His ragged groan felt torn from the pits of Hell, an unleashing of some kind of beast that had never seen the light of day. He took the weight of my breast in his hand, sucking as much of it into his mouth as he could manage.
My orgasm came suddenly, shoving me over the edge into something that turned my vision white and left me collapsing against him. Scar shuddered beneath me and released my hair, that one hand continuing to guide my hips to move when I lost all semblance of reality, until my body stopped convulsing with the force of my climax.
When I lifted my head, he smiled up at me, shifting my weight so that I would be more comfortable as I cuddled into his chest. He was still hard between my legs, still pulsing with his own desire.
I reached between our bodies, stroking him with my hand before he stopped me with a warm smile. “This was never about me, cuore mio. This was about you remembering how good your body can feel.”
He guided my hand away, letting me rest on him for a few moments of peace. “Up you get,” he ordered finally, lifting me from his lap and standing smoothly. He deposited me on the floor on my feet, moving to the closet where my clothes from my apartment had been put away.
“What are you doing?” I asked, when he returned with a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra.
“Showing you how to work your body and make it hurt in a healthy way,” he said, helping me into the new clothes.
I thought I’d known what it was to be tired before. I knew nothing in comparison to what Scar was about to put me through.
51
SCAR
“Again,” I ordered, watching as her face twisted into a glare. Her arms hung limply at her sides, her head bowed forward as her chest heaved with the exertion of my demands. “I said fucking again.”
She curled her hands into fists, the hand wrap flexing with them.
“Fix your thumb unless you want it broken,” I said, correcting her positioning for the tenth time in the last ten minutes. After thirty minutes of stretching her body until her muscles were as relaxed as a limp noodle, I’d pushed her into weight training.
She wasn’t ready to run yet, not with her leg only barely out of the brace and working through her daily strengthening exercises.
So we’d promptly taken a page from Sadie’s book, wrapping her hands and teaching her how to throw a punch. Some people thought that after you’d been taught once, you’d know how to do it if the time ever came that you needed it.
They were dead fucking wrong.
The trick in knowing how to defend yourself came from doing it so often that it was committed to muscle memory. Irina wasn’t there yet, her body sagging beneath the effort.
Through her glare, she fixed her thumbs and hauled off. She put all her weight into the punch, using it to drive it into my open palm and taking satisfaction from the thump that carried through the gym.
Her knuckles were pink when she pulled back her right hand, immediately following it with a jab with her left. On and on she went, a rapid succession of punches that wouldn’t be enough to knock anyone out, but they’d sure as fuck shock the hell out of someone who didn’t expect it.
Irina might not have been as tiny as Sadie or Samara, but they had muscle and curves where she had lithe and lean definition. Too lean, after her attempts to stop eating entirely, but they were slowly returning to normal with me feeding her by hand.
She’d stopped fighting it, no longer needing me to dictate how much she ate, but the darkest part of me liked providing her nourishment in such a visceral way.
It loved knowing that she lived because of me, that everything that went into her body came from me.
Even if Ivory had cooked it.
“Enough,” I said, releasing her from the workout as she stumbled over her own two feet with the exhaustion weighing her body down.
“You’re an asshole,” she snapped, probably regretting her choice to ask me for help and tell me she needed pain.
“You hurting or not?” I asked, raising an eyebrow when she leveled a glare at me. She couldn’t deny that the exercise had left her so tired she could barely function, her body claimed by a soreness that could only come from a thorough workout.
It was just a bonus that it would help her rebuild her confidence in her ability to take care of herself in the meantime.
“Yes,” she said reluctantly, her tone echoing her desire not to give me the credit I was due. I suspected an orgasm followed by working her body until she couldn’t walk had been more effective than bleeding herself.
“Let’s go, Butterfly,” I said, stepping forward and lifting her into my arms. Draping her over my shoulder, I took away her ability to walk and let her dangle over my back. She giggled despite herself, the hoarse sound echoing straight up my blue balls and into my stomach.
That giggle was worth every second of pain.
I carried her into the house and to our private suite, ignoring the smile on Ivory’s face when she saw Irina’s grin. Her eyes were wet, the significance of that smile not lost on either of us.
Irina was coming back to life, slowly returning to us. She may not ever be the same, but she was still her.
She was still mine.
I reached in and turned the shower on, taking pride in the fact that Irina was comfortable enough with me that she didn’t hesitate to strip off her clothes. There was no moment of fear or worry before she stripped down.
She stepped in the moment she was naked, letting the water soak her raven hair and spill down over her face. Sucking back greedy breaths of air while the lukewarm water soothed her skin, and enjoying the way she felt when it cooled off, she turned to face me.
She cocked her head to the side, a playful smirk toying with her lips. “Aren’t you coming in?” Showering together had become something we did regularly because of her casts and the weakness of her limbs, but after she’d rubbed her pretty little cunt all over my cock, something about it felt dangerous.
With my dick tenting my gym shorts, I didn’t trust myself to be that close to her naked, wet body. Water dripped down her pert breasts, gliding over her flat stomach and between her thighs before continuing on down to her toes as she stepped toward me.
“Not today, Butterfly,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat. Her gaze dropped to my cock, her little pink tongue darting out to trace the seam of her mouth.
I’d never had a woman’s lips wrapped around my cock, never felt the ecstasy that most men were addicted to.
The knowledge that Irina would be the first settled through me, only serving to thoroughly convince me that I could not get in that shower with her. I’d never be able to stop myself from shoving her to her knees and watching her choke on my dick.
“Why not?” she asked, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. She fidgeted, the confidence of a moment ago forgotten as she looked at me and the need written onto my face.
“I’m pretty sure we both know exactly why I need to stay on this side of the glass door,” I said, stepping toward her. I touched my thumb to her bottom lip, dragging it to the side to reveal her bottom teeth. “Because I can’t stop picturing my cock in your throat.”
She gasped, staring up at me for a moment before her eyes dropped back down to my waist.
“Who says I don’t want that too?” she asked, her green eyes glimmering as she stepped back farther in the shower. When she crooked a finger to summon me into it with her, I tilted my head to the side and pulled from the last reserves of my self-control.