It didn’t matter that she’d disobeyed him and come without his permission. What she’d given him when she’d handed him that blindfold, when she’d told him he was hers, was more important than punishment.
Her belief that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he’d stop when she said her safe word, made him want to honor that trust. Made him want to be worthy of it.
Made him understand what it meant to trust himself. And make amends for how he’d scared her. Hurt her.
Lowering her to the bed, he slipped from it, pulling his clothes off before coming back to kneel once more between her spread thighs.
Her whole body was pink, and there were tears on her flushed cheeks, glinting from underneath the blindfold.
He leaned over her, wiping away the tears with his fingers then moving lower to where the ribbon of blood stained her pale skin. Moisture gleamed at her throat, sweat from her pleasure. He wiped the blood away with her tears, with her sweat, wiped her clean.
Jesus…this woman…she made him everything he’d ever wanted to be.
Reaching over to the nightstand, he grabbed a condom from the drawer. Protecting himself with shaking hands, he then leaned forward and pulled the tie from around her wrists, freeing her. She groaned, her hands coming up to his chest.
He didn’t stop, trusting her to say the word if she needed to, but she didn’t. So he pressed into her slick heat, feeling her pussy close around his cock, gripping him tight, and he shuddered, unable to breathe for a second.
Her hands pressed harder. “I want to see you.”
“No.” It felt as if it were too much, to watch her face. To see her come. As if he wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Please.”
At this point he could deny her nothing. Reaching up, he pushed up the blindfold, revealing her flushed face. And her eyes…they weren’t dark. They burned silver.
His heart kicked hard inside his chest. And he couldn’t look away, staring down into her face as he began to move. Slow. Deep. Her hands slid up his arms, around behind his neck, her legs wrapping around his waist. Holding him tight. Surrounding him.
The cracks through his soul began to shudder. And it wasn’t because he was falling apart. It was because a dark shell he hadn’t even realized was there was beginning to disintegrate. And there was something underneath it.
Something shining. Golden.
He bent his head, burying his face in her neck as the shell broke apart revealing the shining thing at the center of him. The thing that had been there all along, from the moment he’d seen her.
Love.
As it shone in his soul, she held him. And when it burned away the dark shell of the man he’d once been, he let it.
Chapter Fifteen
She could feel him shudder, the storm breaking through him, and she didn’t let go, holding him tight. Even afterwards she didn’t loosen her arms around him, didn’t stop stroking the smooth skin of his back, feeling all his muscles relax against her. He was heavy but she didn’t care. She just wanted to anchor him somehow.
“Hey,” he said thickly, some time later. “Can you give me a minute?”
With some reluctance, she let him go and he slipped out of the bed, vanishing into the en-suite bathroom. A moment later he returned though and she opened her arms to him as he came back to the bed.
“You know how I said you could tell me anything?” she said into the darkness, wrapping her arms around him. “How about you tell me all of it now?”
He was silent a while and when he began to speak, his voice was brittle as shattered glass, listing the things that had happened to him. The first government soldier he’d shot, a gun held to his own head until he’d pulled that trigger. How he’d been sick after it. The rapes, the tortures he’d seen, powerless to stop any of them from happening until he’d been made lieutenant and could command his own squad. He’d shot members of that squad, anyone who perpetrated violence on others. Yes, he saw the irony of that. And yes, it had killed a piece of him.
She couldn’t speak for the anger that overwhelmed her then, at what he’d been made to do. At the people who’d done this to him. At the injustice of it all, furious tears filling her eyes.
He noticed, shifting in her arms, putting a gentle finger to her cheek and wiping the tears way. “Don’t, soleil. Please don’t cry.”
She caught his finger, holding it. “Why shouldn’t I cry? Someone has to.”
“I don’t want to make you unhappy.”
“I’m not unhappy. I’m fucking angry.” She kissed his finger. “Do you know how strong you are? How amazing that you survived that? That you even came out of it sane is incredible.”