Page 18 of Broken Beauty (Beauty 3)
He pinched her clit, and she came with a hoarse cry. Her pussy squeezed him tight. He almost came—not yet, almost.
“Again,” he demanded.
“No more. Oh God, I really can’t.”
But she could. Her inner muscles still rippled around him, her last climax hardly faded.
He bit her earlobe gently. “I want to feel you come again. I want that sweet pussy to squeeze me until I can’t hold back anymore. I want to feel your wetness drip down my cock to my balls. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”
She might have cried out his name, but the sound muffled in his ears as she did just what he’d ordered. As she came and shook in his arms while her sex tightened almost painfully around his cock. His vision went white, his body rigid. He came in a moment of blinding ecstasy and helpless, heartless need. With a cry of despair and release. With the knowledge that he would never survive it if she left him too.
He curled onto his side, catching her as she fell, panting. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“No.” Her voice was raw. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Don’t you dare.”
So he didn’t say it aloud, he just thought it. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go. You’re mine now, God help you.
CHAPTER SIX
Erin stretched. Her muscles felt rung out and used well.
She turned her head, facing her lover with a lazy smile.
Blake had his eyes closed, arm slung over his face. He grew less bold in the aftermath, as if she might find his scars ugly without the haze of arousal to soften him. He had also maneuvered them so that she saw his unmarred side. He did that constantly, so smoothly she hardly noticed until after. She wasn’t sure he even knew he did it. The burned skin was only a glimpse on the opposite cheek. Shiny tissue. White and pink that didn’t tan to bronze with the rest of his skin.
She wished she could tell him it didn’t matter. But that wasn’t really true. How many people wore the darkest part of them on their faces? What a different world it would be if we walked around with signs that proclaimed the worst thing that had happened to us.
For her mother, it would be whatever had happened in the house where she’d worked as a maid and then suddenly hadn’t anymore. For Erin, it would be when her boyfriend had taken her to meet his parents and they realized his father had been the one to hurt her mother. When her boyfriend had called later with that bullshit story about her mom stealing from them, sure that his father was innocent of any wrongdoing. When he’d left her to find her own ride back to campus and when she’d seen him walking between buildings with another girl on his arm. Broken spirit, her mother’s sign would say. Broken heart for Erin.
Broken body for Blake.
Put that way, she felt lucky. Everyone had pain in their pasts. Some had it worse than others, but no one was untouched. The difference was that Blake was introduced that way. The rest of them had their smooth-skinned shells to hide behind.
He turned to face her, exposing himself. She looked into his eyes and felt herself fall into them—the contentment there and the shame.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmured.
She almost smiled at the echo of his earlier words. During sex he’d asked that question. And her answer was the same, in essence. “About you.”
He raised a brow. “Anything in particular?”
She studied the smooth bronze of his skin, the mottled pink. The courage with which he faced each day, holding that damned sign up, his head held high.
“How beautiful you are.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “That’s cruel,” he said mildly.
She flinched. “I mean it. You’re beautiful to me.”
He faced the ceiling again. “Fuck, Erin. I never asked you to lie to me.”
She propped herself on her elbow. “Why do you think I have sex with you if I don’t find you attractive?”
“Pity?” he said, so cavalierly she knew he was baiting her.
And it worked, damn him. “Then why do you have sex with me?” she challenged.
He was still a moment. His expression impassive, he turned his head and gave her a long, slow perusal from her wild, disheveled hair down her naked body to where her toes were tucked under the sheet. He caressed her breast, running his thumb down the side, the rough pad of his finger like fine sandpaper on her sensitive skin.
