“Peregrine,” I whispered shakily.
“Give it to me,” His voice was thick and hoarse with need. “Give me all your need. Make a mess on my cock, sweet girl.”
He held me steady as I came apart on him, deep shudders of pleasure moving down my spine, through my hips, and to the soles of my feet. The world spun around me and I gasped aloud, shocked by the sensations curling through the deepest parts of me. I’d come hard with him before, but never like this. This was an intense, clear kind of ecstasy that touched every part of me.
His eyes glittered. “My turn.”
In a lightning fast movement, he flipped me onto my back and thrust into me so hard I saw stars. For a fleeting second, I saw him over me with his mouth parted and his chest flushed. Then he drew back, his muscles rippling, and thrust into me so hard the bed slammed into the wall. Buried to the hilt, he shuddered.
“There is nothing and no one who feels the way you do to me,” he breathed.
He took me slowly, shattering any remainders of doubt. His intense need still frightened me, but I knew now I could cling to him and trust him to carry me through it. And I could trust him with my arousal even though I still didn’t understand my deep desire for him to drive me to the brink.
It was the purist form of him. Unfettered, unbound, on the edge of losing control.
Except now I was free to love him as he was. Every passionate, obsessive, intense part of him.
It was the side of him he showed only to me and I loved it. I lived and died by the deepest, darkest parts of him. The world saw only his beauty and it was a gift that he let me see his ugliness.
At some point in the night, the bed broke with a sharp crack and Peregrine swore aloud and stilled. I lay beneath him, my face buried in the pillow. He pulled from me and lifted me gently from the lopsided bed.
“Goddamn, that was brand new,” he said.
I looked up at him and laughed. “What? You can’t just buy a new one?”
He lifted me in his arms and carried me naked down the hall to the room with the twin bed. One handed, he tore down the sheets and spilled me onto my back. Then he moved atop me and kissed a trail up my stomach to my mouth. His teeth brushed my lips and his tongue curled hot beyond them.
“I hope you’re not too tired,” he murmured. “Because I’m just getting started.”
“I can take it.”
He ran a finger up my neck and a delicious shiver moved through me. His lids were lowered and he had that heady, drunk expression of pure desire in his eyes.
“Peregrine, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“You’ve…you never degraded me in bed before,” I whispered. “You said once that only you got to call me a slut in the right context, but you’ve never said anything like that.”
His jaw worked. “I was more trying to make a point with that.”
“Do you not like degradation?”
“No, I like it.”
“So, why not do it then?”
He released a sigh and his palm slid down my side, cupping the underside of my knee. “You love being praised,” he said. “And clearly you were badly hurt by being called a slut and a whore, so I thought it best to give you what you were starving for.”
My throat tightened. “Even when you didn’t love me?”
He kissed my mouth.
“I have always loved you, Lia,” he murmured. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the things I do to you fill that empty space in the pit of your stomach. Are you satisfied?”
“Some of the things you do are…a lot,” I admitted. “But…they do satisfy me. Completely.”
“I won’t threaten to drive you into the river again,” he said, his mouth twitching. “But I can’t promise not to hang you off the stairwell and fuck your pussy because I’ve never felt you come that hard. I can’t live without it, I can’t live without tasting that again.”