Page 62 of Blood Ties
It frightens me how easy this is now. Something inside of me has softened. I’m not sure when it happened — maybe during our reading lessons, maybe when he touched me so gently, maybe when I saw those self-harm scars on him — but little by little, my hatred for Kai is turning into something far more dangerous. My feigned affection is becoming more and more real.
“Could you teach me something else?” he murmurs, in between slow kisses.
“What’s that?”
“I wanna...” He swallows, but doesn’t look away. “I wanna learn how to make you feel good. Like you do for me.”
For a moment, I can only stare at him. I should say no. This goes against the rules I laid out for myself. But he’s looking at me so eagerly, and as heat curls through my lower body, I can’t deny I want this. I want to feel something good, for once, in this god-awful place.
“Okay,” I whisper.
His smile is big and crooked and far too sweet. “Yeah?”
I take one of his hands and bring it under my shirt, shivering as his callouses graze over the smooth skin of my breast. “Touch me here,” I tell him, moving his fingers slowly back and forth. My nipple hardens beneath his touch, and I bite my lip. “Yeah. Like that.” He watches my face, drinking in the sight of my pleasure. As that heat in my belly coils tighter, I guide his hand to my other breast, and he does it this time without my help. I let out a soft gasp. “Oh. That feels good.” After a moment’s hesitation, I lift my shirt over my head. I can’t pull it fully off, with my wrist still shackled, but I leave it dangling on that arm so my torso is bare. “You can use your mouth, too, if you want.”
His eyes darken, and his lips move to the breast his hand isn’t touching. His tongue flicks over the sensitive bud, and I gasp again, jerking against him. He moans low in his throat, lavishing one breast and then the other with attention.
“You can be rougher with me,” I say, breathless. “I like—Oh.” I cut off in a gasp as his teeth graze my nipple. “Yes. Yes. Like that.”
I ease off of his lap after a while, my face flushed and my lip swollen where I’ve been biting it. I’m surprised how good this feels, how easy it is to lose myself in the moment. I’ve been trying so hard to hold myself back, but right now I want to pretend it’s just the two of us, that we’re just two normal people exploring each other for the first time.
Lying back on the mattress, I slide my panties down over my thighs. I reach down, fingers skimming flat stomach and downy hair before reaching the place where I most ache to be touched. With a jolt, I realize I’m already soaked. I look over at Kai, who is watching me with dark eyes and lips slightly parted.
“And then,” I whisper, “you could touch me here...” I glide a hand through my own slick heat before bringing two fingers to my clit, delicately circling. My back arches, and I whimper.
Kai’s gaze flickers between my fingers and my face, his breath quickening. He watches me for several moments and then reaches over.
“Wait,” I whisper.
He pauses without hesitation. I grab his hand and bring his fingers to my mouth, wetting them with my tongue.
“Now,” I say, meeting his stare. “Touch me.”
His calloused fingertips are a shock after my soft ones, but not an unpleasant one, not at all. He works me slowly and carefully, mimicking the motions I showed him until I’m gasping and trembling. I whisper “yes” and “right there” and “faster” until I’m reduced to incoherent sounds. At that point he doesn’t need my guidance — he can read what I want in my reactions, in my little twitches and cries. Till finally I’m whimpering, “God, yeah, just like that, I’m gonna—”
I come apart beneath his fingers before I can finish the sentence. My hips lift as I grind into him, crying out. He strokes me until I go limp against the mattress, and then lowers himself beside me, his eyes never leaving my face.
There’s a fluttering sensation in my stomach... but the butterflies are doused by cold dread as I realize I just broke one of my rules.
Or maybe all of them.
No emotional attachment.
No orgasms.
Focus on the goal.
My smile wavers as I reach over to brush hair out of Kai’s face. “You did so good,” I say. “That felt amazing.”
But the words feel hollow all of a sudden, and so does my chest. I fucked up. I almost forgot what this is all about.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says. “That look on your face, it was...”
Then he pauses. His eyes lift to the ceiling as if he can stare right through it. It takes me a moment to hear what he does: voices.
Unfamiliar voices.Women’svoices, alternating with Knox’s familiar low rumble. It’s too quiet for me to work out what they’re saying, but the flirty tone is unmistakable. So is the rough bark of Knox’s laugh, which sends shivers down my spine.
But once I found it charming. I bet those women up there do, too. I bet they don’t recognize yet that it’s not humor, but cruelty in his laughter.
