Page 11 of Ruin
When he settles between my thighs—the head of him pressing against me but not entering—he pauses.
He holds my gaze, hooks a finger through the collar and pulls me up until our foreheads are touching, until we're breathing the same air.
Then he enters me in one brutal stroke.
A year. A full year compressed into a single thrust, and the sound that comes out of both of us is something broken and starving and finally,finallyfed.
He fills me completely—the stretch almost too much, the fullness bordering on pain—and for one heartbeat neither of us moves.
We just breathe. Foreheads pressed together. His hand on the collar.
My nails on his shoulders. Then he moves, and I stop thinking.
His pace is punishing.
Every thrust drives deep enough to touch something that makes my breath catch, and I roll my hips to meet each one.
Not passively. Not the way I used to lie there and take what he gave me.
I match him. Stroke for stroke. My legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him harder. Deeper.
He pulls me upright. I'm in his lap, face to face, and I ride him with my hands braced on his shoulders.
The collar glints between us.
His hand stays hooked through it, keeping me close—my breasts against his chest, close enough that I can see the silver flecks in his black-blown eyes.
I lean forward. Press my lips to his ear and tell him exactly what I thought about every night for twelve months—explicit, filthy, detailed—and his composure cracks like ice under a hammer.
His grip tightens. His pace turns ragged. He buries his face in my neck and groans against the collar, and the vibration moves through the diamonds into my skin and down into my bones.
The orgasm gathers like something tectonic.
Deep. Slow. Unstoppable.
I feel it in the base of my spine, in every tightening muscle, in the way my breath goes shallow.
When it breaks, it breaks me with it. I come with my nails buried in his shoulders and his name in my mouth—not a plea. A claim.
He follows me over with his hand fisted in my hair, forehead pressed to mine, and the sound he makes is closer to a snarl than a groan.
Feral. Possessive. Wrecked.
We stay like this.
Tangled. Panting. Sweat-slicked and trembling. His forehead against mine.
My fingers tracing the red lines my nails left down his chest. The collar heavy and warm against my throat, his finger still hooked through it like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets go.
I won't. The girl who might have run is gone. I killed her myself.
He traces the collar with his fingertips while I lie against his chest. Silk sheets tangled around our legs. His heartbeat slowing under my cheek—a steady, heavy rhythm, turning into a war drum standing down.
"You're different," he says.
I press my lips to the bite mark on his shoulder, already bruising. "You sent me away to become something. Did you think I wouldn't?"
His fingers move from the collar to my hair. Threading through the strands with a gentleness that contradicts every violent thing those hands have done. "I thought you'd come back stronger. I didn't think you'd come back..." He pauses.
