Page 108 of The Vigilant

I wasn’t the thing that would make his pain better. I was the thing he wanted so badly, he’d risk, in his mind, desecrating Dad’s memory and destroying any shot at forgiveness in order to have me.

“No—”

Smack.

I cried out again, my chest heaving into his thigh.

“You think getting so fucking turned on I can’t think straight when his daughter calls me Daddy is the way to ease my guilt for my part in his death?”

I didn’t even try to answer this time, my mouth only opened in anticipation of the cry that released when his palm landed hard on my burning ass.

“You think it eases my conscience that I imagine my cock filling each and every one of your hot, tight holes every minute of the day?”

Smack.

Every blow of his hand was like another wall knocked down, and before long, it wasn’t the hot sting on my skin I felt, but a burning path of tears that streaked down my face.

“Do you think forgiveness would be on your dad’s mind if he knew how fucking bad I wanted to fuck you? How fucking bad I needed to possess you?”

Smack.

I let out a sob then, hearing just how tortured he sounded—knowing that was the final blow.

“I’m s-sorry,” I whimpered. “I was wrong.”

My ass was on fire. My core, turned on by the brutal confession, clenched so painfully I found it hard to breathe.

“You were wrong, my little wasp,” he croaked, his palm moving tenderly over my brutalized flesh. “You were so fucking wrong.”

And if his words weren’t honest enough about how badly he wanted me for himself, the thick length of his cock where it pulsed into my stomach was. I wasn’t the only one hurting—aching right now. And with his piercings, it didn’t take much to imagine just how painful this was for him, too.

I shuddered. “I’m sorry.” The words were so soft, once I’d spoken them, I questioned whether I’d said them at all.

Tynan’s ragged groan made me shiver. “Are you wet from this, little wasp? Wet from hearing what a terrible fucking friend I am for wanting you?”

I whimpered and nodded against his leg.

His fingers dipped between my thighs—not on my underwear or my pussy that throbbed with the same beat as the flesh of my ass—but along the inner top of my thighs, sliding along where my desire coated the skin.

“Fucking drenched for me.”

For seconds that felt like they spanned centuries, his fingers skated along the slickness, close but never touching my sex. It wasn’t so much hesitation I felt from him, but a sense that he was slowly pushing the final nail into the coffin of his guilt.

His fingertips dipped close again, drawing a thick streak of wet onto the back of my thigh with a low groan. “Is this from me punishing you…or hearing how the simple act of wanting you is punishment for me?”

A shiver spilled down the length of my spine, the whole of me ready to dissolve into nothing if he didn’t touch me, but somehow, I managed to breathe out a single word. An answer. A plea.

“Both.”

My teeth captured my bottom lip, biting harder and harder as his fingers swirled then along the back of my thigh, the bottom curve of my ass, the seam of my sore cheeks all the way to where my thong rested at the top?—

Snap.

I gasped, my body thinking for a moment he’d smacked me again, but it was only my underwear that suffered the brunt of his brutality, the string ripped at the seam. And then they were gone, the air hitting my bared, slick center as his big fingers skated up the back of my thigh once more.

“I want you,” I breathed out, desperation driving the words from my lips before his hand got close enough to tease me. To torture me. I couldn’t bear it anymore. Not after days of convincing myself of something that couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I can smell it. I can smell how fucking soaked you are for me.” The raw need in his voice was mirrored by the firm drag of two fingers along my slit. “Fucking drenched.”

---