Page 67 of Deep End

“If you want me to stop, what do you do?”

“I saystop.” Icansay it. I know I can, and he will. I’ve just never wanted anything less.

“You are even wetter than in the lab. Is it because I didn’t let you come? Because I’m in charge?”

It seems to be a genuine question, something he needs to know for sure. I nod, desperate. Flutter greedily around air.

“You want to be ordered around by someone you trust, is that it? You want rules, to be told what’s good for you.”

It’s so patronizing, and I—I nod like my life depends on it, half ashamed of the loud moan that slips out of my throat.

“Hey. Hey, baby.” One of his hands comes up, fingers brushing against my lips, circling my jaw. “Kyle’s room is just down the hallway. You’re going to have to be quiet.Canyou be quiet?”

I’m lost for a second. Unable to fully grasp the magnitude of—this. The way he talks to me. His grip. The mix of violence and control and tenderness. So close to what I’ve always wanted and never managed to ask for, it’s hard to believe it’s not a fantasy.

“Scarlett. Can you be good?”

I nod against his hand while the other pins my wrists to my belly. His pleased smile works me up that much higher. “If you can’t, just bite,” he says, his palm right by my lips, his long fingers cagingmy cheeks, and I want to tell him that it’s okay, that I can be good for him, that he doesn’t need to worry, but it turns out to be a lie.

The first time, it takes him less than ten seconds to make me come. It’s just his tongue on my clit, flat, relentless, and when my orgasm rushes over, Lukas grunts like it’s happening to him.

I thought I could be quiet. Instead, I keen into the fleshy part of his hand.

“You areso fucking good,” he tells me. I’m not sure how, but a handful of moments later, I come again. “Already? Youareperfect, huh?” He continues to suck and lick and hum against my clit, eating at me like I’m made of air and water. Quickly, the pleasure shifts from something to chase, to an avalanche that I want to run from. Tears slide hotly down the corners of my eyes. “Lukas, Lukas—I—” My voice breaks into a sob. I arch again, head tilted back, convulsing. It’s too much, too intense, too new to be defined by something as uncomplicated asgood. It is, however, thought-annihilating. My bouncy mind and my racing anxieties sit still, as though Lukas knows exactly how to bend them to his will.

I squirm away from his mouth, but he knows it’s not what I need. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re doing great.” My heels push against the muscles in his upper back. He presses my wrists more firmly against my stomach, avoids the hypersensitive, over-touched parts of my cunt, and still manages to make me come again.

“More?” he asks after I float down, like the past ten minutes have not just been a glorious assortment ofmores, like I don’t twitch every time his breath puffs against my flesh. I’m hot. Heavy. Made of sparks. I watch him watch my clenching hole, on display for him.

“I . . .” My throat is raw, scraped from the inside. His palm, marked with my teeth. “It’s not up to me.” I say it because we’re both thinking it, anyway.

“You sweet thing. You were made for this, weren’t you?” Hishand leaves my face and comes down to spread my legs. Pin my right knee to the bed. When his teeth bite into my inner thigh, my whole body jerks. It hurts a little, more than that, but I’m cross-wired, neurally confused, and the pain and pleasure are impossible to tease apart. “You’re so right.”

I wonder if I’m going to get used to his strength. The rational part of me knows that his physique is a simple product of training, discipline, and questionable priorities. The other part, the one that just wants a minute of rest, loves the ease with which he flips me around until I’m all the way on the bed, belly down on the covers, my cheek pressed against a pillow that smells so much like him, I cannot help grabbing two fistfuls.

Mine.

“I really want to fuck you,” he says from behind me. I’m still quivering. Wearing nothing but a white tank top that has long ridden up to my rib cage. Lukas is on his knees, my thighs trapped in the spread of his. He must be looking at my ass, and if this was anyone else, I’d be fretting over it. Am I pretty enough? Have I disappointed him with my body?

Except,he’s the one who gets to decide what happens. And if he didn’t like me, he simply wouldn’t continue. My worries quiet down, and I smile into the comforter.

I could livehere, in the quiet of this moment, forever.

“You’d let me, right?”

His hand comes up to the valley between my shoulder blades. Pushes down. My head has little range of movement, but I try to nod.

“That’s so sweet of you.” He leans forward. Kisses the first vertebra of my spine, slow and patient. “Then again, I reallydon’twant to fuck you with a condom.”

His voice pierces through the dense fog in my brain. I recall thelist.On birth control, to avoid periods, scribbled in the margins of mine.

If you’re up for it, let’s both get tested and exchange results, he wrote.

I sent mine.

He got busy, and didn’t send his.

“We’ll have to do something else,” he says.

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