Page 137 of Twisting Beauty

“Fuck me, Lorcan.” I yanked his head back by his hair.

He barely got the condom on in time, and when he pushed his thick cock into me, I felt the stretch, the sharp drag of him, and I gasped, my head thrown back and my arms tight around his neck. It was a shock and a relief all at once, the ache of it edged by the way his whole body shuddered above me, the noise he made somewhere between a growl and a plea.

He pulled out almost all the way, then thrust back in, again and again, each time harder, less controlled, pounding the air from my lungs. The bed frame groaned with each thrust, but nothing could drown out the obscene slick sounds of us together, or the low, desperate noises he made every time he bottomed out inside me.

My hands were in his hair, then dragging up his wounded back.

God, every movement must hurt him, every touch.

He did not flinch. He did not pull back. He pinned my wrists above my head and his mouth was on my throat, biting, sucking as he fucked me hard.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and I used the leverage to flip us, straddling him, grinning down into his startled face. He looked even more beautiful like this—out of control, flushed, hair wild, eyes wide and wanting.

I grabbed both his wrists and forced them down by his ears, grinding down on him, feeling every inch of him, the heat and hardness of him so close to unbearable I could barely breathe.

He let me have half a second of it, and then he flipped me onto my back again and took control.

We fought for it. The whole of it. Every inch of it.

He’d push and I’d push back. I’d reach for control and he’d let me hold it for a moment, and then his hand would be at my throat and we’d be turning over again.

One of our limbs knocked the bedside table. The crash was sharp and far away, somewhere outside the sole existence of the two of us.

My wrists were pinned above my head, my thighs trembling on either side of his hips. His weight was a furnace holding me down, the length of him thrusting into me, relentless, perfectly brutal. I was nothing but nerve endings and need. I bucked against him, trying to force him deeper, and he braced harder, his hand clamping tighter over my wrists, the stretch of my arms burning so good.

He was saying something low in my ear, something filthy, but I couldn’t make out the words over the blood pounding in my skull. Each thrust bent the world around it, sensation compressing into a sharp dangerous singularity, the dark room tipping and spinning around those piercing blue eyes.

“Say my name,” I heard myself beg.

“Gray.”

“My real name.”

His jaw worked.

“Liath.”

My name in his mouth slammed through my body like electricity, every muscle in me tightening, a raw, perfect ache shattering from the base of my spine, wild and inevitable.

I came apart.

He followed a beat later, his face buried against my throat, his arms locked around me, his whole body bracing through it like a man going under.

The room came back in pieces.

His weight was on me. His heaving chest against mine. His breath against my collarbone, slowing.

The gray light through the red drapes. The satisfied ache in between my legs. The cool of the air against my skin. The faint scent of crushed black violets.

The pot lay on its side in a half-circle of dark soil. The plant had gone over with it, its roots exposed, the small dark flowers tangled in the broken clay.

Nestled within the wreckage was something dark and small; the impact had knocked it loose from where it had been hidden among the violets.

I went cold all over.

It had a black plastic body the size of a thumbnail and a round glass eye.

A camera.