Page 219 of Safe Word

I collapsed against the mattress with the next climax, boneless, breathless. His own followed, but he never broke contact, never let me go. Just simply adjusted me, pulling me, pushing me, wrapping himself around me like a punishment and a blessing in one.

At long last, his hand found my throat gently. His nose buried into my hair as he settled next to me, his breath warm against my skin, slowing, mooring, his heart beating so hard I could feel its rhythm against the mattress.

He held me tighter, his fingers flexing against my skin as if reluctant to let go – not out of dominance this time, but something dangerously close to need.

His palm rested on my hip, the same place he had spanked with the belt. The touch was light, almost reverent, yet the sting beneath it kept me tethered to the lingering ache of his possession. The aftermath was a ghost against my skin, a reminder of everything he had taken, everything I had given.

Then he moved.

His lips traced the curve of my shoulder, pressing warmth into bruised flesh, trailing lower, down the length of my spine.

I felt him pause where he had struck me, his breath a whisper of heat against the tender skin.

A kiss.

Soft – over the place he’d punished. It wasn’t meant to soothe, but it wasn’t cruel, either. He let me linger in that exquisite place between pleasure and pain, letting my body register both at once.

His breathing steadied before mine did.

The quiet between us was heavier than any word, a fragile thing we both pretended we weren’t breaking.

‘Was I too harsh?’ His voice was barely a murmur, slipping into my ear just as sleep began to pull me under.

I shook my head, too exhausted for words.

He shifted, winding himself around me again, moulding his body to mine, his breath slow and steady against my skin.

‘I can’t get enough of you,’ he murmured, his lips brushing my temple, fingers flexing slightly where they rested atop me.

Distantly, I thought I heard him say something else, a whisper threading through the last edges of my consciousness.

But the words scattered like smoke before I could hold onto them: ‘Where have you been all my life?’ was the echo that followed me into my dreams. And I was gone.

I slipped into the quiet void with every nerve aching, my lungs burning. He’d ruined me, then remade me from the wreckage.

One tear at a time.

THIRTY-NINE

She was fire and fucking ruin.

A brand on my skin.

Paula was never meant to be that – not this kind of need, not this ache that twisted into obsession.

And yet, here she was, burned into me, coursing through my veins, a drug I couldn’t quit.

I didn’t do soft. Or fucking forever. I took what I wanted and left, knowing full well they would never want more of me once they glimpsed the truth behind the mask. No one ever got close enough to carve their name into my bones.

But she had. Without asking.

Without mercy.

I’d known she wasn’t like the others the moment she’d walked through my office door.

The first time I’d seen her, she’d looked like trouble coated in that wet, peach lipstick. I’d already imagined those lips around my dick without even speaking a word to her.

A little too sharp, a little too guarded, she had stood at the edge of a shadow she had no business stepping into. And still, she’d walked straight into my tempest, head high, daring me to devour her whole.