Page 38 of Carrick
I didn’t stop. My arms wrapped around her thighs like a vise, forbidding her movement. Another wave hit. Then another. By the time I rose over her, she was limp—wrecked and flushed.
I stroked myself hard, towering over her. I was so turned on, it only took moments for my own orgasm to build to its breaking point. My breath came in ragged gasps of need.
Her eyes locked on mine. “Please,” she whispered. “I want you to.”
A growl broke low in my throat as I flipped her over in one fluid motion and came hard across her ass—hot and sharp against her marked skin, a final brand sealing what I’d claimed… and what she’d given.
For a long breath, I just stood there—panting, awash in heat—staring down at her like she was something sacred. Wild. Wrecked. Glorious.
Finally, I reached for a towel, my movements quiet. Her breathing filled the space—shaky and raw, but steady. She wasn’t lost. She was floating.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed, skin still humming, breath still uneven—but my hands were steady. That mattered.
It mattered that I could bring her to that edge—push her past it—and still be calm enough, clear-headed enough, to care for her with intention. With purpose.
Withdevotion.
Some part of me knew this wasn’t going to end with just release. That it wouldn’t be over when the last moan faded into silence.
This wasn’t just a scene.
It was a reckoning.
A slow, deliberate collapse of walls neither of us had named aloud. A surrender wrapped in leather and sweat, in the stinging sharpness of trust laid bare. There’d been pain, yes—gloriouspain—but this? This was what lingered. This moment. This quiet connection.
The aftermath where everything that mattered stayed.
I moved slowly, carefully, deliberately, the way a man handles a weapon after it’s already been fired. Not because I thought she might break—but because Iknewshe wouldn’t, and that kind of strength deserved reverence.
She lay on her stomach, hair tangled, mouth parted, skin glowing with the after-burn of what we’d just done. Her thighs glistened with sweat and arousal, and across the slope of her ass and down her legs, the marks I’d left bloomed in brilliant, deliberate crimson—a map of every place I’d touched. Every point I’d pushed.
She was still. Not frozen—just far away. I needed to bring her back slowly, with care. With presence. The same focused intention I’d given when I’d bent her over that bench and made her take everything I had to give.
I started at her calves, working upward in slow strokes. Warm water. Clean towel. Gentle pressure.
Sweat. Lube. The fading smear of release streaked across the red pattern of impact.
It didn’t make her look ruined. It made her look claimed. Marked in ways no one else would see—but I would. When she walked past me in the hallway. When she bent to tie her boots. When she stretched in the kitchen or lingered too long with her coffee.
Those marks were mine. But not for control. Not really. They were for honor. For what she’d given. For what she’d endured. For the fact that she wanted it. Craved it.
I wiped gently around a bruise, the skin raised where the flogger had landed clean. I’d layered the implements just like she asked—soft to searing—and the memory of her moans caught in my chest. But I pushed it down.
This wasn’t about arousal anymore. This was about reverence.
The cloth drifted between her thighs, brushing the backs of her knees. The towel was soft. My hands were not. Still—she didn’t stir. Didn’t flinch.
She was deep now. In that space submissives sometimes find when pain fades and all that remains is the fall. Some call it subspace. A chemical drop.
A shift in breath. In body. In everything.
But I never liked that word. It felt too clinical. Too detached. This wasn’t detachment.
This wasdevotion.
Bellamy wasn’t drifting. She waswith me—fully. Even in her stillness.
Every mark I’d left told a story. Every welt was a sentence in the language of trust. And I read each one again now with my fingertips, letting my hands memorize them. No pressure. No probing. Just presence. Skin to skin. A thank you with every pass.
