Page 49 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

The confession obliterates his remaining restraint.

"Then I won't be."

He releases my wrists, shifting his weight to grip my hips.

"Wait." I catch his hand. "Hold them."

He pauses. The desire in his eyes sharpens to a razor's edge. "You want me to restrain you?"

I bite my lower lip and nod.

A low growl vibrates in his chest. He catches both of my wrists in one hand and holds them there, exactly as I asked.

For all the threat in him, he's gentle at first. He pushes into me with care. The first pain is a sharp, tearing flash of heat. I gasp, arching my back against the bed.

The pain dissolves, swallowed by something enormous. Fullness. Stretching. The impossible fact of him inside me.

He goes utterly still.

"Breathe." His forehead drops to mine, his arms shaking with the effort of not moving. "Breathe, then tell me."

I breathe. My body softens around him by degrees, pain melting into pressure, pressure into an ache that wants. We stay like that, joined and motionless, his heartbeat slamming against my chest so hard I can't tell it from mine.

"Move." The word comes out broken. "Please. Move."

He bends his head, lips brushing the shell of my ear.

"You feel incredible." The whisper is a rough confession as he draws back, slow, and fills me again. "I fantasized about this, too."

The first thrusts are careful, deep, deliberate—a tempo I can follow, like a partner giving me the count. I catch his rhythm the way I've caught every rhythm in my life, rising to meet him, and the friction turns my body molten. Heat pools low. Every nerve he woke with his hands begins to sing.

Then I hook my leg over his hip and pull him deeper, and his restraint shatters.

He drives into me with a ruthless rhythm. The rough canvas scrapes my bare back. The bed's rusted springs cry under us, drowned by the sound of skin and breath. His grip tightens on my wrists—not to hold me down, but to hold on—and I arch into every thrust, meeting force with force, demanding more with a body that's never once been allowed to demand.

Visceral. Brutal. Everything I need to burn away the ghosts of my past.

I surrender to the claiming. The ballerina dies in the ashes. I anchor myself to the operator tearing my world apart.

He keeps his promise. He takes me two more times in the dark.

Each round is harder than the last. He strips away the final layers of his restraint, driving into me with relentless force, testing my desire to be ravaged. I match his intensity. I refuse to break. I refuse to ask for mercy.

Hours later.

The generator thrums steadily in the distance.

The room is silent, save for the sound of our breathing.

I lie tangled in the military blanket. My skin is flushed and slick with sweat. My muscles ache with a satisfying exhaustion. The tremors are gone.

Dax lies beside me. His arm wraps around my waist, pulling my back flush against his chest. His chin rests on top of my head. He holds me like something he refuses to lose.

He's silent.

"You're thinking too loud." My whisper barely dents the darkness.

His chest expands with a slow breath. His arm tightens around my waist.