I shook my head. He licked a cut with barely-formed scar tissue, and despite bracing myself, I whimpered.
He made a sound of regret. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t…” I opened my eyes. He looked down at me, curious and heartbroken. “It hurts, but I don’t want you to stop.” I don’t want you to leave me.
His frown was uncertain. He had to know how fucked up all this was, but he’d straddled the world of the criminal and the law-abiding for so long, he knew also how little that mattered in the end. Sane and crazy. Right and wrong. It all whirred together like the tinsel-bright colors of a carousel going round and round. Here. Now. That was all we had.
Slow, so I’d have time to stop him, he bent to kiss another cut. Another bruise. He licked and nuzzled and caressed every point of pain on my breasts. He moved down my belly, which was mostly bare. My thighs were marked more deeply than my breasts had been. It was a testament to Carlos’s care of me that the severity of the wounds depended on the place. He hadn’t been randomly beating me. He’d been careful, giving me only as much as I could take. And my thighs could take a lot, judging from the slash marks I’d seen in the mirror. The ones Hennessey stared at now. What did he feel? Disgust?
He did the same for them, licking and kissing until my hips rolled up in silent invitation. Please, here. He did move to my center, licking at my cunt with skill and eagerness. But only on my outer lips. He nudged my hip, and following his tacit instructions, I turned over. He repeated the strange healing process starting at the nape of my neck. He trailed his tongue along a thinly formed scab on a cut, and I gasped. He sucked at a bruise, sending sparks of pain to my core. The sensations were tied up between surface pain and deep, sensual pleasure. They were tied up between natural aversion and a childhood longing.
He worked his way down my body, over the valley of my lower back and the hills of my ass. Lower still, until he reached my ankles and circled them lightly where the chains had been. I jerked when I felt something soft and wet at the bottom of my feet, right on the heel. He kissed and licked there too. It felt strange at first, as if he were abasing himself—and I would never ask that of him. But it was different when given freely, like he did for me now. Where once I’d felt the worst kind of pain imaginable for fleeting, heart-stopping seconds, now he caressed the tender skin with his lips, laved it with his tongue. He found each wound on my body and he loved it—and in that way I found the acceptance I’d been searching for. Carlos had hurt me, but that was only one half of the equation. But this, this was the answer.
A cell phone rang in the distance, but he muttered for me to ignore it. As if to ensure his command, he pulled my hips up, so I knelt on the bed face down. It was wholly undignified the way my face and breasts hugged the sheets and my ass pointed at the ceiling. Wholly undignified the way he pressed his face between my legs from behind, licking and sucking at my cunt. He delved deeper this time, lapping at the moisture in my core, drawing it out.
He found my clit and circled it, pressing the flat of his tongue against it in a timeless rhythm until I moaned against the sheets and warm liquid dripped down the inside of my thigh. He made love to me with his mouth, moving over every place that Carlos had touched, that Carlos had hurt.
Hennessey’s touch didn’t erase the pain. He made it sharper. Sweeter. I still felt the ache, jerking and crying out at the touch of wet tongue to torn skin. He saw the darkness written on my skin, and he wanted me anyway. The thought spurred me higher, on the roughened currents of hope.
I pushed back against him, shoving my wet cunt against his face, begging him to take more of me, all of it. Fingers slipped inside me, filling me where I needed him. It wasn’t enough though, and I clenched around him with my secret muscles, begging for reprieve only he could give me.
He pushed my hips down flat on the bed and placed his cock at my entrance.
“Tell me it’s okay,” he said.
He had to know I wanted him, from the dampness drenching the crown of his cock to my breathless moans urging him on. He knew, but he wanted me to state it clearly, unequivocally. That was the difference between him and Carlos. Carlos had reveled in my lack of consent, had gotten off on it. This man wanted more than my reluctant participation. He wanted my full-fledged desire, and he had it. I wanted his strong body. His intelligent mind. His unrelenting sense of honor. I wanted all of him.
“Yes. Please. Take me.”
“More,” he said on a groan.