Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 35197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
We’re in her bedroom. She trusted me to sleep beside her and I…
I choked her. Didn’t prepare her enough. Possibly got her pregnant without any kind of rational discussion first. No wonder she was scared. Why didn’t I stop when she said she was scared? Am I a monster?
Quickly, I release her wrists, climbing off her ravaged body and burying my head in my hands, starting to pace beside the bed. “Oh Jesus, July, what have I done?”
CHAPTER
TEN
July
Oh my goodness.
I can’t move. My bones are made of warm butter. There are stinging marks all over my body, my throat feels raw and I’m not sure if I’ll ever catch my breath again. I completely overestimated my ability to handle Theo during one of his nightmares. I thought it would be so easy to snap him out of it. Soothe him. But I was wrong. He was in the midst of battle the whole time we made love and now, I feel like I’ve made it through battle, too.
And I’m exhilarated.
Sex is not this choreographed act I was expecting. It’s messy. It’s mental and physical. In my case, it’s…destruction. When Theo gave me orgasms with his tongue and fingers, it was like a knot loosening. A slow, wonderful melt into relief. With Theo inside of me, however, using my body so roughly and with such a lack of control, the orgasm hit me like a mean right cross. It choked me and robbed me of reason, cinched up my tummy so tight, I thought I would rupture from the inside out…until the pleasure arrived like a reward for making it through the briar patch.
I’m wrecked in the best way.
Sated, stupefied and…proud of myself. I’m stronger than I thought. I’m adventurous. I’m the embodiment of his needs. Need so strong, he can’t breathe when he’s fucking me. He has to bite and groan and squeeze me because the pleasure is so intense. With me. I’m good in bed, I think. Who knew? And it’s only my first time.
It takes me a moment to mentally wave away the haze and realize Theo is pacing back and forth beside the bed, visibly distraught. His reaction parts the bliss induced fog all around me and I struggle up onto one elbow.
“Theo. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” He stops, raking an unsteady hand through his hair. “Baby, you’re…” His chest rises and falls. “You’re all covered in marks. Jesus, your throat…I could have killed you.”
“No.” I sit up and swing my legs around, scooting to the edge of the bed, reaching out for him, but he shakes his head and steps out of my reach. “No, you were rough, but you weren’t violent.”
“Rough is bad enough. You were a virgin, July.” For the first time, be notices the traces of blood on my inner thighs. “Oh God. Does it hurt?”
“No,” I lie. At first. Then I decide to tell him the truth, because honestly feels right with this person so vulnerable around me. And because I sense that the truth will assuage his guilt. I don’t want him to feel guilty about something I found so extraordinary. Something that taught me a lot about myself. “Fine, it hurts a little, but…I, um…”
“What?”
I cast my gaze down to the ground. “I liked when it hurt.”
His brows pull together, his chin lifting and I can tell her doesn’t believe me. “You said you were scared.”
“I was scared of how good it felt. How…b-big the feeling was.” He doesn’t respond to that, continuing to scrutinize me, as if searching for the truth. “Didn’t it feel good for you?” I whisper.
He starts, as if I’ve asked a question from left field. “Didn’t it—” He cuts himself off, dropping into a kneel in front of me, wrapping both arms around my waist and pressing his face into my thighs. “July, it’s no wonder I only get hard for you. One look at you across a table launched an obsession. Kissing your mouth, touching your soft skin, is like being admitted early to heaven. But now that I’ve fucked you?” His eyes glitter with heat as he eases my thighs apart, perusing my swollen sex. “It’s so tight, you’d have been a hot fuck if you just laid there and took it, but Christ, you worked that pussy like you were marking your territory. I couldn’t fuck you hard enough. Goddamn.” A shudder wracks his huge body. “Did it feel good? Did you really ask me that? I’d do forty more years in that enemy camp to get five minutes on top of you with your legs spread. It wasn’t good. It was worth dying for. You are…God, July. You are a work of art, and I abused that. Abused you.” He buries his face in my lap again, drawing me in close, so close I have a hard time catching my breath. “Maybe prison is exactly where I belong.”