too fast and hungry.
She coughed, gagging around my length.
“Lena,” I murmured, my grip tightening slightly in her hair as I steadied her. “Breathe.”
I eased my hips back a fraction, backing out of her throat.
