Page 41 of State of Ruin

I map her skin with my hands before pushing the straps off her shoulders and letting the dress sink to the floor—a fact she allows by pausing her efforts with my dress shirt. She stands before me, breathing hard, a vision in nothing but her thong. Her breasts are small and wonderful, nipples pink and furled tight, and something in me breaks.

“Stirrups,” I tell her, “have their place. But you belong on a bed.” With that, I pick her up, clamping a hand under her peachy ass, my arms full of her as she wraps her legs around my waist. At the bed, I lean forward and lower her down before peeling her thong down her legs. She kicks it off and scoots farther up the bed without being told, bracing herself on her elbows as she slides one foot up over the sheets. I think I might die of happiness. It’s as if seeing her here, naked and laid out on my bed for me, is the most precisely perfect thing my brain could conceive of.

I think she should never leave.

With her hungry eyes spurring me on, I get my shirt off and make quick work of my belt buckle and pants. Off come my socks. I wrangle my boxer briefs over my erection and lose them, too, then I’m crawling over her on the bed, kneeling between her legs, staring down at her, stroking her hair. What the fuck was I thinking with all those Alchemy gimmicks? Sure, I acted out my deepest fantasies on her over those two sessions. But a woman like Elyse requires no gimmicks, and right now I want the anti-Alchemy experience.

I want to fuck her in my bed, deep and slow, and make her fall apart around me.

The way she’s staring up at me is something I have no words for. I’d like to think this moment feels as charged to her as it does to me and, if I’m honest with myself, as monumental. As I lower myself down on top of her—just for a moment, just to revel in the sensation of bearing down—I take in her face. The face that torments me in my dreams and eludes me in my waking hours. The face I crave so much that I’m forced to drink it in from the pages of the very pitch I killed.

But now it’s in front of me. She’s in front of me, all lush-mouthed and doe-eyed and luminous, and if I’m back in my dream, I never want to wake up.

Fuck that pillory. Being eye-level with her cunt had nothing on this.

Although that’s clearly where I should be: down there, making this worth her while. Vindicating the decision I made for her.

She’s lying here, guileless and trusting. She thinks she’s here of her own free will. And what terrifies me beyond all compare is this insistent, intrusive thought, tapping at my consciousness like a tattoo:

If she knew what I’d done, she wouldn’t be here.

But she doesn’t know.

She won’t find out.

And she’s fucking here.

I kiss her one more time. Slowly, memorizing the reality of her with all my senses, the present moment feeling almost bittersweet. Painful, certainly. I’m Bottom—or a more cerebral version, hopefully—kissing Titania, hoping her curse never lifts. Hoping she never finds clarity. Hoping I can make it so good for her that she never even thinks to seek it out.

Then I tuck a pillow under her head and slide down her body, mapping it with my mouth as I go. A worshipful suck of her nipples. An awed kiss to her stomach. Eating her in those stirrups was merciless and intense and fucking hot, but this feels sacred. I lie between her legs, and we stare at each other. I don’t break eye contact as I seek out her wetness and use my fingers to stretch it open for me. She beseeches me with her eyes, and I grant her prayers with my mouth, licking a line upward until my tongue finds her clit, encircling it.

Jesus, this is good. The way she tastes is diabolical. If I wasn’t the clear devil in this scenario, I’d think Satan had sent Elyse Ward to ruin me. I push her legs wider and feast on her, sliding my tongue in and out of her before replacing it with a couple fingers and sampling her clit again. My mouth is watering, and my heart is hammering, and my dick is jerking against the comforter. I’m losing myself in her when her lovely little moans escalate into words.

“Come here.”

I look up. Her brown eyes are hooded, her face etched with need. “I’m very busy.”

A little laugh. “I’m close. I want to come with you inside me.”

“There’s no universe where you have to choose.” I give my fingers a leisurely twist to underscore that truth.

“I know, but—I want it.”

Well, that settles that. I’ve already conspired, in a dozen dubious ways, to put Elyse in my bed tonight. I’ve pulled every string. Tonight, the lady gets what she wants. I crawl back up the bed and kiss her again, cradling her face, letting her taste herself on me.

“Please tell me you have condoms,” she whispers against my mouth, and I hesitate.

Of course I have condoms. Legions of them. But I wish for a second I was a different man, a man who could be okay with verbal declarations of birth control and clean bills of health. A man who could take the next step without having to suffer the knowledge of what Machiavellian machinations would await any poor woman who got accidentally knocked up by a Voss.

But my cousin Charles set the precedent there.

I am not afforded that ignorance.

I am not a different man.

“Of course I do.” I kiss her once more before pushing myself up and reaching over to the nightstand drawer. Condom secured, I kneel up. “I want you to know something,” I say as I rip off the foil and position it at my tip, pinching the end. “Protection is a good idea. Very good. No matter what. But I want you to know that I’m not fucking anyone else right now. I haven’t since our first time together, and I have no plans to. I just wanted to say that,” I conclude lamely. The significance of those red stamps at Alchemy aside, I really need her to be clear on the fact that the condom doesn’t mean I’m fucking around.

She stays silent, gaze flickering between my face and my dick. “Neither am I,” she says. “Obviously.”