Collapsing on top of me, he breathed hard in my ear.
He didn’t speak, and I didn’t mention how tingly and tight I was—on the knife edge of release. I wasn’t worried. I would come. He wasn’t finished.
I waited.
I waited some more as his heartbeat clamoured against mine.
I worried I might have it wrong.
That Elder had somehow figured out how to sleep with me once and only once. Perhaps that was why he went so furiously fast—to get it over with before he truly gave in.
Disappointment swelled in my chest; a touch of anger that I hadn’t come and probably wouldn’t if this truly was a fast coupling for him to get control again.
Only, his cock never softened inside me.
His body never moved to stop crushing mine.
His fingers never unlatched from my hair.
Slowly, his hips rocked again, gently at first with a hiss hinting at sensitivity. “Did you think I was finished with you, little mouse?” His growl seared my blood, my nipples, my clit.
I shivered as he drove upward, nudging against the innermost part of me, bruising me with pleasure.
“I’m not finished.” His fingers tightened in my hair. “I’m not done.” His teeth nipped at my jaw. “I’ll never be satisfied while fucking you.”
My sizzling orgasm sat up and paid attention. “Take me. As many times as you need.” My hands walked down his back, loving the rippling power of his muscles as he drove again and again. “Once isn’t enough.”
His eyes gleamed. “You want more of this?” He thrust up, grinding into me.
I gasped as starlight filled my vision. “Yes. God, yes.” I grabbed his ass, intending to pull him harder against me. To rub against him and find my release but in one jerk he withdrew, leaving me empty and clenching for more.
“El—” I pouted and clawed the air for him to return.
His fingers grabbed my waist, plucking me effortlessly from the cushions. In one deliciously primal move, he manhandled me to the arm of the couch and pushed me against it.
I breathed hard as his hands turned to claws and tore at the tiny hooks holding my bodice in place. “I need to see you, Pim. Need to taste you.”
He scratched and broke, shredding my dress as each hook and eye pinged free. The bodice slacked around my torso, quickly revealing I might’ve worn red knickers, garters, and stockings beneath the dress, but I wore nothing above it.
The corset was all I needed to push my breasts up.
And now that corset was ruined and hanging like torn wings at my sides.
“Christ, Pim.” His eyes locked onto my breasts, his tongue darting between his lips. His head ducked, and his mouth captured my left nipple and then my right.
I stood swaying with one hand clutching his hipbone with his trousers around his thighs and the other swooping up to tangle fingers in his hair.
“Oh, God.” I cried out as teeth tangled with tongue.
He kissed and suckled, drawing more tingling need through the invisible cord from core to nipple. My knees wobbled as he bit me harder then stood to his full height and kissed me just as feral.
With one hand cupping my throat, he spun me around and pushed me over the rolled top of the couch arm. Something sounding like an apology fell from his lips as his fingers pulsed around my neck. “Remember I tried to stop this and you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Sweeping up my dress, he slotted his naked hips against my ass, his hand fumbling between heavy fabric and slippery bodies to once again find my entrance.
“I tried to fight you, Pimlico, but you’re just too fucking beautiful.”
The head of his cock found me.
I sucked in a breath, my belly squished and lungs struggling in the prone position he’d placed me in.
“I tell you I’m in love with you and instead of accepting my gift...you make me do this to you.”
I whimpered as he speared back inside me, forcing me to bend fully over the couch, thrusting so hard my toes came off the floor.
With one shoe on and the other foot balanced on tiptoe, I gave in entirely to his mania. His hands captured my breasts swinging unhindered and untrapped by my fallen bodice. His teeth nipped at the back of my neck, and my hair that had been painstakingly done by my dressers tumbled around us.
There was nothing alluring or beautiful about this moment.
He rutted into me like a monster.
And I bent over and took it.
God, I took it.
I craved it.
I loved how inhuman he was, how barbaric and consumed.
His thrusts were short and sharp, his grunts in time with every claiming of my body. We were untamed and messy, him driving into me and me arching back into him.
My orgasm built even stronger, a steady drumbeat in my clit and core and nipples.
I had to come.
Had to.
Had to.
Had to.
Letting the couch hold my weight, I buried my hand under my dress, fumbling and digging to find myself beneath so much frustrating fabric.
The moment my fingers found my clit, I sobbed with sex.
Sex was a noun, but here, now, it was a verb, an adjective, a living, breathing entity that filled me up and made me burst.
I didn’t think about how foreign it was to touch myself after never doing such a thing. I didn’t ponder on what Elder would think of me chasing my own pleasure.
All I focused on, all I could focus on, was the pummelling of his hard size in my pussy, the rapidly building pressure of muscles being hammered by his lust, and the spike of blissful insanity as I rubbed my clit with my fingertips.
Him and me together.
Chasing the ultimate paradise.
I wasn’t programmed for soft loving. Whether a by-product of my past or I’d always been built that way, I needed to feel the thrum and not just a tickle.
I punished myself as surely as he punished me and I loved it.
Fucking loved it.
Elder grabbed my hips, holding me steady to drive into me harder. “Fuck, that’s it. Christ, Pim. Make yourself come while I fuck you. Feel my cock in you. Feel me hold you down and know you can’t go anywhere. You’re mine. You belong to me. My cock belongs in you. Your orgasms belong to me. Everything about you belongs to me.” His pace turned crazed, his sweat dripping onto my spine as he drove into me faster, harder. “Come with me, Pimlico. Come. Now. Christ...come...” His voice switched to a lupine growl, and I rubbed so hard, a cramp shot down my arm and into my fingers.
The pain only added another dimension.
And this time...this time, I reached the finish line before him.
I screamed loud and uncaring as the crescendo found me, rippling down my core, squeezing inner muscles, shooting me into utopia as my legs gave out and I puddled over the couch arm.
The rush of liquid heat ensured my body was ready for deeper penetration.
Elder took full advantage.
He reared up, hands clamped on my hips, burying himself as far as he could as he roared out a second release.
On and on he thrust, feeding me his pleasure.
His cock throbbed with its own heartbeat, and residual clenches from my orgasm battered both of us.
He’d taken me twice.
He’d ravaged every part of me.
I was boneless, breathless, mindless.
But it wasn’t over.
Once more should be the key.
Lucky number three.
I honestly didn’t know if my heart could stand another. It bashed against my ribs as if it’d torn free from veins and arteries and suffocated in a pool of pleasure.
I gasped and gulped, my hair over my face, my dress in tatters.
I believed I had a few moments of reprieve while he gathered himself together.
Not this time.
Almost angrily, Elder withdrew and stumbled away. I turned in time to see him clutching his head, shaking and mumbling
, his eyes squeezed shut.
He was resplendent in a tumbled tux and glistening cock spearing out from beneath his black shirt. His trousers still clung to his muscular thighs—neither one of us nude even after two bouts of passion.
Not bothering to hide my breasts or rub at the trickle of his seed on my inner thigh, I moved toward him.
He was still hard.
Still ready.
He couldn’t stop now.
Three was the magical number.
I would survive another.
I had to.
He had to.
We had to do this if my theory was ever to be tested.
Elder held up his hand. “Stop, Pim. I’m trying so fucking hard—”
“No, you stop.” If he was back to fighting it, this wouldn’t work. He had to give in because I needed to know if this experiment would work. If it didn’t, then Jethro and Nila Hawk would stumble upon us tomorrow gasping for water and bruised beyond recognition from marathon sex all night. But if it did work, then we could finally find peace as well as pleasure and find a way forward we both could live with.
I got to indulge in this new side of me.
And he got to have me knowing there was an end in sight.
Come on, Elder.
Don’t stop.
“I want more.” Swaying toward him, I cursed the weakness of my voice—the scratch of being well used. But I wasn’t lying. I did want more. I wanted this now, and I wanted more in the future.
I wouldn’t let him ruin it.
He said I belonged to him.
Well, for the first time, I wanted to belong to someone, but only if I could have him in return.
He had to do what I wanted...he has to.
Tackling him, I climbed his body and reached for his mouth. But he grabbed my wrists in one hand and my cheeks with the other, his eyes blazing into mine. “What are you doing to me?”
“Trying to free you.” Dangling in his grip, I fought to get free. “Let it happen.”
“Stop.”
I managed to wriggle out of his grip, swatting away his touch, and darting in to kiss him. “Fuck me, Elder Prest. You’re not finished yet.”
He snapped again.
This time, he fell to his knees, dragging me with him.
His mouth claimed mine, my dress whooshing up to surround us in red and blue.
Pushing aside my gown, he somehow managed to free me from the material to settle me on his lap. Our bare skin was intensely hot and slippery with combined sex and sweat.
We were no longer human, just animals desperate to mate.
Squirming on his lap, I moaned like a cat searching for cream—searching for him, entirely unshackled from propriety and self-awareness.
I was empty.
Empty.
“Fill me, fuck me...Elder...please.”
“You’re going to kill me, Tasmin.”
My eyes flew open at my real name just as he stabbed up and his cock impaled me all over again—both enemy and victor over swollen-sensitive flesh.
He called me Tasmin.
He glowered as if I were a conquest as well as his mistress.
He hated me as well as loved me in that moment.
I gasped and groaned as he drove exquisitely deeper.
“This is what you get. Are you happy now? Happy that I’ll just keep fucking you until I can no longer stand?” He punctured his growl with his rampaging hips, bouncing me in his arms, jerking me down to spear deep, deep, deep.
My breasts jiggled before his hands captured them, forming a bra from his fingers, squeezing me depravedly.
A barely there memory scrambled through my mind of the first time we’d had sex. He’d been on his knees, and I’d been in his lap. Only he hadn’t moved when he’d entered me. He’d been rigid while I burst apart in his arms.
Now, I pushed his shoulders, causing him to clench his belly only for his legs to kick out and lie down with my pressure.
The moment he was on his back, I gave him everything he wouldn’t take that first day.
“Yes, I’m happy. Yes, I’m glad you’re fucking me. But now, it’s my turn.” Digging my fingernails into his chest, I rode him.
I took him.
I moved with him as he guided my hips to a faster beat.
I studied his face as his jaw tightened and eyes blackened and hair tangled on the carpet.
I arched and revelled in the way he locked onto my bare breasts.
I gasped and preened at how gorgeous he was wearing a rumpled tux with my dress all around him.
I rode him while he rode me, and I took back every last piece of my sexuality on the floor of Hawksridge Hall.
With our eyes locked and bodies joined, my hand vanished under my dress for the second time. I couldn’t finish this without coming again. I needed to stare into his eyes and shatter. I needed him to see just how much he’d broken through my bounds and created a bold sexual lover who would never tire of him, never deny him, never ever leave him.
My dress trapped my hand, layers upon layers of satin preventing me from finding where we were joined.
Elder’s jaw clenched as his nostrils flared, inhaling the scent of us, his face drenched from exhaustion. One hand left my hipbone, burrowing through my skirts, finding me swiftly.
His thumb latched onto my clit with reckless precision, burying me under an avalanche of heaven.
“Let me.” His voice was a cross between a snarl and thunder.
His face turned to stone as his thumb rocked me in the perfect way and his cock drove into me in ultimate rhythm.
I gave up being self-conscious or worried or tender or shy.
I threw myself into the carnage we created, my knees heating from carpet burn; my heart well and truly expired. “Elder...El...God, El.”
My head fell back, my eyes closed, my body swayed as my hips rocked, forcing myself down and onto him, filling me with him, consuming him, riding him, buying him, forging him to me for eternity.
I’d never been so free, so liquid, so dazed.
It was a dance.
A waltz.
A fucking on the floor with my lover panting and writhing beneath me.
“Come, Pim. Ride me.” He grunted and groaned. “Fuck, yes, ride me. Take me. Fuck, I want to come. I want to watch you break apart. I want to feel you.”
His face twisted into something demonic. “Ride me, Tasmin. Fucking ride me.”
So I did.
Time lost all meaning as we merged into one. We no longer fought to stay in sync; we were in sync. Our breathing, our thoughts, our bodies, our orgasms.
We drove each other up and up and up. We drove each other insane and crazy and wild.
And when there was nowhere else to climb and nowhere else to venture, we fell.
Ripple after ripple turned into a tide which turned into a waterfall.
His hand on my clit pushed me from orgasm to bitter splitting, and I jerked as if someone cut all my strings, crumpled me up, and threw me down to earth to forever be his.
He roared.
I screamed.
We rode out the waves, his heels driving into the floor to climb higher into me and my knees bleeding from rocking so hard.
We were determined to mark each other. Blinded and deaf to anything but crawling inside each other in every way possible.
And when the last clench wrung us dry, and there was nothing more than agonising echoes, we crashed together—boneless, broken, and utterly burned out.
Slowly, his cock softened inside me.
Slowly, the angry drive diminished from his eyes.
Slowly, his touch turned soft and adoring instead of rageful and controlling.
Finally, he kissed my forehead and brushed sweat-tangled hair from my eyes. “It’s time for us to go home.”
I nodded, too weak and sated to speak.
I stayed in my sex daze as he rolled me off him, and we both winced at him pulling free. My body mourned him, but my heart was glad fo
r a reprieve.
Doing up his trousers and smoothing his shirt, Elder gently scooped me into his chest and pulled me to my feet. I allowed him to do his best to fix my broken dress, smiling as he used his cravat to wrap around my bodice and keep my corset together, so I didn’t flash the masquerade guests.
I snuggled into him as he wrapped his arm around me, plucked the penny bracelet from the floor where I’d tossed it, found my shoe and discarded knickers, and unlocked the door.
Guiding me through Hawksridge Hall, I feared we’d bump into the master and mistress in our current state of undress. We looked as if we’d gone to war and both sides had lost.
But both sides won instead.
I hugged that happy lucky conclusion.
I was right.
He was wrong.
My theory on three was cemented.
As we stepped into the cool English night and kept to the shadows to avoid peering eyes, I whispered, “You owe me an apology.”
His eyes flashed, knowing full well what I meant.
I’d promised this would happen, and I’d promised the loser would owe the winner commiseration.
I waited for him to deny he’d been able to stop willingly. That we’d slept together and stopped without the need for any third party interference.
He merely guided me down the steps and onto white gravel. “I owe you nothing. Don’t try that again, Pimlico. Do you hear me?”
He was back to calling me Pimlico.
I was glad.
For a second there, I’d been two people blended into one.
I was back to one.
The better one.
The stronger one.
The one who had just won.
I smiled and made no promises.
Because we both knew I’d proven a point.
He’d stopped at three.
We’d found our middle ground.
And we both knew what that meant...
There would be no denying me now.
Chapter Thirty-Three
______________________________
Elder
WE DIDN’T SAY goodbye to anyone.
It was the height of rudeness, but with my blood coursing through my veins and overwhelming tenderness commanding me to care for Pim, I couldn’t bow to social niceties.