Later. Sooner. Now. Never.
Meaningless.
Someone was knocking at my door.
I climbed out of bed, grabbing my glasses on the way out of the room. I squinted through the peephole to see Devin standing there, his broad, angular face in profile. Of course it was him. No one else would have gotten past the doorman, but what to do now? I hadn’t expected him to come. I had no words prepared, and very little energy. I was wearing a nightgown with kittens on it.
“Open the door,” he said, so I did.
“I don’t want to talk about Leo.” I turned away from him as soon as he entered, cowed by his outsize presence in my living room. “I don’t want you to try to help me.”
“You already told me not to help you. That’s ‘not what I’m for.’”
As he said it, his fingers wove into my hair. I closed my eyes and lifted my face for his kiss. It landed, as hard and forceful as I expected, and I leaned against him as his body aligned to mine.
“No one should hurt you,” he said, pulling away and making me meet his gaze.
“No one but you?”
“It’s not the same thing.” His fingers tightened, moving up my arms. “I want to protect you. Not because I’m falling in love with you, because I’m not. It’s because of what happened to my mom. I couldn’t defend her, but I can defend you.”
I cringed inside, cringed away from his goodness and strength, the depth of personality hidden beneath his Domly alpha attitude. No falling in love. That was our agreement.
“Why did you come here?” I said, my voice on edge.
“To explain why I can’t let it drop, why I lost my shit when you confided in me.”
“But I need you to let it drop.” I squirmed in his grasp. “It’s my life. My career. If you get in my business, you’re just like him. I’m trying to be a big girl.”
“Are you?” He got that twitching curve to his lips, the lazy smile that always unnerved me. We were in a fight, weren’t we? I was angry with him, angry that he was good, and trying to help me yet again. Kindness and sadism didn’t belong together. “How big are you?” he asked, promising bedlam. “As big as me?”
“No.” I forced the word out through a rising wave of lust. Don’t do this, I wanted to beg him. Don’t make me feel so many feelings for you. But he was only being himself. I was the weak one, the one who was becoming obsessed, who was starting to wonder how I could live without him if he disappeared from my life.
“You should go,” I said, even though I didn’t want him to go. My lips wanted more of his rough kisses. My pussy throbbed from the way he held me, and the way he crowded my personal space. “I have to work tomorrow.”
“So do I.” One of his hands moved down to cup my ass, drawing me forward against his erection, hard and stiff beneath the denim of his jeans. “I think I might want to hurt you a little first.”
“Yes, because I like to be hurt,” I said, repeating his scornful words from earlier, the words that had made me feel bad. Yes, I was angry with him. No, I didn’t love him. I didn’t even like him. I didn’t. I really didn’t.
I didn’t.
He ignored my resistance and kissed me again, roughly, nipping my lower lip. My hands, which had been trapped against his chest, moved up to circle his neck. I clung to him in capitulation as he ravaged my mouth, and a moment later, I was lifted in his arms, big hands under my ass, drawing me up against him. How big are you? As big as me?
He felt very big as he carried me down the hall to my bedroom, kissing me, raking his nails across my back as I crossed my legs around his hips. When he dropped me on the bed, I started to take off my glasses, but he told me to leave them on, so I straightened them after he yanked off my nightgown, and held onto them as he wrestled my panties down my legs.
“Spread your thighs,” he said, pushing them apart. I did as he asked, letting him see how ready I was as he tore off his sweater and unbuttoned his jeans. His cock sprang out, heavy and thick with arousal. I wanted to take it in my mouth and worship it, but he fell on me instead, grabbing my wrists.
“Look at me,” he said. “Fucking look at me, Ella. I need to see you, so I don’t hurt you the wrong way again.”
“The wrong way? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
I was afraid to see the intensity of feeling in his eyes. This was pain for me, and he knew it.
“Keep your legs spread,” he snapped, when I started edging them together. His hands tightened on my wrists as I finally met his gaze. He shoved inside me, hard, prying me open, sliding through moisture that didn’t mask the sensation of being impaled. I hissed as he drove in all the way. Even if I wanted to move my hips, I couldn’t have, because he was so deep in my pussy, his weight on top of me. His body. His stare.
I fought the grip at my wrists, opening and closing my hands. He answered by fucking me harder, in and out, deep and deeper, using his cock as a weapon. I cried out at the violence of it, but I was excited, too. I was spread out beneath him, helpless and held down, lifting my hips for his thrusts out of self-preservation.
When I looked away, unable to bear the intimacy of his fucking, he let go of one wrist and grabbed my face, and made me turn back to him. There was mayhem in his eyes as his fingers squeezed my cheeks. “I see you,” he said. “Even if you close your eyes, I still see you.”
Without my glasses, I could have drifted, seen everything in blurs. I tried to take them off with my free hand, but he made a sound that stopped me. I was going to come soon, just from his pure, cruel, unadulterated ownership. He grasped my wrist again and kissed me, raking his teeth across my lips and down my neck. He bit my earlobe and I bucked into an orgasm as violent as the fucking that caused it.
I forced air through my teeth as my pussy contracted around his ramming tool. I was held down, emptied out, then filled with a driving thrust and his cum. He drew back to look at me, but I was finished. I turned my head to the side so the tears he’d fucked out of me would fall on the bed rather than down my cheeks.
He made a sound that was both impatient and affectionate as he laid his head beside mine. He nuzzled me as he pulled out, letting go of my hands to wipe away my tears. “Why are you crying?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you know. You’re a fucking genius. You know everything.”
But that wasn’t true. He knew by now that wasn’t true at all.
He shifted some of his weight off me and took me in his arms, cradling me against his body. He was a firm, warm, comfortable haven. I shoved my face against the crook of his shoulder and breathed in his scent. One of his big hands moved across my forehead, soothing me, covering my eyes. It let me feel, rather than look. I felt protected. I felt safe. I felt…
Loved.
No, not loved. What we had together wasn’t love, but it was fulfilling. I felt intense peace, with my mind shut off and my body in a post-orgasm haze of pleasure. His skin was smooth and warm, and his smell was perfect: clean, natural, human.
“I didn’t want to leave things the way they were,” he said as I sighed against his shoulder. “Do you feel like things are better again?”
“Things are always better after you fuck me,” I said. “You have a magic cock.”
He pinched my earlobe, the same one he’d bitten. “There’s something magic about you, too.”
Those words settled in my heart. They made me feel happy, but scared, so when he told me he had an early flight, I was relieved to let him go. Better to give up those strong arms willingly, and sleep on my own.
Both of us needed space after what had just happened. I needed space to struggle with my rioting feelings, and he had to go fly somewhere, far too high in the air.
Chapter Twenty: Devin
Ella told me she didn’t want my help, but it wasn’t that easy. I had to help. I just did.
I did an Internet search for Dr. Leopold Mann and found his name all over the latest research on cosmology an
d gravitational waves. I stared at his face. So punchable. That was the first thing I’d thought when he sat beside Ella in the Institute cafeteria and acted like her space was his space.
Her space was my space. Her body was mine to look after. I was the one who took care of her every week when we went to The Gallery, even if I shared her to make it more exciting for her. Her oily, jackass boss had pictures of Ella’s body, which he was using to manipulate her, and that wasn’t okay.
But she was right. A court case wouldn’t do anything to help her. In fact, it would be the surest way to make sure everyone in her career circle knew about her and Leo Mann, and their disputed sex photos. There weren’t any pics of her online at present. I looked. I searched kinky scientist and BDSM astrophysicist, astro masochist, gravitational bondage, and just about every other search term, including her physical attributes and name, and found nothing but professional headshots and conference photos.
I brooded about the problem until I got back from my weekly flight route, and decided to take matters into my own hands, and just explain to the motherfucker that I wasn’t going to let him hold the photos over Ella’s head. If I punched him enough times…