“Tell me you love me.”
“What?” I ask, a strangled, humorless laugh escaping me before I can stop it.
He responds with a thrust so crushing I can hardly draw breath. “You said it before,” he growls, his fingers tightening on my throat. “I want to hear it again.”
“I can’t,” I manage, choking on my words, struggling for breath.
“Say it,” he roars, slamming his hand down on the glass beside me so hard I see cracks spiderweb from his palm. He bites down on my ear until it rings, and I can feel blood running down my neck. He slides his hand around my body, fingering my cunt while he fucks me. “I’m not stopping until you cum on my cock and tell me you love me like you did that morning. That’s all I’ve thought about for a whole fucking year. All I’ve wanted. Now give it to me.”
I claw at his fingers on my neck as they tighten further, struggling for air, for consciousness. Horror barrels through me when I feel how close I am to obeying. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, how I can like this, but his finger massaging my clit makes my body respond in a way I didn’t give permission for any more than I gave Maddox permission to fuck me like this, up against the wall of a phone booth in my wedding dress with his hand so tight around my throat I can’t get oxygen.
I manage only a whisper as his finger keeps circling my clit relentlessly while his cock owns me over and over, as if to remind me I have control over nothing, not even my own body. “You’re going to kill me.”
I feel blackness closing in, taking over the edges of my vision. He drives his cock deep inside me, his fingers clenching around my neck and tormenting my clit until I’m pushed to an edge that’s terrifying and humiliating, that’s freedom and death and relief all in one.
“Then tell the truth with your dying breath,” he growls into my ear.
I mouth the words, feeling the sensation leaving my fingers, my body jerking against his in some spasm as it searches for air, for life. It’s a hundred times worse, more humiliating, because it’s true. My body is saying it already, my walls clenching and squeezing around him in helpless, sucking pulses as I cum for his skillful fingers, his thick cock, his rough treatment and denial of oxygen. “I love you.”
His fingers loosen, and he gives a final, quick, brutal thrust into me, groaning and cursing savagely. My walls are still squeezing rhythmically when I feel him cum, grunting and grinding, holding me gripped against him so hard I don’t know where he ends and I begin. I only know that I’m drawing every drop from him, helpless to stop my body from responding to his claim. It knows where it belongs, who owns it already, just as my heart does. It wants more of him, his cum, his cock, his claim. But I refuse to listen to the insanity inside me. My mind knows better.
“Fuck,” Maddox whispers against my neck, falling back against the far side of the booth, taking me with him. “Fuck, Rae. You’re the only thing good in my world. I can’t let you go. I can’t.”
He strokes my slippery clit, so sensitive now that my thighs quake with every touch. Pinching it between his fingers, he gives a little tug, and I cry out and buck against him, tightening up around his painful girth. He groans again, his hips jerking against mine, and I can feel an answering throb in his cock that’s still lodged deep inside me, squeezing the last drops of cum into my core.
“Stop,” I gasp, trying to close my knees and push him away.
“I can’t,” he says. “You feel too fucking good,mi tesoro. I want to live inside you.” He’s breathing so hard he’s can barely speak, his words twisted with anguish. “I want to fuck you forever.” He strokes my hair back with his other hand, kissing my neck and my cheek with hot, fevered kisses. He keeps touching me, spreading me open, squeezing me closed, rubbing my clit until I think I’ll scream.
“Let me go,” I whisper at last, my throat aching from strangulation. “It’s my wedding day, Maddox.”
Suddenly I’m crying, tears streaking down my cheeks like rain. He’s the only one who can make me cry, and he does it so well. He’s the king of pain, and my heart and body bear the proof.
At last, he pulls out, and our mingled cum and blood gushes down my thighs. Shame pierces my very soul.
Maddox turns me around, holding me in his bare, bulging arms like they’re a shelter and not a prison, like I’m a baby bird and he’s my shell.
“It’s not your wedding day,” he says frantically. “It can’t be. I can’t… I just can’t.” He lifts my face, kissing me desperately, like he’s trying to convey something too big for words. I hold onto him, and I let the force of him wash over me, pull me under, consume me. Because somewhere deep down, I know that he’s right. I know that I can’t let him go, either. I know that he’s still my brutal gangster, my wild crow, my devastating love.
At last, he’s let down his walls for me, and behind them was an ocean of hurt, of tears, of rain. The dam has broken, and the flood of his love has washed me away. I never dared to risk a love like his, one that might force its way inside me before I’m ready, before he lets me in. That’s the most terrifying part for me, having my feet off the ground, giving myself over to someone else, knowing they could break me. Even more terrifying is knowing he already has, that he’s hurt me in ways I can never forget, and I still love him.
That’s the most terrifying of all. I can’t control my own heart anymore. I don’t own it. He captured that too, stole it, and it’s no longer mine. It belongs to Maddox now, and if he wants to use it against me, I am helpless to stop him. All I can do is hold on and love him as hard as I can and hope it’s enough to keep us both afloat until the tidal wave of his rage and pain and love dissipates. All I can do is hold on with my roots, and hope that by some miracle, the heart of this tree I’ve become can save us both from drowning.
thirty-five
Rae West
I sit on the sidewalk, my back to the brick wall of a building, while Maddox makes a phone call. I could run, but I don’t. I know I won’t make it even a block. So I wait, and after a while, he comes out of the phone booth. He’s still shirtless after the tattoo parlor, his body a brutal reminder of his strength, all bulging muscle and size, tattooed with new ink he must have gotten in prison. He holds out a hand as if to help me up. “You good?”
I make no move to get up. “I’m the furthest you can possibly get from good.”
He stands there looking at me in my torn wedding dress with dirt on the outer layers and blood on the inner ones like he’s just now noticing that I’m a mess. Then he sits down beside me and thumps his head back against the bricks and closes his eyes.
“I’m probably supposed to ask what’s wrong?”
“You,” I burst out. “I’m supposed to be getting married today, Maddox. Don’t you get that? It’s my wedding day. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of my life, and now it’s the worst day of my life, the worst day I’ll ever have.”
He gropes on the concrete until he finds my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. “Don’t say that.”