Page 71 of Breathe Like Hell

“Want me to let you breathe?” I gritted out, leaning over her even further, covering her body with my own. I wanted her to feel my weight crushing her, feel every ounce of strength she’d never be able to overpower. “You want me to let you fucking live?”

Every frantic movement of hers was unraveling.

Piece by piece, her body softened, surrender moving through her veins in shivers.

The desire was there, threatening me.

Don’t let go. Make her pass out.

Every moment was dangerous now. Addictive.

Each subsequent second was one closer to the edge she couldn’t come back from.

The power of that made me feel monstrous, but the fact that she wanted it made me feel worshiped. Dakota’s trust was a heady thing. I wondered if she understood how badly I wanted to keep her here, like this, forever. I wondered if she understood how fucking beautiful her fight was to me, how gorgeous she looked when she let me do all these terrible things to her.

But was she letting me do this? Not really.

Those lines had been blurred from the day I met her.

Each time my heart pumped brutally in my chest, more dependency rushed in. If she ever learned how badly I needed her, she’d leave me. It wasn’t healthy, the way I felt about her. I knew that. I knew that.

Her body was so fragile in my hands, so fucking vulnerable. I could break her.

I could kill her.

Sometimes she wanted me to.

My cock was still buried in her cunt when I felt her go unconscious, and I flipped her over quickly. Her head lolled to the side, her body limp on the mattress. For one terrible second, I thought I’d gone too far.

But the next instant, she was breathing again, color coming back to her cheeks, her lungs dragging in air like she was surfacing from deep water.

Devotion and need surged in my veins so powerfully it made me lightheaded.

“There you go. Come back to me,” I said as I spread her thighs out wide, sliding myself back inside while she was barely conscious. I couldn’t stop myself from groaning at the new angle. “Wake up for me, baby.”

Her eyelashes fluttered when I touched her face.

“I know,” I murmured as I stared, sinking the full length of my erection into her, my hand sliding down to hold her jaw. Her eyebrows pulled together, soft breaths slipping between her parted lips. “Breathe if you need it.”

Slowly, she regained consciousness, her eyes blinking sleepily open.

I had to fight the urge to cover her face again. It was way too soon to be safe, but fuck she looked so pretty begging for air. Even prettier when it was my palm over her face instead of a pillow, when I could see all the terror and lust fighting in her eyes.

“You’re okay,” I said, caressing her cheek, her chin, her lips. “You’re okay, baby.”

I started rolling my hips a bit, pumping in and out, moving one hand down to play with her clit. She squirmed, but didn’t move away. She was so fucking wet.

I loved her like this. When she was weak, she stopped pretending she wasn’t mine. She always looked at me differently after I pushed her to the edge of her life, like almost dying with me opened up a truer part of her. She was softer. Needier. Unguarded. All her emotions showing plain as day in those big green eyes.

How was I not supposed to love her with her whole life in my palms?

Maybe this was why I needed to fuck her so often; it was the only time I felt like she actually belonged to me.

And I need her to belong to me.

“Mason,” she mumbled, a little pout on her face, confusion in her bleary gaze. “You made me pass out.”

“And you did such a good job. Look at you, taking me so well when you didn’t even know it.”