“Stop,” Liam growled. “Damn it, Raine, how do you expect to learn to surrender when you spend so much of your energy fighting me and yourself?”
She had nowhere to escape his penetrating stare. Her heart chugged. The moment felt so intimate. So petrifying.
Raine closed her eyes and turned her head away.
He grabbed her cheeks and forced her to look back at him. She didn’t have the guts to open her eyes and see what was on his face. Disappointment? Anger? Scorn?
“The only way you’ll be escaping me now is by using your safe word. Say it or look at me.”
Using her safe word when he wasn’t physically hurting her would be the coward’s way out. He was trying to help her learn to give more of herself. She needed this lesson. But he’d already seen so deeply inside her, more than maybe anyone ever…
On that fateful morning he’d offered to train her, he’d told her that he intended to split her open like a ripe peach. She’d been almost smug in the belief that she’d never give him that power. Damn, she’d been a fool.
Hitching in a sob, she forced herself to open her eyes, though she couldn’t see him through her thick tears.
A voice in her head told her that sharing all of herself wouldn’t be as scary as facing an executioner. It would probably be beautiful. Raine still didn’t know if she could do it.
“I know the fact that I’m not giving myself over to you is damaging. I just keep trying to solve my problems so I don’t have to bother you.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
In her head, Raine did. A plea for his reassurance sat on the tip of her tongue, but she silenced it. She had to give him control.
“Raine…” He wiped her tears away, his fingers terribly gentle.
Her heart wept. Liam was so kind, so tender… She blinked up at him, resisting her every instinct to crawl back inside herself and hide.
“Good. Stay with me now.”
He eased down her body, his lips dragging over her skin, sucking slowly at each nipple before he lowered his mouth to her pussy and took a long, slow lick. She shuddered with the sensations of her soul splitting open and oozing need, her body wired and alive.
He groaned. “The taste of you, love… So perfect on my tongue.”
“Liam,” she sobbed and writhed. “Help me. Tell me… What do you want?”
“You, Raine. All of you. From the sweet to the tart and everything in between.” He sucked her clit between his lips, pulling and scraping the bud with his teeth. She arched her hips, desperate for more of his mouth on her. Liam only pulled back and slapped her clit. “You’re not in control here. Give it to me.”
She choked back a cry, her pain melding to pleasure as he slid two fingers in deep, grazing the sensitive bundle of nerves.
“We could be so good together, if you’d just trust me.”
“It’s not you,” she swore.
“I know. But I want to be the man you finally let in.”
His incessant fingers drove into her pussy, his thumb swirling over her clit. Panting and whimpering, she arched, waiting and hoping for his command to come.
“You burn so sweetly for me. And you’re so close to orgasm you can almost taste it, can’t you?”
“Yes!”
He pulled away from her quivering pussy, then straddled her body. His engorged cock hovered inches from her mouth, the weeping crest glistening. Mouth watering, she opened to take him deep between her lips.
Instead, he leaned over her and unfastened the cuffs, setting her free. Then he rolled to her side, no longer touching her. “All right, then. Stroke your pussy for me, Raine. Make yourself come. Show me how much you want me.”
Raine would far rather have Liam touch her, but he’d given her a direct order. He was allowing her pleasure. She didn’t dare question him or ask for more.
With a jagged sigh, she slid her fingers to her swollen clit. In seconds, she was panting, falling over the edge as a hard, fast climax tore through her. Even as her thighs tensed and her body shook, the orgasm was hollow, a parody of pleasure. It left her wanting.
And she knew exactly what was missing… Liam.
Reaching for him, Raine murmured his name.
He grasped her wrists. “Did you enjoy that?”
Physically, she had. But emotionally, knowing that he hadn’t allowed her to give him pleasure in return left her feeling wretched, empty, and wracked with guilt. “Not without you. I feel like…you gave and I took, but it was one-sided.”
“Exactly.” He backed away from her and off the bed. “Now you know what I feel every damn time you try to satisfy me with scraps of yourself. I can’t dominate what you won’t submit. I’ve tried to do it all for us, but I can’t, no matter how much I want you.”