Yet I’d felt endlessly trapped.
He wasn’t him.
But here… with a man I didn’t know driving into me with reckless uncaring, I felt… free.
Free from a past shrouded deep in my brain. Free from wrong decisions. I was unshackled and taken and possessed.
I loved it.
My lips parted as I breathed hard, my knees digging into the covers as Killian rocked viciously. He was the opposite of caring, the polar eclipse of gentle, yet he made my heart spread its atrophied wings and fly.
“Yes,” I moaned. “Don’t stop.”
His hot balls slapped against my clit as he rode me harder and faster than I thought possible.
“Shut up,” he growled, slapping an open palm against my ass. The punishment sent my blood arching to the surface of my skin, making everything blister in intensity.
I wanted more. I wanted to be alive.
“Arthur…” I looked over my shoulder. The image of his tight eyes and pleasure-flushed face sent another clench through my core.
“Shit, you don’t learn.” His large hand came down, clamping around my neck, forcing my face away and my eyes to focus on the plain wall. “My name is not yours to use. Shut the fuck up while I take you.”
Why?
Because you don’t like to be reminded that you’re human? A man who needs companionship?
He groaned in a mixture of guilt and bliss. My stomach twisted and another orgasm sparked as he drove upward, hitting my G-spot.
Not letting go of my neck, he grunted as he thrust again and again. I squirmed beneath his grip to look at him. I wanted to see this animal consuming me.
But his fingers tightened around my nape, pressing my cheek harder into the bed. “Don’t look. Don’t fucking look at me with her eyes.”
My heart broke as his voice cracked. The pain inside, the misery—it was all wrapped up in anger and rage. My eyes fluttered as a throb in my core took me completely by surprise. Yes, he was demanding and stripped me of dignity, but at the same time he’d given me himself to pleasure and please.
The fierce, slightly unstable Arthur Killian became a simple-minded creature. He surrendered to me completely as I wriggled my hips and lavished the feeling of being taken. The heat of his flesh scalded my thighs; the rush of his breath tickled my back.
I wanted him to come. I wanted his release. I wanted to have that power.
He panted in time with his thrusts. His hand on my neck pushed harder, forcing me to take more and more. My eyes watered as he took me to heights I’d never explored.
Suddenly, he bent over me, pressing his body along the length of mine.
I barely had time to suck in a breath when he thrust harder from behind, gliding deep and fast. I was so turned on. Soaking for his violence.
His large hand spanned my hip, while the hand on the back of my neck never stopped gripping me. He half throttled me from behind as he fucked me hard, so damn hard. And ruthless, so damn ruthless.
It was the hardest I’d ever taken—at least I thought it was—but he still held something back. Still didn’t give me his all. I jerked my hips, encouraging him to go deeper. I wanted to come again. I wanted to own his pleasure.
His cock stroked me until my mind filled with sparks. His fingers tightened around my neck and then he came—spurting inside, fucking me into mind-flipping oblivion.
His body jerked as the waves of his orgasm wracked his frame. He groaned long and low, shuddering as the last ripple drained him dry. The moment he finished, he pulled out and rolled away.
I collapsed onto my stomach, bruised, tingling, and struggling with the mixture of emotions squeezing my heart.
Kill bent over me, undid the tie around my wrists in a quick release, and then climbed off the bed.
Nothing was said. Nothing was mentioned.
Silence was absolute. And we both had no courage to break it.
I lay in artificial darkness with an unbearable throbbing between my legs as Kill strode naked from the room and didn’t come back.
Chapter Ten
Happiness was not permitted in my world.
I couldn’t afford to think of softness or weakness or want.
I hurt more than any other time I’d been unfaithful to her memory. Worse than any moment of disgusting sexual need.
I cheated on the woman who owned me. I wanted to howl at the moon, curse the gods, and reap havoc on the earth for what they’d done to us.
I was so damn alone, so fucking broken, so hauntingly lonely.
And I would never find peace until I was with her again.
Death was my one salvation.
But not yet.
I couldn’t join my lover until I’d taken care of a few things.
Carnage.
Payback.
Retribution.
—Kill
“No, you got it wrong again.” He leaned over me and snatched the pencil from my fingers. Turning it upside down, he used the barely there eraser to rub out the equation.
Once my answer had disappeared, he passed me back my pencil. “You need a better eraser. You make more mistakes than anyone I know.”
I pouted, brushing off the eraser shavings from my homework. “You could be a little nicer about it.”
He scoffed. “Nicer? You asked me to be hard on you. How else will you get the grades you want to be a vet?”
I looked into his green eyes. “You don’t have to rub your geniusness in my face, though. I feel stupid next to you.”
His cheeks pinked.
Was this our first fight? My heart rabbited and I felt sick, so sick to think we weren’t as perfect for each other as I’d hoped.
Then he smiled, pulling me into his embrace. “I might have a brain more adapted to numbers than you, but you… One look from you… and I’m the stupidest boy alive.”
I froze. “I make you stupid?”
He kissed me ever so softly. “Crazy stupid. Insanely stupid. Want to know why?”
“Why?” I breathed into his mouth.
“Because when you’re around, I never think with my head, I only think with my heart, and it only knows one thing—how much it adores you.”The sunshine stole me from the wonderful dream, shoving aside teenage crushes and depositing me back into a body that burned from sexual overuse.
My muscles creaked and groaned as if I were a derelict house after withstanding a brutal earthquake.
I stretched, wallowing in the sadness of missing a boy I didn’t know was real. I still hadn’t seen him. The dream had been crisp apart from the deliberate fuzziness around his image. My brain seemed to enjoy teasing me with snippets but never giving me the full clue.
Kill had never returned last night and I’d spent the witching hour full of loathing one minute and victory the next. He’d taken me—in that I had power. But he’d left—so I was nothing more than a body to use.
I needed to find a way to obliterate his protective rage and explore what he kept hidden beneath.
But first, I had to do the same to myself. I refused to be blind in a world with so many secrets. It was time for Operation Smash Through Amnesia.
Staring at the white ceiling, I balled my hands. Breathing deep, I said out loud, “What is your name?”
I paused. Waiting for my brain to search through the mess, unlock doors I had no keys to, and deliver an answer. Buttercup was the only thing that came. Even Sagittarius wasn’t strong, as I somehow knew he’d called me Buttercup, too.
“Where do you live?”
I waited.
And waited.
“What’s your best friend’s name?”
Corrine.
My heart rate spiked.
“Corrine.”
Oh my God, I remembered her. Pixie-cut blonde hair, slim, energetic. She’d been studying veterinary science with me at…
I growled in frustration and skipped to my next question. “How old are you?”
You’re three and a half years younger than him. He thought it was too much of a difference. That’s why he refused to take your virginity.
I slapped a hand over my mouth. I willed more to come. Nothing but blankness returned.
The shrill sound of ringing drifted in through the open door. A doorbell? A phone?
Last night, after I’d come alive beneath the man who held my very existence in his hands, I’d welcomed the dawn in an empty bed.
Kill had gone and I’d battled with the urge to follow. I’d wanted to go after him, but managed to stay in bed—his bed. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to chase him, not with how complex his emotions were. I had no right to pry into his heart.
But curiosity was an insatiable need.
Sliding from the warm covers, I wrapped a blanket around my nakedness and went in search. Down the long corridor, and ascending the stairs, I found Kill in his office—the same room where he’d very nearly died.
The floor was cleaned and the towels and bloody water had gone.
Did the cleaning lady do that or him?
Sunshine bounced into the room, defying the white blinds, half drawn to stop the glare on the computer screens, and the large mathematical artwork loomed ever higher, as if taunting me from my dream.
He helped you with your homework.
Whoever the boy was who owned my heart, he was smart—just like this brooding president.
Kill sat in the glow of early morning sun, his naked chest gleaming from a recent shower. He hadn’t dressed yet, but wore a pair of black boxer-briefs. His tattooed leg was hidden beneath his desk. I leaned against the door frame, watching the planes of his back as the golden light made him seem otherworldly. The large ridges of muscle elongated down his spine, looking both masculine and graceful. The huge tattoo was a stain on his flesh. The skull and coins were there, along with the motto—but it looked clouded. As if it’d been drawn over another design—a design that refused to fade beneath the new ink.