Except Caspian could never be a stranger to me. Even when he feared he was a stranger to himself.
I shaped a kiss of my own, imagining my heart dissolved, flowing slick and glitter-bright into the runnels of his hand. And unwound my legs from around his waist. No sooner had my feet hit the ground than he spun me, my cheek hitting the wall, the air knocked from my lungs. Catching up my wrists, he shoved my palms flat to the bricks and splayed me out beneath his body.
God, the strength of him. And in that moment, all of it was for me. With Caspian, force had never felt like a threat. It felt like a fucking gift. Everything was a gift. The weight of him against my back. His harsh breath. The fretful pressure of his teeth in my nape. The sting of his bites and the throb of his bruises. The promise of his hard cock ground into my arse, his suit dragging roughly across my legs. I was melting not just into submission but submission to Caspian, the pleasure of it a dark tide rising inside me, as deep as despair.
Caspian’s fingers slid between mine against the wall, half trapping, half holding me. “Don’t move.”
He stepped away, fumbling in my pocket for my wallet. I waited, my ears catching at the crinkle of foil and the swish of fabric, the murmur of voices from inside the gallery—oh shit, what if someone else decided they randomly wanted to sneak a cheeky ciggy in the fire escape? And here I was, in a fuck-me pose against the wall, with my bits hanging out. I mean, I guess it was nothing they hadn’t seen, but I wasn’t quite ready to upgrade from stills to live action.
Before I could get into a real panic, though, Caspian’s hand landed on the small of my back, the touch remarkably steady given how harsh his breathing sounded. I arched into the reassuring warmth of him, which I suppose counted as technically moving, but he didn’t chastise me for it. Just stroked, soothing me in ways I hadn’t realised I needed soothing, before he moved lower and gave my arse such a possessive little squeeze it had me up on my toes, swallowing a yip.
The thing is, Caspian wasn’t as awesome at not breaking my heart and leaving me in pieces on the floor as he could have been. But I also knew, with the faith Elizabeth Barrett Browning once gave to her lost saints, he would never let me come to harm. Besides, there was no way the man who had flipped his lid at the thought of other humans looking at pictures of me was going to let them stand around watching me get fucked. And, wow, my dick was an idiot: It was already looking for ways to find Caspian’s behaviour secretly endearing, when the rest of me was still quite annoyed by it. But actually…it was hot, in principle, to bethatcoveted. It was just the practice that had been severely fucked up the arse.
Much as, I hoped, I was about to be. I spread my legs a little wider and nudged up into his palm—flaunting. And suddenly a different need opened up inside me like quicksand.
“Oh God,” I heard myself whisper, “I wish you could spank me.”
His muffled a groan in the back of my neck. “Arden…”
“Obviously don’t. That shit’s not quiet.” Even if the idea of it was insanely hot.
“It’s what you want, though.” A taunting note had crept into Caspian’s voice—a delicate edge of cruelty that made my heart stutter with fearful delight. “To be spanked in a back alley like a dirty slut.”
There was such…suchaffectionin the words—I might even have called it love—that I lost my head. “Yes please.”
“Not tonight, my wicked one. My brave boy.”
That briefly reminded me that less than two seconds ago I, too, had been aware it was a terrible idea. But I still wriggled and whined, safe in the knowledge Caspian would take care of me.
His teeth scraped my earlobe. “I don’t need to spank you to own you, Arden.”
And then he pulled my hips back and entered me—one long, merciless push that I felt all the way to my bones, then a pounding so gloriously brutal it seemed to make my heart shake and my pulse falter. There was enough lube that it didn’t hurt, but itnearlyhurt, and that became its own strange pleasure: a haze of rough thrusts and stretched-tight muscle, fingers digging into my hips and burning breath on my neck, and the deep, shuddering satisfaction of being so thoroughlytaken. It was an odd and tantalising paradox, my body utterly conquered by his, and yet I was free, strong, happy, as I hadn’t been for months.
Caspian was a surge of ferine power at my back, snarling and gasping as he fucked me, the sweat from his brow prickling against my neck, sharp with salt and heat. And for once, I wasn’t lost in the frustration of not being able to see him. Feeling was enough, the ferocity of him, and the intensity of his desire for me, becoming, in those moments of physical unity, a kind of vulnerability.
I twisted back as best I could. “Kiss me.”
It emerged neither entreaty nor demand—just the stating of a private obvious. And Caspian leaned over me, his lips finding mine in a clumsy collision, words drowned beneath our tongues, and the tears on his cheeks wetting mine. I came less than a minute later, in great wrenching spurts, like I was splattering my soul all over the wall. And Caspian not long after, with a broken sound, pressed jaggedly against my open, panting mouth.
Oh God. What had we done?
Chapter 28
Well, I knew what we’d done. I always had. And done it anyway. But suddenly all I could see was Nathaniel’s face. The way he’d looked at me, his eyes a barbed-wire snarl of hatred and despair, as if he’d already known what was going to happen. And the reality of cooling sweat and heavy bodies and my arsehole sticky with someone else’s come flattened me like a cartoon anvil. A cartoon anvil made of regret, self-loathing, and discovering I had made yet another fucking awful decision.
I turned awkwardly in Caspian’s arms, my jeans catching against his trousers, and my cock knocking damply into his. He barely moved, still almost fallen over me, breathing in rasps.
“Tell me,” I said, “you’re breaking up with Nathaniel. As in, right the fuck now.”
There was a way too long silence. Probably it was a good time to pull up my pants.
I tried again. “Caspian, I need to hear that you’re not going to stay with Nathaniel. Not after what we…after, um, that.”
Again. Nothing.
“We were justreallybad.” My voice rose and cracked. “Don’t make it into something even worse. Please.”
At last, Caspian lifted his head from my neck and stepped back. Began putting his dick away, which was never the best part of an evening. “Believe me, Arden, I’m well aware of what I’ve done.”
