“Please,” I pant. “Possess me. Own me.”
“I am, Alyse. I am. You’re mine now.”
“Possess me faster,” I beg.
But he doesn’t. He just continues his methodical pace, pleasure etched over every inch of his face. I’m on fire. I need to come. My hand snakes between us, but he grabs it, pinning it behind my back.
“Asher, please.”
“Your orgasms are mine, Alyse. Mine to give. Mine to withhold. They all belong to me now.”
A long moan leaves me, a cross between intense euphoria at how right he feels and sheer frustration because I need more.
Jesus, this is like deliberate torture.
I want hard.
Rough.
Messy.
I don’t want tender. It’s suddenly making me feel too vulnerable. Now, my earlier thoughts about being completely consumed by him are suffocating me. Like a weight that’s slowly pressing me into the ground. Asher’s slowly been taking pieces of me day after day; some I freely give, some I’m trying to hold back, but it’s like they’re drawn to him.
Like they’re his already and they’re finally being called home.
I feel the chains tightening. I feel the lock trying to slam back together. Inside I’m having a slight panic attack and I’m trying to keep it from showing, forcing him to take me like I need instead. This is exactly what I do when people get too close. I try to shut them out. God, I could win a Pulitzer, I’m so damn good at it.
But Asher’s perception about my inner struggle doesn’t go unnoticed.
His hips halt. “Stop.”
“Stop what?” I roll my hips, causing us both to moan. I need to get him back on task so I can get the hell out of here and back to the safety of my self-imposed lonely prison. Why do I have to be so fucking screwed up? I almost want to cry.
One hand leaves my face, palming my hip instead, but the other holds me steady, so I’m forced to watch him. Just when I think he may end this, trying to have a heart-to-heart instead, he takes a different tactic. He resumes his slow, methodical plunges, causing my eyes to roll back before refocusing on him.
“Do you know there are different forms of possession, Alyse?”
I don’t answer. I’m in such excruciating pleasure I can’t string vowels and consonants together, let alone instruct my tongue and lips to make sentences.
“Quick. Fast. Brutal.” He punctuates his words with vicious thrusts. I nearly come from the pleasure his movements stir in every sensitive, swollen nerve ending. I’m so damn close, a couple more pumps and I’ll be flying.
But he doesn’t give it to me.
“Surrender is inevitable, but it’s messy. It’s fleeting. It doesn’t last.” Pulling me to his mouth, he takes my lips in a hard, deep, almost-savage kiss that’s completely contradictory to the way he’s now slowly pushing into me again.
“Slow. Methodical. Deliberate,” he whispers against my kiss-swollen lips. “That possession, Alyse, that surrender is beautiful. It’s transcendent. It’s eternal.” Pulling me back down, his lips brush against my lobe as he whispers, “And that’s what I want from you.”
What if I can’t give you that?
As if he reads my mind, he murmurs right before taking my mouth again, “You will give it to me, Alyse.”
Asher takes his sweet time, making me come twice more. He only picks up the pace at the very end, seconds before he climaxes, finally tensing and releasing on a roar. Our bodies are covered in a fine layer of moisture, our breathing is ragged, and as we sit here wrapped in each other’s arms, my emotions are all over the goddamn board.
I’ve never felt so raw.
I’ve never felt so exposed.
I’ve never felt so consumed.
I’ve never felt so wholly loved by anyone.
And I’ve never felt so damn scared in my life that someone is about to see the real Alyse for the first time.
But my real fear is: what if he doesn’t like her?
Chapter 16
Alyse
Sipping my Belgian craft beer, I’m lost in my own little world thinking of a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed sexpot. Asher and I haven’t been able to spend much time together since Monday night. The night he took complete and total possession of both my body and mind. And another little piece of my heart.
I’m still reeling from that night.
The mind-bending sex that I feel days later.
His soul-piercing words went straight to the center of my very being. They still echoed loudly inside me.
And the fact that he wanted me to spend the night? Asher doesn’t seem like the kind of man who regularly welcomes a woman into his bed. When he picked me up and carried me into his bedroom, still inside me, I had a little mental tug-of-war. I had an almost irresistible need to escape back to my safe little apartment, but, just like when I nearly had a meltdown during sex, he wouldn’t let me retreat within myself. I have a feeling that Asher will be challenging me at every corner.