Page 19 of Bram

“Fuck, I bet you're wet, baby. I can almost taste your wet pussy, Julie.”

“Soaked for you,” I said, letting my apprehensions go. I needed this just as bad, if not worse, than he did. I grabbed his cock and moaned, the thing pulsing in my hand.

I pulled him down to me, felt the weight and the heat and the not-asking. I twisted a hand in the collar of his shirt and got my fingers up under it, scraping over the raised, raw skin at his side. The suture line was swollen, a thread of angry red running beneath his ribs. I stopped, fingers hovering, and looked up.

He looked back at me, breathing through his nose, jaw locked so tight I could hear the click in his molars. “It’s fine,” he said, and pulled my hand down over the wound, made me feel it, like he needed the pain to keep him present. “I’ve wanted this for far too long to let a little scratch get in the way.”

My lips parted, and our tongues met, the taste of him delicious, his touch firm in a way that said, at least for now, I belonged to him, and nothing else mattered. I broke the kiss and stared into his eyes, finding his soul, sharing mine. “What happens after this?” I asked.

“Honestly, babe, whether you want to hear this or not, you’re gonna belong to me. You’re gonna be taken care of, protected, treated the way you should be treated.”

“I’ve heard that before, from other men, Bram.” It sounded like an asshole thing to say, but it was true, and every time it had been a lie. I was tired of the lies and the games.

He placed a finger beneath my chin and held my gaze. “Don’t ever question my devotion to you, babe. Ever. You got that? I take care of what’s mine.”

I nodded. I was buying what he was selling. “You have to promise me this will never end. I don’t want to be used and let down again.” I hated the way that sounded, but it was true.

“It won’t end, Julie.”

My name on his lips made my legs Jello.

“Believe this. I’d crush this fucking world for you.”

“You might have to, Bram.”

The robe came off at the shoulders and pooled at the crook of my elbows. I shrugged it off and let it hit the floor. The air was cold, but the skin-to-skin burned hotter than anything else in the room. He stripped the cut off one-handed and tossed it over the back of the sofa. I slid his shirt up, careful at the stitches, but he didn’t let me slow down. The white of the scar looked fresh, ugly and beautiful, a perfect memory in the making. He got the shirt over his head and let it fall behind us, and I raked my nails down his back, across the old scars, the new ones, the map of every bad choice he’d ever made.

He lowered me onto the rug, pinning me with a knee between my legs, and the softness of the carpet was a joke against the hardness of everything else. I dug my heels into the back of his thighs, locked him to me. He pressed my wrists into the floor, wrists to elbows to shoulders, a single lever of pressure, and bit along the curve of my jaw, down my neck, until I gasped and arched into him.

He was marking his territory, leaving nothing to the imagination.

“I want you to come first,” he whispered. “You don’t touch my cock until you’ve fucking soaked the floor.”

“Damnit,” I said, thrusting my hips at him.

“That’s my girl.”

He slipped a finger into my mouth, and I sucked it as if it were his cock.

There was a glass coffee table to my right, and when I shifted, it scraped hard across the floor, the edge catching my ankle. I didn’t care. I wrapped my legs around him, tight enough to bruise, and pulled him down until our hips aligned. He was already hard, the fabric of his jeans rough and immediate. I reached down, got the button undone, and he did the rest, one-handed, never breaking the rhythm of his mouth on my throat.

I was wet before his fingers found me, desperate and ready in a way that made my brain want to apologize, and my body want more. He pushed inside me, slow at first, then deeper, and the pain was perfect, bright and sharp at the edges. I clenched, dug my nails in, and bit his shoulder until he made a sound that was somewhere between a curse and a prayer.

He fucked me like he fought: no wasted motion, no apology, every thrust a statement of intent. I met him, every time, hips rolling up to catch the movement, the heat of his body a furnace at my chest. My back arched, shoulders pressed flat to the rug, and the silk of the robe was a slipstream around us, wet and ruined and beautiful.

The stitches at his side split; I could smell the blood, but he didn’t stop. If anything, it made him go harder. I grabbed the back of his neck, held him there, teeth to teeth, forehead to forehead. I wanted to see his face when it happened. I wanted to know if I could break him, even for a second.

When I came, it wasn’t quiet. I heard myself, raw and hoarse, and he bit down on my collarbone to keep from answering. The table scraped again, louder, and a pillow hit the floor in a drift of down. I locked around him, squeezed every drop of life out of the moment. He didn’t finish, not then. He pulled out, rolled me over, dragged my hips up and took me from behind, hands rough at my waist, the silk now knotted at my wrist like a leash.

He held me there, his hand covering mine on the floor, and when he came, the whole weight of him dropped onto my back. For a moment, neither of us breathed. He pulled out so slowly that I thought he might stay there the rest of the night. He wanted me to feel every inch of him leaving me.

When he was out, I felt his lips on my ass cheek. His teeth dug in, and I fought the urge to cry out in pain. Instead, I took the marking like a woman owned. When his mouth moved to my other cheek, I bit down on my knuckle.

His lips retreated, and I thought that was the end. That’s when I learned something special about Bram. Nothing is ever the end. He spread my cheeks, and for the first time in my life, a man ate my ass, his tongue swirling like an out-of-control tornado. The tip of his tongue dipped inside me, and every nerve ending in my body fired away. As soon as his fingers bounced against my clit, I came again.

“Fuck, Bram,” I said. “What was that?”

He rolled off, leaving me half-naked, half-laughing, both of us staring up at the ceiling.