Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One (83 page)

He flipped me over onto my back, my body obeying his every command—just a floppy heap of putty in his hands—and walked around to the other side of the bed, avoiding eye contact. Which, unless he told me, I wouldn't have realised was a submissive thing.

Half of his chin was smeared with blood and the other half clear moisture, his hair a mess, his eyes black. I
wanted
him to look at me. I wanted to share this moment with him, but I wanted more to see exactly how he planned to punish me.

“If you hadn't cum, I would have granted your wish and fucked you in that position.” He hooked his fingers under my arms and slid me across the bed so my head tilted backward over the side. “But you clearly need to be taught a lesson.”

I nodded, flexing my fingers under my bottom to help the blood flow back into them.

David stepped back and I heard his jeans hit the floor, his towering body appearing at the crown of my head a second later. Naked. I instinctually closed my eyes as he stood with his legs either side of my head, but as he forced the gag away and ran his thumb across my teeth, opening my mouth, I dared to look up, seeing him from an angle I
never
thought I would.

Since he and I had grown closer over the years, he’d stopped waxing away his chest hair and, clearly, he was a much hairier guy than he ever let on. I wanted to reach up and touch him, but my hands were bound tightly behind me, filling with blood where my bottom pressed them into the mattress.

David leaned forward slightly, his soft hanging flesh falling against my nose, and pushed my legs apart at the knees. “Keep them open. I want to look at you while I do this.”

And before I could say anything, he gripped his penis in one hand and eased it into my mouth. I gagged for a second while he learned how deep he could go, and he shifted it slightly to the side so the tip hit the inside of my cheek as he moved it back and forth past my lips. I could taste the saltiness of his desire, feel the cold of the wet gag on my collarbones, the brush of the air between my legs. I knew he was looking at me there—my body completely exposed in the most intimate way possible, and all it did was make my heart jump. This kind of sex was a hell of a lot more fun than anything we’d ever done before. I liked him like this—the real David. The truth. And I realised, as he expressed his pleasure in soft low tones, that this is what had always been missing. He’d held back so much that I’d never really had sex with the real David—just a version of him. I was sure he could still make love to me without all the kinkiness, but this was the real him. And I liked it. A lot.

My mouth opened more as he hardened and thickened inside it, and I felt a strange pulsing up the vein running the length of him—could almost hear the fluid rushing. He leaned back a bit, holding my head with both hands, moving a little slower than before. I wanted to free my wrists so I could touch him, use my fingers to rub the end that couldn't fit in my mouth, but he said “No” as he saw the thought, and placed his own hand there, the other one by the corner of my mouth, his thumb slipping in beside the head. He traced circles over it, using my saliva to glide his touch smoothly, moaning so loudly I listened for a second to see if Falcon was about to burst in, thinking I was being attacked.

No one came, though. David had clearly given the guys the afternoon off. There’s no way Falcon would have stayed away if he heard noises like that.

“You’d be making those noises too, if you could feel this,” David said.

I tried to laugh, but my throat was completely full of spit. I swallowed down as best I could with my head tipped back and my mouth open, but it all got stuck and I choked, coughing slightly. David backed away quickly, his face appearing right over mine when I opened my eyes.

“You okay?”

I coughed again, wetting my lips and swallowing the last of the saliva. “I’m fine.”

He held my head still in both hands and leaned down to kiss me firmly, his stubbly chin scratching my forehead. I breathed him in deep—the scent of me mixed with his sweat—opening my mouth and eating his lips to savour them, like the smoothest chocolate.

He moved away to kiss my neck, the curve of my shoulder and, without warning this time, his jaw cracked slightly as he opened it wide and bit back down into my skin. I sucked a tight breath through my teeth, forcing the scream down hard into my chest, but the tip of his fangs kept digging deeper and deeper, and I cried out, wriggling down the bed away from him. A trail of blood followed me, pulsing from my artery with every heartbeat.

David and I looked at each other across the mess, breathing deeply.

He licked his lips, wiping his chin with the back of his wrist, and a quick breath escaped me as his lips wrapped my wound again, his body forcing mine down on the bed. He made a small cut in his own neck, like he used to do when I was human, and let the blood drip down into my waiting mouth, most of it spilling onto my neck, into my hair. I drank desperately at what I could lick up with my tongue, the sweet smoothness soothing so many cravings for so many different desires in each gulp.

David stopped drinking then and I noticed him quickly inspect the wound before sliding his hands under my shoulders and moving me up onto the pillows. As he knelt back a little, our eyes met for a moment, and it was enough to turn his green again. He smiled at the blood on my face, wiping it with his thumb, his eyes travelling down my body then to my open legs.

“I shouldn't have looked in your eyes.” He cupped a firm flat palm over the curve between my legs.

“Why?”

“Because this will all be over as soon as I put myself inside you.”

I offered nothing more than a wild, inviting smile.

He leaned down and kissed my belly, then jumped back and knelt between my legs, cupping my legs under the knees and sliding me down until I slipped onto him like a glove. And it felt cold at first, the air having cooled me for too long, until the rock hardness of him moved the deeper warmth closer to the entrance.

I wrapped my legs around his hips and he landed on his hands beside my shoulders, his stomach arched over my belly, his hot breath brushing my lashes. The desire to touch him, to hold him, won out over the need to be obedient, so I burned the ropes away from my wrists with a quick charge of Cerulean Light and, ignoring the singed flesh, untangled my hands and brought them up to grip his shoulder blades.

He looked down in confusion for a moment, then laughed softly, leaning in to kiss my head after. “I love you, Ara.”

I didn’t respond. I just closed my eyes, tilted my face to the sky, and let myself feel every inch of him, both inside and out. My hands knew every curve, every small bump in his skin, every indent, despite his body having changed so much. I ran my hands up over his ribs like they were a fabric I'd never touched before, memorising each reaction he had, learning him all over again.

“Don’t stop,” he whispered into my hair. “I swear to God your touch is going to break me, Ara, but I couldn't bear it if you stopped.”

“Break you?” I looked up, and as I scanned his cheeks toward his eyes, I saw a thin line of tears. “David?”

He pressed his lips to my forehead again and left them there.

“I love you,” I whispered, and wrapped my arms and legs all the way around him, guiding him deeper as we both reached the peak of endurance and slipped over the edge, the blood throbbing between us, hot, while our hearts saturated the moment in the coolness of emotion. I felt the agony of everything we suffered finally coming to rest above every other feeling in me right now. The orgasm felt incomplete somehow, as if it never happened, even though both our bodies were saturated in the liquid satisfaction of it.

David laid on top of me, crushing Bump a little, his lips still against my forehead, breathing so heavily I wondered if he was okay.

I rolled up slightly and kissed just below his ear. “We’re gonna be okay, you know.”

“I know.” He leaned back a bit, giving my belly some relief. “I’m tired of worrying all the time. I’m done. No more.” His head moved in a no but his eyes fixed to mine with a promise. “Nothing Fate concocts will ever hurt us again.”

I pulled him close to me again and dried his tears with my cheek, keeping my face against his. “I’ll talk to Lilith—make her help us. Threaten her if I have to. We live in peace from now on, or we run a million miles away from here and no one ever sees us again.”

He shook his head. “No. We won’t run anymore, my love. From now on, we fight.”