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I grab his thighs for purchase, hugging his legs instead of pushing him away. Holding on instead of letting go.
He tilts his hips and pushes my face against his groin, making me swallow everything. My throat feels raw. My mouth stretches so wide to accommodate him I swear the corners must tear. I focus on inhaling through my nose, but the intrusion in my throat prevents the air from reaching my lungs. My throat convulses, milking his cock. He grunts and holds me to him, uttering words of praise and encouragement, but I’m no longer listening.
White spots dance in my vision. Like him, I’m tired of fighting this war, and as I cling to him and give in to exhaustion, I get a glimpse of how easy it will be to give up. How sweet it will taste to let go. To drift in a darkness, a warm and comfortable place that’s free of obligations and judgement. I let it take me, sinking deeper, and it feels so good to no longer be tired. No longer tense. To swallow his cum.
I’m in my happy place. Water. I don’t want to surface. It’s soothing under the rigid line that separates the sky from the sea. The rigid line of right and wrong. Of honoring my family and my dad’s memory or loving a man. No, not a man. A monster. My dark angel. But with only the soft gushing of the current in my ears and the gentle rocking of the tide, I don’t have to think anymore. I don’t have to choose between hate and love.
The rocking turns more insistent, the tide growing stronger. I moan in protest. The sand beneath me is hard instead of soft, and when I lift my hands, the sun is warm beneath my palms. My body follows the rhythm of that slipstream. A wave builds around me, pulling me to the shore.
“No.”
I don’t want to surface. I want to hold my breath. I want to stay under the water forever. I want to inhale the saline darkness and grow fins like a fish, but the persistent need that builds in my core is like a tether that ties me to the land. The pleasure pulls my body tighter. It lifts me closer to the sun. It draws me into strong arms and coaxes me into moving to that intoxicating rhythm.
“That’s it,cara,” the water says, sweeping me farther and faster along. “Come with me.”
So I go. I let it carry me to the break where the eager waves crush and maul. I let it drag me under and bend my body, and when the swell lifts and lifts and finally curls, I crash on land. The sea spits me out, forcing me to breathe. The light that filters through my eyelids as I peel them open isn’t the daylight on a beach baked warm by the sun. It’s the overhead light in the lounge. The heat surrounding me isn’t a perfect summer’s day. It’s my water. My husband.
“Cara,” he whispers.
He lowers his head and kisses my lips, bringing me slowly from the forgiving darkness to a cruel reality. He’s naked, spread out on top of me on the floor, cushioning my head with one hand while rubbing aftershocks from my clit with the other. I go slack, giving over to pleasure and disappointment. My body betrayed me, and so did my mind.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I try to focus my eyes.
“That’s better,” he croons. “You had me worried there for a moment.”
My throat hurts when I speak. “About what?”
“That I’ve gone too far.”
“Haven’t we?” I ask, biting my lip, and I don’t mean what just happened. I meaneverything.
He stills. His touch vanishes. He pulls his hand from between our bodies and carries his weight on his arm. His dark hair falls over his forehead, the wavy curls messy. His chiseled jaw hardens even as insecurity shimmers in the harsh brown of his eyes. The black ink on his hard chest draws a stark picture of the man who holds my fate in his hands. The permanent art is an exact representation of the man who owns me.
Holding my gaze, he says, “I want to stop being on my guard around you. I don’t want to feel as if I’m walking onto a battlefield every time I enter this house.” He pauses. “I want to end the bloodshed between our families. We both suffered by the hands of our fathers and the bad decisions they made.”
Bad decisions. All those deaths. His mother and sister. My dad. How did we get here? Angelo’s words come back to me.
I had no choice.
I had to steal your father’s book.
It was the only way to ensure our wedding would continue as planned.
The only way to make you mine.
Our war didn’t start when he married me with a gun pushed against my head. It happened long before then. It began when he stole that book. And just like that, the implication of his words stares me in the face.
You were always the only objective that mattered.
Angelo didn’t steal the book because he wanted my dad to honor a business contract. He stole the book because he wantedme.
The words tumble from my lips in a shocked whisper. “You blackmailed my dad to let you marry me. The business you took from him was just a secondary advantage. By taking his source of money away, you made him powerless.”
He cups my cheek in a tender caress even as his eyes harden like gleaming onyx. “I took the book to ensure your father would honor the promise he made when he negotiated our betrothal. You see,bella, my war started a long time before I stole that book. It started the minute I learned you were mine.”
Something twists inside my chest. The statement should soothe me, but it doesn’t, because he just told me in not so many words that he didn’t want me because he fell in love with me. I was a commodity from the very start. A currency. It’s never been about me. His cock is not yet soft inside me when the bitter truth settles in my heart.
