“I’m going to do so many things to you. So many f**king sinful thi—” Q groaned, stopping mid-word as he thrust deep and hard.
He shattered the gentle rock, increasing the tempo until his balls slapped against my clit. I squeezed my eyes against the brain-warping need to come.
As Q lost himself in me, I lost myself to him. The sound of the helicopter faded away, and the most important thing in the world was the connection between us. The intrinsic link of male and female.
Q pinched my cl*t as he thrust violently, sending us forward a few centimetres. His hip bones bruised my ass as he turned savage. Gone were the long and measured thrusts. These were short and sharp and entirely explosive.
“Fuck, esclave. Fuck, yes.” He let go of my bound wrists and spanked me once—hard and biting as he rippled inside; jets of hot come set off my own reaction, and I combusted.
The orgasm thundered into being but then teetered on edge, almost as if it expected to be denied again. The pain of being held in limbo made me cry out.
I writhed and bucked against Q’s relentless pace.
“You have my permission. Come. Squeeze around my cock.” Q thrust harder, stroking my cl*t until I had no choice but to fall.
I plummeted over the edge.
I surrendered to the pulsating waves of bliss.
My entire body contracted, and every part of me supernovaed into tiny particles. The little pieces of my soul collided, before reforming into something new.
My past no longer existed. My future was uncertain, but one thing was for sure, Q tumbled me headfirst into vulnerability, stripping me bare.
When the last tremor quaked through me, it ripped me apart, leaving my head swimming, lungs screaming, and my body completely limp. The sensation of being put back together after a world-altering orgasm brought me to tears.
I’d been reborn.
Q chuckled, still rock hard inside, but his voice sounded off as if he forced himself to speak. “I could come just from you milking my cock.”
He pulled out and gently undid the tie from around my wrists. My body refused to move from the face-plant-ass-up position, and I moaned in pleasure as he wiped his come from between my legs with his expensive silk tie.
What just happened to me?
Once he finished, he stood and gathered me from the ground. Not meeting my eyes, he quickly secured his trousers and stuffed his tie into the same pocket that held my knickers.
His body was supple, sated, but his eyes were tight.
I reached to pull my skirt down, but he stopped me with his large hands. “Let me.”
When our eyes connected, I stopped breathing. Whatever happened to me, he sensed it. He saw my confusion, my fragility.
His face danced with confliction along with a trace of self-loathing.
With aching tenderness, he smoothed down my skirt, frowning at the tear in the fabric he’d caused. We breathed each other as he carefully fastened the delicate buttons on my blouse. His hands were gentle and reverent as he repaired the damage, his knuckles brushing the sensitive flesh of my br**sts.
His lips stayed tight in concentration, and I fell a little more.
Fell further into lunacy for this man who made me live.
When the last button was done he paused, not moving away. “Tess…”
I shook my head. Now was not the time to acknowledge what happened between us. I wanted to savour it. Protect it.
He nodded, eyes troubled. He guided me into a chair and did up my seat belt. Leaning over me, he gave me the sweetest smile, whispering, “I think we just joined the mile high club.”
I laughed softly as he sat in his own chair and glanced out the window. He looked pensive, completely wrapped up in his thoughts. The air between us no longer seethed with sexual tension, it hummed with emotional connection.
I knew why Q looked quiet—it was because something deeper than just sex had happened. My mind felt it, my heart welcomed it—in the moment where Q made me splinter, I let down an unconscious wall. A wall that had been there my entire childhood—a foundation so I could have some sense of happiness, all while being unloved by my parents.
Q shattered that wall, and he felt it, too.
Something soft webbed between us, and I hoped it was the beginning of our future.
I sighed, resonating with bruises and aches.
High above the world, we were in perfect twisted harmony.
Chapter 5
You crawled into the darkness, set my monster free,
so scream, bleed, call out to me, but never say stop, never flee…
I’d done it.
I did what I was after—what the beast was after.
I broke her.
I damaged something deep within Tess, and it f**king butchered me. I wanted to apologise, to slam to my knees and beg for her forgiveness, but she shook her head when I began, shutting me out.
I didn’t know what the f**k happened. Nothing outwardly changed, but something had crumbled—some barrier between us—some ledge we hadn’t crossed.
As the helicopter began its descent from clouds to city, I beat myself up for punishing her. For demanding too much, too soon.
I f**king broke something deep inside her. What if I’ve ruined everything?
Risking a look at Tess, I flinched at the shadows around her neck and the fading carpet pattern on her cheek. Her eyes were closed with a tiny smile on her pink, perfect lips.
She’d removed her pantyhose to get rid of evidence of our in-flight entertainment and her skin was flushed.
My heart thudded hard, spreading foreign warmth through my body. The longer I stared, the more I wanted to wrap her up and keep her safe, but in the same thought, I wanted to kill and ruin anyone who came near her.
I wanted to highlight her bruises, mark her skin, so everyone knew she belonged to me. I wanted to brand her, to scar her, to wear her blood as a blatant warning to any man who ever looked in her direction.
Shit! I’m f**ked up to want to hurt her so badly. I was right to send her back to Brax, and wrong to accept her back. She would never be free now. Not now I’d tasted her submission, felt the break in her psyche.
The delicious snap had sounded like a gong in my heart. I felt her break; I wanted to crawl deep inside her and find out what part of her yielded to me.
It was a sick addiction, and I wanted more. More. More. More.
I wouldn’t be satisfied till I broke every barrier, consumed every thought.
Leaning forward, I put my head in my hands, trying to massage away the rapidly forming headache.
I’d always thought of myself as steel. Forged in hatred for my own father, sculptured by a will of iron to never bend to my heinous family traits. I’d always believed I was invincible. But I wasn’t.
Turned out Tess was a furnace—the f**king kiln and smelter who gave no choice but to buckle and melt and turn into liquid.
Steel didn’t change. It couldn’t change its molecular structure, but liquid metal…it could. Other elements could be added, minerals removed, impurities purged, until an entirely new composite existed.
That’s how I felt.
Melting, changing, evolving.
I just hoped I survived the transition.
*****
“Bonjour, Mr. Mercer. Directement au bureau?” Straight to the office?
I scowled at the chauffeur. In his penguin suit and slicked-back hair, he looked like any other member of my countless staff on call to run me around, do errands, and make sure the f**king scary CEO of Moineau Holdings was happy.
I was never happy.
But today I was worse than normal. I was wound tight and confused, but I kept my tangled emotions hidden beneath a blank angry façade. “Oui.” I smiled tightly in thanks, all the while wondering how the hell I was going to get through the day.
Ushering Tess off the helicopter and into the back of the Rolls-Royce Phantom, I tried to keep my hands soft instead of grabbing her and shaking the crap out of her. Tell me what broke! Tell me if I ruined you.
I wanted her to admit I ruined her as much as I hoped to f**k I hadn’t. Would I ever have one thought that wasn’t schizophrenic?
Tess slid onto the side seat, looking serene and content against the beige leather. She looked around, taking in the crystal bar, the big-screen TV, the decadence of such a vehicle.
“It’s a morning full of surprises,” she whispered.
I didn’t think she meant for me to hear, but as I settled onto the backseat, I asked, “Care to tell me what the other surprises were?”
Perhaps the bit where you came undone, and it snapped so loudly, I heard it in my f**king soul?
I kept my balled hands hidden between my legs, portraying the picture of calm and stability. When really I wanted to slap her and demand the truth.
But her entire demeanour turned languid and hard to read. She moved as if she had a delicious secret. She didn’t move like a woman I’d destroyed.
Trying to tame my rapid heartbeat, I waited for her to answer. But she shook her head and looked out the window as the chauffeur started the car and pulled away. We were on a landing pad on top of a parking garage I owned. My office was next door. The inconvenience of driving the final three minutes paid in dividends for the use of roof space.
Tess picked up a champagne flute with a sparrow flying over a skyscraper etched into the glass. She ran her thumb over the engraving, turning to look at me. “Have I told you how much I love your logo?”
My lips twitched a little. I loved it, too. It took countless days, sketching frantically when I was sixteen, trying to figure out a sigil that I would wear with pride.
Every time I saw it I sat taller, embraced the hard work I did, all because it allowed me to free so many women.
Blondes, brunettes, young, and old.
Without this company—without my success—I wouldn’t have been able to send so many home after a lifetime of torture. It wasn’t often I felt proud. A man like me with so many demons lashing at his soul could never be truly proud of the human he was, but in that moment, I let myself be content.
“I’m glad you like it.”
Suddenly, I regretted the four days with Tess I’d squandered. Instead of taking advantage of having her to myself, I’d buried myself in f**king paperwork, avoiding her questions, her requests for connection.
I’d blocked her off emotionally because I wasn’t ready. I’m still not f**king ready.
But now it felt like such a waste. I could’ve found out everything about her—asked her multiple questions, until I possessed every inch, every thought.
And now it was too late. I let her free. She was no longer my prisoner, secreted away in my house to whip and fuck. She would become known by my staff. She would become a part of my business world.
My throat closed up. Sickness rolled in my stomach, and for the first time since I was a boy, I felt loss. The terror that Tess would find others better than me. That she might one day grow to hate me and share my darkest secrets with the world.
I hated myself for the thought. I could trust her.
But I didn’t, and that one confession made me worse than every other fault combined.
Tess had accepted both me and my beast. She was falling in love with me. She had a power over me that no one else had before. And I didn’t trust her.
Shit, I’m scum.
“I want to take you out to dinner tonight,” I grumbled, trying hard to battle back the darkness.
Tess’s eyes flew to mine. “Dinner? As in a date?” She laughed quietly. “It’s a bit backward, don’t you think? After you owning me and all.”