Pushes my legs together. Makes me arch. He’s making me tighter for him. I realize it in a delirious haze just before he shoves the head of his cock into the place he’s just prepared.
I’m still new at this. I have to stretch, even though we’ve fucked, even though I’ve been fucked by him. Leo shivers behind me. He has to let go for that to happen, I know now, he has to consciously decide to be that way. To be that revealing. It’s so hot. His fingers digging into my hips. His thickness filling me. He’s in control of himself. That’s what it is. He’s not the beast, not now. Something brought him back from the electric, boiling tension of the last few days.
He’s in control of himself, and he’s in control of me.
“I wasn’t your nightmare,” he says, tone almost conversational, but I can hear the raw need in his voice. “You weren’t dreaming about me. About me hurting you.”
“No.” It’s hard to say anything else with him stroking into me, harder with every thrust, my hips hitting the edge of the bed with thud after thud. “Not you.”
Leo does something at my wrists and my hands come free, but he doesn’t let them stay that way for long. He curls his fingers around both wrists and pins them to the bed so he’s over me. So he’s everywhere in the dark. In the moonlight. The head of him meets some inner place he hasn’t touched before and I spread my legs on instinct. Give him more room. He’s so big, he needs more room. He drops a kiss to my shoulder. A bite.
He releases my wrists. One of his hands goes to my throat. The other between my legs. I whimper when his fingers meet the soreness from being strapped there. A pinch to the clit makes my legs give out for real. I’m held in place by his hands, and his cock, and if it weren’t for those things, I’d be a puddle on the floor.
“Your pussy loves that,” he growls into my ear. “You like when I hurt you.”
“Just you,” I breathe as his fingers play at my clit, gentler now but no less insistent. He’s going to make me come again. “It loves you. Anything you do to me.”
“The next time you try to hurt yourself for me, I’ll fuck your ass until you scream. I won’t stop for tears. I’m the only one who hurts you. Do you understand?”
I can’t speak. I’m too close to a violent orgasm, one brought on by his words and his relentless fingers. Too close to coming apart. The nightmare carried me to the edge. Leo Morelli’s pushing me over. He’s the only one who can hurt me, and he does it so well.
His grip tightens around my throat. He thrusts his cock home. “Please,” I choke out. “Yes.”
“I’ll be your nightmare,” he says, and I come so hard I drag him over with me.
Chapter Nine
Leo
The voicemail comes in too fucking early to be a polite call. Just after seven. I didn’t notice the call itself. I’ve been sitting in the only way I can at this moment, with my head in my hands, watching the corners of the room take on the hue of the dawn. At various intervals I look out the front windows of my house, down onto the driveway. From this smaller library and sitting room I have a clear view of anyone approaching the house from the road.
Sleeping is becoming impossible. Fucking Haley last night, feeling her cunt ripple and clench around me, bought me three hours. Then came the pain. Then came the guilt. She was terrified when I found her in the bed. Cracking her fists against the headboard like it was a door to a prison cell. What she imagined was worse. My office. Not being able to get to me.
A better man would have whispered sweet nothings to her and stroked her face until she fell back asleep.
I’m not a better man.
And Haley, for all her innocence, for all her sweetness, can’t stand gentleness. Not right now.
So I have been awake. My back is killing me. Razors down my spine and across my ribs. And a restless, unsettled pit that can only be soothed in a way that’s not available to me in the daylight. That will have to wait.
My phone buzzes again and I swipe it off the table by my chair.
A voicemail from Lucian.
Lucky me.
I lean on the arm of the chair, prop my forehead in my hand, and hold the phone to my ear. I don’t particularly want to hear what Lucian has to say on his way home from his sex club. His recent involvement with my security team means I have to listen. I don’t trust how much he’s become involved. I don’t like how much he knows. My eldest brother is coming dangerously close to the real secret of what happened with Caroline, and I fucking hate that.
I hate it so much I miss the beginning of the message and have to start over.
“Learn to answer your phone when people call, Leo. Voicemail is for hired help and women you want to avoid. Elaine has had an interesting conversation with her mother.” He takes a barely noticeable breath. Elaine. That’s right. Has he been at the sex club with her? Without her? Why the hell is he up so early? I don’t care. “Caroline has been bribing Rick Joseph Jr. with a place in the Constantine family in exchange for doing her a favor.”
The favor will be to kill me.
“She wants him to kill you. Kill the Beast of Bishop’s Landing, and Caroline will make him a hero. She’ll make Haley his wife.”
My spine goes up in flames at the suggestion. At this fucked-up promise that Caroline can’t make, but that she has made to Rick Joseph Jr. That’s why he kept his mouth shut while I beat the hell out of him. He thought he had something on me. He thought if he could survive me, he’d have a chance to get what he wants.
An insidious voice hisses like a snake in the back of my mind. She would be better off with him. Hand-picked by the Constantines. He’d give her family back to her.
It’s bullshit.
What’s not bullshit is the thought underneath.
She would be better off without me.
Lucian’s voicemail continues.
“—come to dinner—”
What the fuck?
I start the damn thing over and listen again.
“I’m so pleased to accept your invitation, Leo. Of course we’ll come to dinner tonight. Happy to accept your thanks for helping to rescue the love of your life and then ensuring your safety while you shut yourself up in your room with her. Elaine can’t wait.”
That’s where it ends.
I let the phone fall onto the bedside table. “Fuck.”
“What is it?”
Haley’s at the door, cheeks pink with sleep, her hair so adorably rumpled and gold in the morning light that I could believe it had some healing quality to it. Like running my fingers through it could be a kind of blessing. She wore one of my shirts to bed last night. I almost order her to take it off, but she needs an answer first. This surprise dinner party will take up the rest of the day.
I beckon her over to me and pull her into my lap. She’s as warm as she is pink, and the scent of her skin calms some part of me that’s been knotted and tense while I waited for the night to be over. Haley kisses the side of my neck, waiting.
“Lucian called,” I tell her. “He and Elaine are coming for dinner tonight. Now lift up your shirt. I need to see you.”
* * *
Haley stands in the middle of my bedroom in an Armani dinner gown in black, looking down at its shimmer, which reminds me of starlight. She bites at her lip. “Are you sure about this?”