She bites down on my shoulder, her fingernails digging into my skin through my shirt. She writhes on my lap, so close to the edge already, although each time her ass brushes against the fabric of my pants, her voice hitches, and her grip on me tightens.
Pressing my fingers inside her, I stroke her ruthlessly and butt my palm against her clit. Her back bows and I have to hold her closer to me, laying my hand against her shoulder.
“Cum for me,” I whisper in her ear. My cock is hard and desperate to be wrapped in her hot cunt, but I can’t take my pleasure from her like this.
It’s all for her.
“Carter,” she gasps my name as her body rocks with pleasure and her head falls back. I don’t stop until she’s trembling, and her cries have stopped completely.
My heart races against hers, sweat covering my skin and every muscle in my body coiled.
Time passes slowly as I wait until she’s calm and coherent. And each second, I carefully select the words she needs to hear.
With weak balance, she finally lifts her head to look me in the eyes. Her expression pinches as she leans back, feeling her raw ass brush against my pants once again, but this time her lips part and another orgasm threatens from the faint touch.
“I need more from you,” I tell her, breaking her moment and forcing her hazel eyes to stare into mine.
“I have you here,” I say as I let my fingers fall to her pussy and then cup it, watching as she gasps, throwing her head back and rocking herself into my hand. My lips drop to her throat, whispering against her skin, “So needy.”
Before she can get off again, I stop and wait for her eyes to reach mine, dark with desire and lit with lust. “I’m getting to you here,” I tell her and smooth her hair back on the crown of her head.
A moment passes with a tense beating in my chest before I drop my fingers to her chest, between her bare breasts and ask her, “What about here?”
My eyes flicker between where I’m touching her and her own gaze, now swirling with a hopelessness and sadness I wish I could take away.
The ever-present vise tightens on my heart as she asks me in a whisper, “If I gave you that, what would I have left?”
It tightens further, and my heart refuses to beat. The answer is so obvious. “You’d have me.” I watch her expression remain unchanged and I have to look away.
Breathing in deeply, I ignore whatever I’m feeling, every last bit of it, knowing logically, she’s close. I know she is.
She comes and goes, and that’s because of her father. If he wasn’t in the picture, she would be mine completely. And Nikolai…
“You know what I need, Carter,” Aria finally speaks and when she does her voice cracks. Tears linger in her eyes. “For you to have my heart, you can’t destroy it. You can’t kill them.”
I cave. Knowing what this could be, I offer her something, just to have a chance to break through the wall that guards her heart. “I’ll call him, but you’ll be silent.”
With a look of shock and gratitude, she leans in closer to me and starts to speak but I press my finger against her lips, silencing her and halting her movements.
Fear is power. And every day, I fear her never loving me more than the day before. I’ve given her the power and I don’t know how I let that happen.
“I will call your father and you’ll listen only. Is that clear?”
Although she nods, she doesn’t speak until I move my finger away. “Yes, Carter.”
It occurs to me how little she obeys unless she has hope. I instantly regret telling her I would call her prick of a father.
I need to give her hope in something else. Because when this war is over, her father will be dead, and she’ll have to find forgiveness or be miserable and hate me forever.
Chapter 23
Aria
I don’t know how I slept at all.
I keep wondering if he’s really going to do it. If Carter is going to call my father and if he does, what would he say? I almost ask Carter if I can call Nikolai, just to tell him I’m safe but I don’t know how Carter would react, and I don’t want to push him when he’s given me this hope.
If my father knew Carter gave me Stephan to kill, literally forced to stay put with a knife placed in my hand, wouldn’t that offer some sort of truce between them?
My hands are shaking so much from the anticipation and anxiety of what they’ll say that the picture in front of me is blank, not from lack of inspiration, but from the inability to create even a simple line.