Page 41 of Diamond in the Rough (The Diamond Trilogy 1)
Even though she doesn’t know what I’ve done.
Suddenly I want her to know. I want her to see what a monster I am, so she stops looking up at me with those eyes full of hope and humor and light.
I’m not a man who deserves forgiveness.
“I could have walked out of that cell at any time.”
She blinks, not quite believing. Not wanting to believe. “What?”
“Every time they came in to beat me, I could have escaped. Every time Peter took a cigar to my skin, I could have broken his neck. I didn’t have a key to that lock, but I didn’t need one. The key was in my hands.”
Confusion tightens her brow. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you understand.” I trace the angry red line where the metal bar cut into her flesh. It hurt her so badly, and even now it might kill her. Infection in a goddamn forest with no access to medicine or even soap. “I did this to you. I pushed you through the bars.”
“So I could escape,” she says, but she sounds less certain now.
“I almost broke you in half, but not so you could escape. I did it so that I could stay there. So that I could stay there without blowing my cover.”
She shakes her head. “Why did you need to stay? Why did you—”
“My cover? That took eighteen months to establish. Eighteen months of pretending to be a lowlife, of doing horrible things so they’d trust me. Eighteen months of my life.” I snap my fingers, knowing I’m being an asshole. “Gone. Down the drain.”
“Why are you angry at me?”
Why am I angry at her? I’m not sure whether I’m mad at her or myself, but I’m goddamn furious. “Because you were going to get raped, understand? Whether it happened that day or later, Peter was going to hurt you. Adam was going to fuck you. And I shouldn’t have cared about that. I’m well trained not to care about that, but I couldn’t let it happen.”
I’m pleading by the end of it, and her eyes aren’t furious with me. She looks soft and understanding. She looks like everything I want, and nothing that I deserve.
“You saved me,” she says simply.
I shake my head. “No, goddamn you. I hurt you.”
“You saved me,” she says again, pushing down her leggings, showing her sweet, pink pussy. My body doesn’t know that I’m full of guilt and regret and rage. It has the predictable response to seeing her pretty body exposed. I’m hard as a log in a matter of seconds.
She puts her hands on my chest and pushes—not hard enough to knock over anything, but there I go, toppling into the shallow water, letting her climb me. She fights with the wet denim to release my cock, and then she’s holding me with those clever fingers.
I drop my head back and look up at the blinding sun.
Heaven. How did I ever find myself here?
I belong in the other place. I belong back in that cell. It was my job and my mission, but more than that, it was the only thing I deserved. Now I have her gentle hands working me, too soft, too soft. A more terrible torture than Peter’s whip, her too-soft hands.
Then she climbs over my lap. She’s adorably awkward, the way she angles my cock toward her pussy. It’s like she’s hardly ever done this. We fit perfectly, I know that from last time, I know that from my dreams, but it takes her long minutes, hours, days to wedge me inside her. It takes an eternity of pressure as her body surrounds my cock.
Wet heat grips me all the way down, and I shout toward the sky.
“You saved me,” she says, bearing down, pressing until her pussy lips touch the thatch of hair at the base of my cock, pulling me with little pulses of her inner muscles. “Say it.”
“Never.” I’m holding myself with both my elbows in the mud. I’m completely open to her. She sets the pace. She decides when to raise her body and when to twist back down.
“Admit it, Elijah. Whoever you are.”
I grit my teeth against the sheer pleasure. “Mermaid. Siren. Fairy.”
She gives a small laugh that turns into a moan. “You saved—”
With a hard upward thrust I cut off the last word. “No.”
I flip us over so I can fuck her into the water, fuck her into the mud, fuck her into submission. “Do you want me to compromise everything I am? Do you want me to give up everything I have? It’s already yours, Holly. I’m yours to command.”
I slam my mouth down on hers. My hands drag up and down the length of her body, heedless of the mud and her injuries, feeling her in her raw state.
She moans as I tilt my hips to find that spot inside her. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
