Breathless (Merciless Book 3)

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

The kind of quiet that makes you feel unsettled deep inside. Staring down at the empty glass of wine, I bite down on my bottom lip knowing full well that it doesn’t matter if it’s quiet or if I was in a room full of people chattering because I was going to feel like this tonight regardless.

This sick, numbing feeling spreads over every inch of me the second I’m consciously aware and not drifting down a memory I wish I could hide in.

Letting out a deep sigh, I push the glass away from me and wrap the woven blanket tighter around my shoulders as I get off the barstool at the kitchen island.

I finally ate today, but the food’s tasteless and I can barely stomach a thing. Not when I feel like this.

Addison left half an hour ago, and I asked Eli to tell the guys to leave me alone tonight. Part of me regrets it. I’d like to pretend I could go downstairs and join them for a drink. Lord knows I need more than just one glass of Cabernet. I need a distraction and something that doesn’t feel like my world is falling apart and collapsing on top of me, but that’s all I have to accompany me tonight.

My bare feet pad softly on the hardwood floor as I make my way down the hall to the bedroom. All I keep thinking about is the phone on the nightstand. It only allows me to call Carter, or for Carter to call me. There’s not even a number in the settings for me to give someone else.

I hate that he limits me like this, but I understand the need for him to control it right now. Because if I could, I’d call my father. I’d tell him I’m sorry I left and was stupidly taken. I’d tell him I’m okay. I’d beg him to stop all this.

And I’d be judged, found lacking, and a failure. I already know it, but I would still try.

Just the thought of it makes me pause outside the bedroom door, my hand on the carved glass knob as a shuddering breath leaves me. I hate this feeling of hopelessness that numbs my skin. I hate this feeling of being confined and pushed to the side.

I hate everything.

When the door creaks open, my feet sink into the plush carpet and I try to flick the light on, but it doesn’t work.

My stomach drops even lower and I try it again, hearing the click but not seeing a change. It doesn’t stop me from furiously flicking the switch back and forth rapidly.

“I didn’t want any light tonight.” Carter’s voice paralyzes my body. It’s a slow drip, like the venom from a snake bite. That’s how my body reacts to his deep, rough tone.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I see his broad shoulders from the corner of the room, sitting on a chair that wasn’t there this morning.

“Carter,” I say his name and then glance at the mess of sheets on the bed, and he follows my gaze to where I was hours ago, pleasuring myself as he ordered me to. “I didn’t expect you to be here,” I tell him softly and make my way toward him.

It amazes me how drawn I am to him. As if nothing matters but going to him.

Maybe Nikolai was right. Maybe I am sick. Because all that nervousness and anxiety doesn’t exist anymore.

“I missed you,” he tells me, and it sounds so unlike the man I knew while I was in the cell, and the man who rules with an iron fist but it’s my Carter, the man who gives me everything behind closed doors. Flutters in the pit of my stomach travel up higher and lower at the same time, warming every inch of me.

“I need you,” I whisper as I reach him, not hesitating to climb into his lap and wrap my legs around his waist. His large hands splay along my lower back and ass. He squeezes just as my lips brush against his and instead of kissing him like I intended, my neck arches back and I moan from the pain.

From the pain.

It’s all he gives me at this moment, but sitting like this, being with him and feeling his heat is exactly what I need right now. The pain alone sends ripples of pleasure through my body.

He lowers his lips to the dip in my throat, letting his stubble drag along my skin as he plants open-mouth kisses right there and then trails up my neck.

He nips my earlobe before whispering in a way that creates a shiver down my spine, “I want you on the bed.”

I take a kiss from him first. Stealing it quickly, I love that I catch him off guard and he nearly misses the chance to kiss me back.

He takes it though and then sits back as I leave his lap and lie on the bed.

“Strip,” he commands, and I obey. I do it slowly, letting my fingers linger over my sensitized skin and reveling in the power I have. He wants me. He loves wanting me. And it’s a heady feeling to have such a powerful man give in to the need of wanting you.

The clothes fall carelessly to the floor and the cool air kisses my skin as I writhe on the bed and run the tips of my fingers over my hardened nipples.

Carter stands slowly, and I barely turn my head to watch him stalk around the bed, stripping slowly for me as well. With the only light coming from the windows behind me, the shadows dance around him and it’s intoxicating.

I can hear the clink of handcuffs before I see the metal shine in the pale moonlight, and it only makes me hotter for him. Before he commands me to, I raise my arms above my head and to the headboard made of thin planks. He only uses a single pair of cuffs, looping them through the planks and cuffing each of my wrists.

His fingers burn along my wrists and he lets them travel down my arm, tickling me, my breasts, my waist and then he dips a hand between my legs and I spread myself wide for him.

The groan deep in his throat is my reward, as is the spread of pleasure that runs through my body when he trails his thick fingers from my hot entrance up to my clit.

Writhing on the bed sends a mix of pain from the belt marks rubbing against the sheets and the pleasure from his touch.

He leaves me like that, breathing heavily on edge for him for a moment to grab something from the floor.

A tie, his tie. The silk runs along my cheek and then he tells me to close my eyes as he wraps it around me like a blindfold. My heart races at not being able to see and a new kind of excitement courses through my body.

Without being able to see, I can hear it clearly when he takes out another cuff as his fingers travel down my leg, to my ankle where he cuffs me. He does the same to the other side and I’m blindfolded and restrained for him.

My breathing comes in chaotically when I hear him walk around the bed again and the cold metal heats while the chill in the air makes me beg him to be touched. “Carter,” I whimper his name.

“Tell me the truth, songbird.” Carter’s voice is deep. but laced with something I haven’t heard from him in the bedroom for so long. A hard edge I don’t like to hear.

Although my heart batters in my chest with the mix of fear slipping into my veins, I whisper, “Anything.”

“You hate me, don’t you?” he asks me and with his question comes a click and buzzing. My back bows as he touches the cold metal of the vibrator to my clit. The pleasure is immediate and spikes through me.

“I love you,” I moan recklessly into the air as I pull at my cuffs, unable to move away from the intense pleasure.

He pushes it harder against me and I let out a strangled cry of ecstasy. I can feel myself clench around nothing as the intense waves of pleasure approach like the tide, creeping up and crashing harder and harder.

I’m so close. So, fucking close.

And then he pulls it away.

A gasp is torn from me and I try to look around. I want to hear where he is and what he’s doing over the sound of my own ragged breath. But as I do, my impending orgasm slowly dims, leaving me slick with my own arousal and desperate for him to get me off.

Swallowing down the disappointment and trying not to pull on the cuffs that dig into my wrists and ankles, I wait for him.

“You hated me when you came to the cell.”

I breathe in deeply, not wanting to remember how we started. My voice is raspy when I tell him, “I knew I wanted you.”

His thick fingers push inside of me and I can feel his knuckles brush against my front wall. My breasts swing, and my shoulder blades dig into the mattress as he finger-fucks me. “Fuck,” I moan, feeling the warmth spread through my body like wildfire as the bundle of nerves in my core heat and prepare to ignite.

“Carter,” I breathe his name as my neck arches and I feel the pleasure build higher and higher. “Carter,” I moan his name just before I cum.

And he pulls away before I can finish. My breathing’s chaotic and I try to rip the blindfold away, but my hands are cuffed.

“Carter!” I yell at him and all I get in return is a rough chuckle. He kisses my jaw even as I pull away from him.

“I don’t like this,” I warn him in a voice that wavers. I can feel a sense of dread flow into my blood.

“All you have to do is answer me.” His voice is easy as if this isn’t a trap. “Did you hate me?” he asks again, and my voice tightens.

The buzzing gets louder and this time the vibrator hits me at full force. My head pushes back and the pleasure races through my blood. I’m so close. I’m already on the edge with only a few seconds of its touch.

And then it’s taken away. Gritting my teeth, I struggle to move, feeling tears prick my eyes. “Carter!” I scream at him with unadulterated anger, but all I get is the vibrator back on my swollen nub.

Again, he takes it away just before the pleasure can consume me, leaving me with dimming fire and I can’t fucking take it.

“Yes, I hated you! You hurt me, and I hated you for taking me!”

The pain that sweeps through me is like nothing I’ve felt before. Admitting what happened and knowing what I felt back then… I hate it. I hate that he’s bringing it up. “Is that what you wanted?” I ask him, furious that he’s doing this. “I hate this!” I yell at him but as the last word leaves my lips, the vibrator hits my clit and he leaves it there, my body flying higher and higher and then I fall from the sky, sending a tingling sensation to wreck my body all at once.

It lasts and lasts as I lie paralyzed and still at Carter’s mercy.

“You loved me afterward though?” he asks me, his lips so close to mine and I push myself up as high as I can and steal his lips with mine. He kisses me back ravenously. I can feel his body close to mine and I wish I could wrap my legs around him and hold on to him, but I’m bound, and he pulls away from me.

I’m still reeling from my orgasm and the kiss I was too starved for to remember what he asked me, so he asks me again.

Breathlessly, I answer him, “Yes, I love you. I love you, Carter.”

As his name leaves my lips, he pushes the vibrator back to my sensitized bud and it’s nearly too much. I scream his name and he captures my lips with his as I detonate beneath him. The pleasure consumes me as the night sky is consumed with stars. Again and again.

I want to kiss him, but more than anything I want him to know how much I mean it when I say it. I love him, and he’s all I want.

“Do you love Nikolai?” he asks me, and the question destroys the moment. I struggle to answer, but I do know the truth and I won’t lie to him.

“Yes. But not like you,” I answer him, feeling the high fall and my pulse slow. A second passes and another without him making a sound or touching me and fear races through my blood. “Carter?” I call out his name and he asks me another question.

“If I wasn’t here, would you be with him?”

The silence stretches as I remember wanting Nikolai but being too afraid to tell my father. That girl, the one who doesn’t go after what she wants and simply prays not to be seen, that girl is long dead.

“I don’t know,” I answer him in a breath and again he denies me, pushing the vibrator to my clit and finger-fucking me until I’m so close to my release I can’t breathe.

Gasping for air, I search for some kind of relief, brushing my ass against the silky sheets, but Carter tsks me, holding my hips down.

“Just tell me the truth, songbird. I’ll take care of you,” he whispers in a voice I don’t trust. One that’s sinful.

“I don’t know Carter. Please,” I try to beg him, but he doesn’t listen. He presses the vibrator against my clit and pulls away nearly instantaneously. My body bucks and the metal bites into my skin. “Fuck!” I cry out. I’m so close. I’m so fucking close again.

Off and on, off and on, he teases me.

The tides of my pleasure rush to the surface, igniting every nerve ending, but as soon as they’re ready to go off, he pulls away and waits for the embers to die before bringing the fire back.

“If I wasn’t here, would you be with him?” he asks me softly, calmly, his lips close to the shell of my ear. His breath traveling along my skin is enough to nearly get me off. I don’t answer, I only bite down on my lower lip and shake my head, but I can’t answer him.

And he does it again. Finger-fucking me ruthlessly, but the second my orgasm approaches, he pulls away. The smell of sex and the feel of my slickness on my inner thighs tease me into thinking there’s more. But he leaves me panting and again my orgasm dies before I can get off.

It’s the last bit I can take.

“Yes! I would try to be with Nikolai if you were gone.” I can hardly believe I’ve spoken the sin out loud, much less to Carter. I know it hurts him and I hate it. I fucking hate it, but it’s the truth. “I would try to be with him,” I suck in a deep breath, brushing the tears off my face away with my forearms and wishing I could do the same with my shame, “but I don’t know that I could ever have what we have. I wouldn’t be the person I am without you.” Tears leak down my face as the confession is forced out of me. “I love you, Carter. I don’t want him when I have you.”

He ruthlessly strokes against my front wall and I cum instantly. He pulls the orgasm from me, drawing it out and my body arches and goes rigid as the silent scream of ecstasy is ripped from me.

He doesn’t stop until I’m limp and struggling to breathe.

“Carter, stop please,” I beg him in a strangled voice that doesn’t sound at all like me. “I hate this. I chose you! I fucking chose you!”

“Shh,” he shushes me as I struggle to breathe. The touch of his splayed hand on my belly makes me jump, but he caresses my skin with soothing strokes until my entire body has calmed. With soft kisses on my neck, I beg him to stop again and let me love him. It’s all I want to do right now, love him and feel the love he has for me.

“One more question,” he tells me, and I stay as still as I can, waiting for it and dreading it. I can’t stop crying, knowing what I’ve already confessed to him and worried that he won’t love me because of it.

“Will you still when your family is gone? Will you still love me then?”

I already know the answer, but I don’t want to say it.

The buzz from the vibrator makes me cry harder. He runs it along my pubic bone and my hips buck, trying to move away. I can’t take any more.

“Tell me the truth,” he whispers in a voice coated in hopelessness. He already knows the answer; I’ve already told him. He doesn’t need to torture it out of me.

“No,” I cry out. Hating him for what he’s doing. I don’t want to think about any of this, let alone admit what it would do to us.

“I love you, but if you do it… if you kill them, I will hate you forever,” I gasp out as tears stream down my face. Agony tears through me both in the physical sense and emotional. He wrecked me. Carter destroyed whatever guard I had that protected me from this truth.

“I love you, Carter.” I hear the cuffs click and then the metal leaves my skin. It’s biting into my wrists and the second he unlocks them; I cradle my wrists to my chest.

I’m still crying into the blindfold when I hear the bedroom door open and shut. The hollowness in my chest collapses on itself and I refuse to believe he left me.

But when I finally take the blindfold off and beg him to hold me, he’s not there.

Carter left me.

He doesn’t love me. Carter Cross doesn’t love me.