Bound by Rapture (2 page)

I leaned down, putting my hands on either side of her head. “You don’t get it, Julia. I have this need. This urge…” I let the words linger as I imagined my dick thrusting between those soft lips. I hadn’t had the pleasure of her mouth since she left me four months ago, since she walked away after she found out the truth. But this time it was different. The need to dominate her was more intense, to prove to her she was really mine. She couldn’t run again, she couldn’t push me away. 

She needs to know.

I closed my eyes, trying to push back the raging emotions. 

Her grip tightened and her delicate hand pumped up and down on my dick.

“Fuck, Julia.” My eyes popped open. “You keep doing that and I’m not going to be able to control myself.”

A small smile spread across her lips. “I know.”

I leaned in and pressed my lips to her forehead. “I don’t want to hurt you.” My arms shook around her head, not from the strain of supporting my weight, but from the weakening hold I had on my self-control.

“I can handle it, Cole. Let me show you.”

The sweet sound of her voice snaked through me, filling me with so much love, so much passion. I moved down her body, jerking my cock from her grasp and found her lips with my own, ravenous for a taste of her. She opened up to me, kissing me back with the same fervent need, as if she would die without my touch, without
me
. 

A strangled moan tore from my chest and I kissed her harder, desperate to taste every inch of her mouth, to kiss her until she forgot everyone before me. My hands were everywhere, in her hair, plucking her nipples, gripping her hips. My cock a raging dagger trapped between our bodies.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was off her, snatching the key from the dresser and unlocking the cuffs. The second the metal fell away from her wrist, Julia was sitting up and dropping to her knees on the floor. She crawled toward me, her blue hair in messy disarray, the colorful flower tattoos on her shoulder bright against her skin. Her movements triggered something primal in me.

She stopped, her face only inches away from my cock. “I can handle it, Cole. If you let me be in control.”

Let her be in control?
 

She licked the tip. “You know you want to.”

I groaned and backpedaled until I hit the dresser. 

“I don’t know if I can.” 

She followed me, crawling on all fours. “You can. I trust you.” She took me in her mouth. I shuddered, gripping the wood behind me with tense fingers. She sucked on the tip, making me desperate to buck into her mouth.

Shove it down her throat. Show her who she belongs to.

I pushed the voice away and clung to her words.
“I trust you.”
If she could trust me after everything, then I could do this. I could control myself for her. 

She sucked me deeper, taking me farther back into her delicate throat. She gripped my hips, her nails biting into my flesh. I tightened my hold on the dresser, the wood grain cutting into my skin. I embraced the pain. It kept me focused on being still and at the same time intensified the pleasure of her pretty little mouth on my cock.
My cock, no one else’s. 

She picked up the pace, moving faster, letting my dick hit the back of her throat over and over until she gagged. The sight was nearly my undoing, having the woman of my dreams gagging on
my
cock. I stopped her and snatched her up off the floor. Any longer, and I would explode in her mouth. As much as I wanted that, I wanted to be inside her more. 

I lifted her up until her wet cunt hovered right over my pulsing dick. I stabbed into her. 

“Fuck, Cole, yes!”

I gripped her hips and pistoned in and out of her, the sound of our skin slapping together like sweet music to my ears. 

“You’re mine, Julia.” I’d told her before, but she needed to hear it again and again. Over and over. I needed to say it. “Only mine.”

“Yours. I’m yours, Cole.” She dug her hands into my sweaty hair and leaned back, looking straight into my eyes. Hers were half-closed, drowsy with lust. She was going to cum soon. “But you’re mine, too. Only mine.” She bit her lip. White teeth stood out in stark contrast to her pink lips, the flesh looking as if it would burst like sweet a berry. 

“Yours,” I grated. “And I’m not going anywhere. Understand?” I moved faster. “Tell me you understand. We’re in this together.”

“Together.” She moaned.

“No running away.”

“No running.” Her gaze met mine. “I promise.”

That was all I needed. I leaned in and sunk my teeth into her lip. Her reaction was instantaneous, her body shuddering, her pussy gripping my cock, milking it. I followed her down the rabbit hole of pleasure, my own orgasm exploding deep inside her. I bit down harder, refusing to let go, while utter ecstasy coursed through my veins. 

When I came down from the high, her forehead was leaning against mine, her chest heaving, beads of sweat tracking down between them. I released her lip and leaned in, licking away the salty drops, savoring them on my tongue. 

“You’re so—”

The sting of her palm against my cheek took the words right out of my mouth, reminding me of the newly sewed up wound on the back of my head. 

I jerked my face forward. “What the fuck was that for?”

“Don’t ever leave me tied up again.”

If she had been anyone else, one of the faceless females I’d fucked, or Elaine, I would have dropped her ass right there on the floor and told her to get the fuck out. But she wasn’t one of them. The sting in my cheek only made my softening cock pulse back to life. 

“I don’t know, Julia. I kinda like coming home to you naked and chained to my bed.”

“That isn’t your bed,” she hissed. 

“It is now.” I smiled. “Do I need to prove it?” I thrust my hips, my cock almost completely hard.

Her eyes widened and she chewed her bottom lip again. It was swollen, my teeth marks embedded in the flesh. The sight made something more than just my cock swell.
Mine.

I considered fucking her again right then. Laying her back on the bed and pounding into her, showing her. But then I remembered what I’d come here for to begin with. The news I had to tell her. It had been my main priority until I came within ten feet of her apartment building. Well, technically it was
my
apartment building since I owned it. But when I was close, all I could think about was the sight of her naked and chained, and my cock did all the thinking after that. 

I set her on her feet, pushing away the disappointment as my dick slipped from her wet folds. “You’re lucky there’s something we have to do or you would already be screaming my name again.”

“Sounds more like a punishment than luck.”

I smiled. “Get dressed.”

TWO

Julia.

It seemed a little surreal, trailing after Cole, his warm hand firmly clasped in mine. Maybe it was because I was following him into Rapture, the strip club where I used to work, where I used to fuck my best friend once a month for thousands of dollars in front of hundreds of hungry stares. With everything that had happened in the last five months it seemed strange that I could just walk back in here, alive and well. 

It was Tuesday, so the club was closed. That was a relief; I wasn’t in the mood to see anyone I knew. 

“Why are we here, Cole?” I couldn’t imagine what he had to show me. Honestly, I wasn’t really in the mood. Someone had tried to kill me less than a month ago, and last night my friend Mandi had been murdered while I slept in the bed next to her, lost somewhere in dreamland from the sleeping pills I’d taken. 

I was exhausted and I needed a nap, not to mention I’d also been left handcuffed to a bed for several hours and fucked senseless by the man I loved. 

It had been quite a day. 

He didn’t respond and I frowned but continued to follow him. He paused just outside his office door. The room where he had been honest with me for the first time. The room where he told me he loved me.  

“I love you,” he said, as if he could read my mind, as if he knew I had been replaying those earth-shattering moments in my head. Moments that would linger with me for eternity. “Remember that.” 

He opened the door quickly, not giving me the chance to respond. The first thing I saw was the mahogany-colored desk with papers stacked on top of it. Papers and something else. Something that made me want to fucking lose my shit.

Elaine was perched on the edge of the desk. An expensive dark blue dress clung to her petite frame, revealing a wild amount of cleavage. Red lipstick was bright on her lips, matching the color of her long nails. Her black hair was loose, framing her face. But her make-up couldn’t cover the purplish bruise beneath both eyes where I had punched her the day before. I fought the urge to grin.

“Cole, what is this?” Elaine beat me to the punch. Maybe it was because I was completely dumbfounded by the sight of her in all her expensive glory, while I only wore skin-tight yoga pants and a t-shirt, my hair a tangled mess I’d thrown up in a haphazard ponytail. 

“This is something that has been long overdue.” He shut the door behind me and about a hundred different scenarios flashed through my brain. I envisioned Cole wearing a striped referee jersey and blowing a whistle, signaling for me and Elaine to go at it. She would get in a few swipes with her pretty red claws, but I would punch her in the face again. Over and
over
until she understood he was mine. 

That wasn’t what happened, though. Cole put his hands in his pockets, his gaze darting between us for a moment before he spoke again. “I should have done this a long time ago.” His gaze was fixed on Elaine and I hated it. I hated that she’d been graced with his presence, with his gaze. He had fucked her before, repeatedly probably. The way he had fucked me. 

How many times has he tied her up and fucked her? How many times did he do that when I was fucking miserable in that gas station?

The thoughts made me bitter. They made everything more real. I still didn’t know Cole, not really. He had a whole life behind him that I knew nothing about. A past, years of love with the woman before me. 

“I never should have brought you back into my life, but I was stupid, Elaine. And whatever it was you thought was going on with us is over.”

I wanted to dance, relish in his words and scream
HAHA
in her face, but I didn’t. I didn’t even feel the sting of pride that he was choosing me. Because he wasn’t. Not really. He had chosen her, even after he met me. 

“He always comes back to me.”
Elaine’s words from days ago rang loudly in my ears. How many times had they done this? How many times had Cole left her for another woman and gone back? I didn’t know. 

“You don’t mean that.” Elaine glanced between us, for the first time looking uncertain. “We’re engaged.” She wiggled her finger with the big rock on it. The huge sparkling diamond. He told me she’d picked it out herself, that he had nothing to do with it, but it still stung. It still ripped me apart and left the pieces of who I was blowing in the hot Texas wind.

“That ring is a joke and we both know it. There isn’t anything between us. Not anymore. There hasn’t been in years.” Cole’s words were gentle. Too gentle. 

I wasn’t relieved to hear them at all. 

Elaine glanced at me and for a second I swore I could see into her very soul. A woman heart-broken over the man she loved. I almost felt bad, being here for this. As if I was looking into a private matter I had no business being a part of. 

“You’re going to leave me,
really
leave me, for this fucking whore?”

And then I didn’t feel bad at all. I didn’t give two shits about Elaine and I remembered why. She had tried to kill me. I didn’t care if Cole didn’t think so, or my Gran, or Mandi.
Mandi
. Her name made my heart ache. Mandi didn’t think it was Elaine, and now she was dead. Now I was standing in an office with the stupid bitch, the woman who wanted me dead because she wanted Cole.
My Cole. 

“Looks like he
is
leaving you for a whore,” I hissed. “How does that make you feel?” Venom dripped from my lips. How had I ever had a moment of sorrow for this woman? How had I let myself forget the things she had done? I knew it was her. I just
knew
it. “How does it feel to know that even your stupid expensive gown couldn’t change his mind?”

I swear I saw some sort of monster staring back at me from Elaine’s dark irises. “This is bullshit.” She looked at Cole. “Did you get me here to put on a fucking show? To prove to your little whore there’s nothing between us?” She wiggled her hand again, the big diamond catching the light. 

Cole grabbed her hand and snatched it off her finger. “It’s over, Elaine. It’s been over for years. It’s time to let it go. I’m sorry I brought you into this mess just to make Julia jealous.”

I cocked my head at him.
He got back with her to make me jealous?
I let the statement roll around in my head.
But that doesn’t make sense.