I’m trapped by his big hand. It’s warm around my ankle, and I’m unsure where to look. His eyes have gone nearly black. He looks starved, more beast than man. I remember what he’d said, that he hadn’t been with a woman in a decade.
Ten years.
How does a man do that? A man like him, at that? Don’t they need to fuck every few days or weeks at least?
But I don’t have time to think when he tugs me to the edge of the bed. I yelp, dropping backward onto my elbows as he crouches between my thighs, wrapping his arms around them, biceps straining his shirt. I watch him look at me, my open legs, my sex inches from his face, a scrap of lace the only thing between us.
When he presses his nose to me and breathes in deeply, I squeeze my eyes shut, embarrassed and aroused and unsure what to do.
“You’re wet, Madelena,” he says darkly. “And you smell like I can sink my teeth into you.”
I cry out in surprise when he closes his mouth over the lace of my panties, his tongue hot and wet and soft, the lace rough. He growls—he fucking growls—and I see the effort it takes him to draw back.
I’m panting as he releases my thighs, dropping to his knees. He’s breathing hard, too, as he slides the panties off me.
He pushes my legs apart, hands rough on my thighs as he shifts his gaze back to my pussy, taking his time to look his fill at me spread open before him, a feast to a starving beast.
“Fuck, Madelena,” he says, the words more a vibration of his chest than sound before he buries his head between my legs.
My breath catches in my throat, and all I can do is grab hold of him, pulling his hair and I’m not sure if it’s to push him off or grind against him as he sinks his teeth into me.
I’ve never felt anything like this. Nothing. And the sounds that I hear, it’s me. It’s me panting and whimpering as I grind against him. I fist handfuls of hair, my feet braced on his shoulders and when he closes his mouth around my clit and sucks, I am undone. I come like I’ve never come before. Never. I come so fucking hard, and my moan… it’s his fucking name.
I’m whimpering, twisting onto my side, my fingers finally loosening as orgasm subsides. He watches me, his lips glistening as I shamelessly squeeze my thighs together to squeeze the last of this new, intense pleasure, still fucking moaning like some animal myself.
He watches, just watches, one hand disappearing where I can’t see it. Is he fisting himself?
My breath trembles, my legs hanging limp over the foot of the bed.
Santos stands, his gaze imprisoning mine as he does. He watches me, wipes the back of his hand over his mouth and I see in his eyes that he’s still hungry.
“What did you say about never coming for me?” he asks in a low voice.
It takes me a very long time to remember what I’d said. He grins, self-satisfied, and I force myself to sit up, glaring daggers at him.
“Remind me again?” he taunts, crossing the room to pour himself a glass of water from the chilled bottle. He turns back to me as he drinks it looking like the cat who swallowed the canary—and I’m the fucking canary.
He sets the glass down, then returns to me. I force my muscles to work, and climb up on my knees just as he reaches me.
“Remind me what it was you said about not coming for me,” he says. Before I can do anything, he slips his hand into the front clasp of the lace bra and a moment later, it’s gone, discarded along with the rest of my clothes.
I launch myself at him, using those claws he so enjoys mocking me about, raking my nails down his chest. He laughs, grabbing the back of my head to draw me to him, holding my face an inch from his, not kissing me though because he knows I’ll fucking bite.
I tear at his shirt, feeling the strength of him, ripping it from him as his muscles bunch. I’m like an animal, wild and enraged. I hear myself as I attack, and I know I’m hurting him when he takes my arms, that grin finally gone as he tells me to stop—shakes me, any playfulness vanished.
“I said stop,” he commands.
I manage to get a fistful of his dress shirt and rip it all the way down, buttons popping before he pulls me far enough to make me stop.
“Stop?” I ask, trying to get at him again. “Fuck you!”
An animal-like growl rumbles from inside his chest as he tosses me backward onto the bed then flips me onto my stomach. I yelp as he hauls my hips up and pushes my head down so I can’t look back. He’s got my arms criss-crossed behind me.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says with that rumble, like the warning rattle of a snake behind his words.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like it when the tables turn?” The bed dips as he climbs on and uses his knees to force mine to part. I fight him, but he’s so much stronger than me. He holds onto my arms with one hand and brings the other to the back of my head to grip my hair and tug my head backward as he leans over me.
“No, Little Kitty. It’s because some things are better left unseen,” he says, his voice different than moments ago, darker, more dangerous.
He straightens, and I’m not sure if it’s the loss of his body heat or the words themselves that send a shiver through me.
I stop fighting and look back. His shirt is hanging off his shoulders, ripped apart. The glimpse of skin I get is strange. But when he shifts his attention from my face down to my ass, I’m hyper aware that right now, I am fully exposed to him. He can see every fucking inch of me, and he holds complete power over me.
He brings one hand between my legs, closes it over my sex and shifts his gaze to mine.
I suck in a breath as his fingers spread my lips and find my clit. He then draws those fingers through my folds and up to my ass.
“Santos,” I start, embarrassed and aroused and I don’t know what else. I don’t know what the fuck just happened.
He looks at me for a long moment and I feel like he’s warning me.
He finally draws his hand away and presses himself against me. I shudder, feeling the length of him through his slacks. And I admit, as much as I hate myself for it, I want him.
“Should I show you again how hard you’ll come for me? This time with my cock stretching your cunt, because you’re fucking dripping.”
My face burns and I’m sure he sees it. “I fucking hate you, you know that?”
“I think you hate yourself more, sweetheart. Because you want this as much as I do. Remember, for years you’ve been wearing my scent on you of your own free will. You were begging to be mine. You want me to take you, to make you mine, as much as I want it. As much as I want you—and that’s not how this is supposed to work.”
I turn my face away because I can’t look at him… because he’s fucking right.
The minute I stop fighting him, he releases me, almost as if he’s stopped fighting me, too. I flop down onto the bed, roll onto my back and watch as, keeping his eyes on me with his expression impassive, he gets off the bed and pulls the remnants of his shirt off his shoulders and lets it drop. The instant it does, I gasp, my hand coming up to cover my mouth.
He stands still and watches me as I sit up and look at him, unable to drag my gaze from his thickly muscled chest, which is covered in scars. Fucking covered. His upper arms are lined with old cuts that have turned into thick scar tissue, and so are his shoulders. I can see where he’s had stitches on his sides, one clearly from a knife wound. The other a bullet?
“Uglier than you hoped for?” he asks.
I meet his eyes, shift my gaze down then up again to his. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? The ugliness?” I ask, not meaning it the way it sounds, the way it wounds, but knowing I’m doing it all the same.
He looks down over himself, then back at me. “Remember, I tried to keep you from seeing it. Now turn around and get on your hands and knees.”
I force myself to hold his gaze.
“I said turn around, Little Kitty, and get on your hands and knees.”
“Why? Can’t stand to look at me when you do it?”
I slip off the bed and go to him, standing so close that I can smell him. The cologne is subtly different when he wears it. It’s the way his skin interacts with it. It’s the thing I was missing all along—that scent of him beneath the cologne.
If he wants to fuck me tonight, he will look at me when he does it, and he will definitely get those claws down his back, exactly as he’d said.
“No,” I say, looking up at his beautiful, cruel face. I think I must be a masochist because even as I reach out to touch one of the scars on his chest, I know all it will earn me is pain.
He catches my hand roughly. We stand still, both of us watching the other. He clearly didn’t expect me to touch him. He was probably expecting me to cringe back at the mess that is his chest. He doesn’t know me, though. No one does. What did he say about secrets? I have my own.
“I’m not afraid of a little truth, Santos.” I need to show him that I’m not afraid of him, that I won’t be cowed. I’m not weak.
He grins. “No?”
I shake my head. It’s his turn to search my face now, to want answers from me that he won’t get. He releases my hand and stands still as I trace the first scar, the deepest one. He shudders, muscle rippling beneath my fingers, almost as though he’s not used to touch, and I remember what he said about being celibate for the last ten years.
“What is it?” I ask, curious, although I’m saving the most interesting ones for last.
“Hunting knife.”
I look up at him, still surprised even though I kind of guessed. It’s the violence of it.
“This one?” I ask, sliding my hand over hard muscle and soft skin toward the rougher tissue of another scar.
“Bullet.”
“You’re not easy to kill.”
One corner of his mouth curves upward. “Are you going to try?”
I don’t answer. He steals a kiss then, and I’m caught off guard. He swallows my gasp as I taste him, taste myself on him. This man… There’s something about him, and there has been since day one. I need to be careful with him.
I shift my gaze to the lines. There must be two dozen in a row all along his arms, cuts deep enough to leave thick scars. Is this the thing about him that somehow connects us?
I reach to touch one, but he grips my wrist hard, harder than before.
“No,” he says. “Not those.”
I look at him, then again at them. “What are they?”
“You don’t want to know, Little Kitty.”
“Like I said, I’m not afraid of a little truth.”
He studies me, a shadow creeping into his eyes, a dense darkness seeming to pour from his pores.
For the first time since I’ve known Santos Augustine, I realize I’ve never really been afraid of him, not like I am right now. Because whatever this is, it’s dark, and it’s alive It lives inside him, and it won’t be careful with me.
I take a step backward.
“Not afraid of a little truth?” he asks, matching that step. “You sure about that? Take care, Little Kitty, before you get hurt.”
I swallow. “Tell me.”
He tilts his head to the side, studying me. I swear he sees me like no one ever has, not even Odin—and that might be the most terrifying thing of all.
“They’re not like yours,” he says.
I know what he’s referring to and it shuts me up. He means my cuts. The ones he saw beneath the bruises of my father’s belt.
My heart races as he walks me backward. He only stops when my back hits the wall. “Tell me something, Little Kitty.” He reaches to touch the space on the underside of one arm, where my own scars, more delicate than his, line up like soldiers in neat rows. Like the ones on the insides of my thighs and in other hidden places no one could ever see. “Why do you cut?” he asks.
I stare up at him, my mouth dry, no words coming out.
He raises his eyebrows. “You don’t want to tell me?” When I don’t respond, he continues. “We all have secrets. Dark ones. I think it’s best you learn now to let things be when I tell you to let them be. It’s safest for you. Do you hear me, Little Kitty?”
I try to swallow, then nod.
“Good. But do you understand me? In here,” he says, the flat of his hand coming to rest over my heart. Heat pulses between us—or maybe that’s my heart’s frantic beating. Can he feel it? He must.
“Santos, I—”
“Do you understand?”
“I… Yes.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to hurt you.” I get caught on those words, and he must see it because he pauses as if giving me time to process before continuing. “There are two things we need to take care of, and then I’ll make your excuses downstairs and you can sleep.”
I nod, a tear sliding down my cheek that I don’t understand. I wait, mute.
“You won’t hurt yourself anymore.”
My lip trembles and more tears fall, and I don’t fucking understand them.
“Did you hear me?” he asks.
“Why do you care?”
“Because you belong to me. I am your master now. You no longer have the right. Am I clear?”
I nod, but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s that I’m not alone, and I don’t have to carry the weight of it all myself. Or maybe I just want this over, want him to go—because no one knows this about me. No one, not even Odin.
“That’s a good kitty.”
“Don’t call me that,” I manage in barely a whisper.
He bends his knees and hoists me up, surprising me, holding me up against the wall and forcing me to wrap my legs around him.
“You don’t like it? I think it fits.” I realize what he’s about to do when I hear the buckle of his belt, the zipper of his slacks.
It’s the second thing that needs to happen.
He nods once as if to acknowledge my thoughts. “You understand. There’s no way around this. You know that, don’t you?” I feel him at my entrance and brace myself, my hands gripping his shoulders, eyes locked on eyes. “Use your nails, Little Kitty. Use your nails and let me feel how much you hate me,” he says finally and pushes inside me.
It hurts. I cry out, burying my face in his shoulder to try to muffle the sound because it fucking hurts.
“Use your nails,” he commands hoarsely, moving faster, driving deeper. “Hurt me.”
I do. And as I bury my nails into his back and feel that breaking of skin, I feel a release. It’s a strange, heavy letting go.
“Good. Good.” He looks at me, eyes nearly black, and he shifts his grip to hold me closer, all the while burying himself inside me. The whole time, I can feel him trying to keep control of himself.
He thickens inside me, his moan anguished. He’s trying to hold back. That’s the sound of the effort it’s taking. He’s trying, and he’s failing.
“Madelena.”
The way he says my name, voice ragged, I don’t know. It’s like right now we’re so close and everything is different with him. This secret he knows about me, it’s more intimate than anything else. Some part of me is relieved that he knows it. It wants him to know.
He cups the back of my head pulling me close, kisses the corner of my mouth, then he drops his forehead into the curve of my neck and mutters a curse as his rhythm changes, growing more frantic.
I wrap my legs tight around him, pressing myself against him as he takes me and the sensation of pain is edged by something else. I press my mouth to his shoulder and cling tight to him.
“Come with me,” he tells me, his hands on either side of my face lifting it, his body pressing mine to the wall. “Come, Madelena.” His face is so close, his eyes dark and burning, and all I can think of is the tension building inside me. It’s all I can feel, and I hear myself begin to moan.
His thrusts come harder, and in moments, I’m coming. My nails dug deep into his back, my face in his hands, our eyes locked, I am coming. The sounds I’m making are desperate gasps as he thrusts once more, twice, until, with a groan he buries his face in my neck and comes inside me, shuddering, saying my name, sinking his teeth into me. Literally.
When it’s over and we’re left panting, he draws backward, holding onto me as my legs slip from around his waist. Without once looking away, and without a word, he lifts me in his arms and carries me to the bed. He lays me down, looks me over, and I follow his gaze to the stain of blood and come on my thighs. When I look back up at him, he’s watching me. Then, a moment later, he walks away into the bathroom.
I touch the place on the curve of my neck. Feel the imprint of his teeth.
He returns, his slacks buttoned up. He’s holding a warm washcloth and when he touches my thigh, I draw away.
“Be still. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I’m not going to hurt you. Why do I believe him? Why do I so desperately want to believe him?
I remain still, and he places the warm cloth between my legs. He presses gently and I wince, sore. If I concentrate, I can still feel him inside me—feel his thickness, his hardness. I watch him as he gently cleans me then disappears into the bathroom.
Chilled, I draw the blanket over myself, trembling a little. What just happened between us? What did I think it would be like? A taking. Only that.
But it wasn’t only that.
Santos returns and looks at me. He has washed his face, pushed wet hands through his hair. He comes to the bed and draws the blanket higher.
“Okay?” he asks.
I shrug because I can’t really speak. I’m not sure what to say.
He nods once. Maybe he’s not sure either, and I don’t know what I want when he turns and walks toward the door. I don’t know why I feel an ache in the very center of myself as I watch his back.
Because I think some part of me wanted to be held, wanted to press my face to his chest and listen to his heart beat and feel his arms around, strong and warm and safe.
I don’t know. All I know is when that door closes behind him, I am alone. Again. Always.