CHAPTER 18 - MARKS

He flips me onto my stomach and pulls my hips up before I’ve finished processing the fact that he just came inside me and is already hard again, and the feeling of him pressing against my entrance from behind while my body is still clenching with aftershocks from the first round makes me grip the sheets so hard my knuckles go white.

“Knox, I’m–” I start to say sore but he pushes inside me before the word forms and the stretch is sharper from this angle, deeper, and a sound comes out of me that’s somewhere between a whimper and a moan and he pauses with his hands on my hips and his chest heaving against my back.

“Too much?” His mouth is at the nape of my neck and the question is genuine even though his fingers are already tightening on my hips like he’s hoping the answer is no.

“Don’t stop.”

The sound he makes against my spine when I say that is barely human, and his restraint slips another notch as he pulls back and drives forward in a stroke that’s harder than anything from the first round.

The soreness is there but it’s wrapped inside the fullness of him in a way that makes it impossible to separate pain from pleasure, and my body has apparently decided that the combination of the two is its new favourite thing because my back arches on instinct and my hips push back to meet his next thrust.

He’s rougher now. His hands aren’t gentle on my waist anymore – they’re gripping me hard enough that I can feel individual fingers pressing bruises into my skin, and each thrust shoves me forward on the mattress until my palms are braced against his headboard and the bed is creaking in a rhythm that anyone in this apartment could decode in about two seconds.

His hips slam against me from behind and the sound of skin on skin fills the room and mixes with the wet obscene noise of him pushing into me where I’m still soaked from the first round, and he’s talking again because Knox always talks, his mouth at my ear narrating the destruction of me in real time.

“You were made for this,” he says, and his voice has dropped into that register that vibrates in my chest cavity, and his hand slides up my spine and presses between my shoulder blades until my chest is flat against the mattress and my as is in the air and the angle lets him hit something inside me that makes my entire body jolt like I’ve been shocked. “Made for me. This pussy was built around the shape of my cock and you’ve been walking around campus with it empty for nineteen years and that’s the biggest waste I’ve ever heard of.”

I should have a comeback for that. I should have something to say that reclaims even a shred of dignity. Instead I push my face into the pillow and moan his name and he grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls my head back far enough that my throat stretches and the arch of my spine deepens and he drives into me so hard that the headboard hits the wall.

“Say it again,” he growls, and I say it, his name breaking apart in my mouth like something I can’t hold together, and his hand in my hair tightens and his hips find a pace that’s relentless and deep and I can feel him in my stomach with every stroke and my body is wound so tight around him that I can feel every ridge and vein as he drags out and pushes back in.

His free hand reaches around my hip and finds my clit and starts rubbing in fast circles that match the pace of his thrusts, and the dual stimulation from inside and out scrambles whatever is left of my higher brain function until the only thoughts I’m capable of are his name and the word MORE and the sound of my own voice begging for something I don’t have the vocabulary to articulate.

Then he leans down and bites my shoulder.

Not a kiss, not a nibble, not anything playful or soft. His teeth sink into the muscle where my neck meets my shoulder and the pain spikes bright and hot and my whole body clenches around him so hard that he groans against my skin and his hips stutter, and the pain dissolves into something warm that spreads outward from the bite like heat from a coal, and the warmth floods my bloodstream and hits every nerve ending I have simultaneously and the orgasm crashes through me without warning.

I cum so hard my vision whites out and my arms give way and my face hits the pillow and I can feel myself pulsing around him in waves that seem to go on longer than any orgasm should, and his teeth are still on my shoulder and his hand is still on my clit working me through it and his hips drive forward one final time and he cums with my name muffled against my skin and I can feel him pulsing inside me and the combined sensation of both of us coming apart at the same time is so overwhelming that I lose track of where my body ends and his begins.

He collapses on top of me and then rolls to the side and pulls me with him, and his arms wrap around me from behind with a grip that has nothing to do with cuddling and everything to do with containment. His chest is against my back and his legs are tangled through mine and his arms are locked around my ribs like he’s physically preventing me from leaving, and his breathing is slowing against the back of my neck and I can feel his heartbeat through my spine.

I lie there for a few minutes letting my body remember how to function, and then I try to move – just shift toward the edge of the bed, just enough to start the process of sneaking back to my room before my mom gets home – and his arms tighten so fast it’s like a reflex.

“Stay.” His voice is rough and half-asleep and his mouth is pressed against the bite mark on my shoulder, and the word isn’t a request.

“Knox, I have to go back to my–”

“Stay.” Tighter. His thigh slides over mine and pins my legs and his arms are a cage around my ribcage and he’s bigger than me in every dimension and fighting him would require energy I do not currently possess, and honestly the warmth of his body wrapped around mine is doing something to the tension in my chest that feels dangerously close to comfort.

I stay. Not because he told me to. Because I want to, and that’s scarier than any command he’s ever given me.

I don’t know how long we lie there – long enough that his breathing evens out and his grip loosens just slightly and I start to think he’s fallen asleep – and then the front door opens and my mother’s voice carries down the hallway with the bright, oblivious warmth that makes my stomach drop through the floor.

“Kids? We’re home!”

Knox’s eyes open. My eyes are already open because sleep was never a possibility. We look at each other in the dim light of his bedroom, and I am naked in his bed and covered in marks – his fingerprints on my hips, the bite on my shoulder that’s already darkening – and my mother is taking off her shoes fifteen feet away.