You’re going to be cleverer than me soon, he’d murmur against my skin.You’ll outshine everyone. The other professors, me, the whole world.
It was possibly the highest praise Church could give, since he arrogantly—but also correctly—assumed he was the smartest person in every room he strode into, and so his praise and petting over my intellectual successes never felt patronizing or supercilious. Superior, yes—asking James Church Cason to be anything else would be like asking a lion to be a mouse—but superior in a way that made me into a lion too.
For all that I later resented feeling like an idiot animal of prey, until he’d left me at the altar, he made me feel brilliant and immortal. Yes, he fucked me like an altar sacrifice, refused to accept any work or thought or argument from me that wasn’t the absolute best—but there was no disharmony in that, not for us. He could be reduced to cinders by my potential and then still fuck me like I was his temple prostitute, and we moved from one dynamic to the other like hopping between trenches at a dig. And like a dig, it would look like chaos to the uninitiated—simultaneously dirty and yet regulated, both inchoate and bizarrely intricate—but to us it was home.
Until our wedding day.
Remembering that now, my cheeks heat and my eyes fly open. “Fuck you,” I say, right as his middle finger grazes over my clit, and then my curse turns into a low whimper.
“A fine plan,” he murmurs in my ear. “Because you were always mine to fuck, sweet Charlotte, from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
His finger is perfect, it’s the kiss of heaven, it’s big and blunt and firm, and it’s right where I need it, right where it feelsso good. Good enough to push my murdery urges to the edge of my mind, just for a moment, just for right now.
“I’m not yours,” I manage. And I mostly mean it, but I can still feel his smirk curving against the shell of my ear, because he knowsmostly mean itis a world away fromabsolutely and definitely mean it, and he won’t let me forget it.
For some reason.
“Why?” I ask on a gasp—he’s just slid his fingers down to toy with my vagina, to probe possessively at where he used to own me—and then I inhale again as he pushes his finger inside and sends sparks skittering everywhere across my skin.
Four years. It’s been four years without being touched by this man, and it’s like taking a full breath of air after a deep, dark dive. Oxygen and life flood me, my body sendsyes please yes pleasechemicals swimming through my blood, and the bright, heady wash of it all makes me dizzy. I slump back against him even more as he slides out enough to tease my clit again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I need to,” he grates out. “Because you belong to me.”
His finger penetrates me again, then a second finger. They slide and curl and stroke, and my body sings at being filled by him, filled by his will and his arrogance and his hunger. The hunger that even now has him growling low in my ear as his indelible erection makes its needs known against the soft curve of my bottom.
I try valiantly for a dig, for something that would give me some control, but not enough to control to leave. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to stop. I want to ride his hand and then murder him for being the most selfish man on the planet. “Doesn’t your date belong to you?”
“No,” he says shortly, not elaborating and his fingers not pausing in their rhythm.
“But—”
“But she’s not here with me between her legs, now is she?”
“God, you’re such a dick,” I groan, chasing his touch with my hips so that I’m riding his hand in truth. I reach over my shoulder and behind me to fist my hand in his tuxedo jacket, the other I brace against his hard thigh for balance as I rock against his touch.
“And you’re the wettest thing I’ve ever felt,” he says. “Helpless girl, fucking my hand. Do you miss it? Me?”
“No.”
“Sweet Charlotte, you can lie with your words all you want, and I’ll still know the truth.” His hand molds to the shape of me—his palm grinding against my clit as his fingers press and curl inside—and he buries his face in my neck. Inhales. “Who’s touched this since you left me?”
“None of your fucking business,” I breathe.
Oh, he doesn’t like this, not at all. I can feel his body tense against mine; his hand in my skirt is merciless, determined, it will wring an orgasm from me at all costs now, simply to erase any memory that’s not of him. I should hate that, I should stop it. Shove him away and tell him he doesn’t get to make me come, and he doesn’t get to care about the people whodoget to make me come.
Or better yet, I could knee him in his giant dick and then go back to my job, the one I have to keep for at least two more years.
Butfuck, he’s good at this. Even angry and jealous—or maybe it’s because of the anger and jealousy—his touch is sex itself. Primitive. Greedy. Unapologetic. His palm is pure rolling pressure on my clit, his fingers are long and skilled inside me, and liquid fire is pooling in my lower belly, burning at the apex of my thighs and down my quads. He’s going to make me come, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he thinks he’s winning some crucial point here, that he’s conquering, when really I still hate him and his perfect, godlike penis, and I’m one the who’s winning. I’ll take my orgasm, tell him to fuck off back to hell, and then walk out of here having been pleasuredandwith the upper hand.
Ha.
“Are you thinking about it?” I provoke. “Me fucking other people?”
“Yes,” he says sharply. “And I’m thinking about how I’m going to fuck you in very short order, my little supplicant, and the minute I do, you’ll forget about anyone else. You’ll forget about anyone but me.”
Memories flash—his body toiling over mine, his firm buttocks flexing and thrusting as I clutched and scratched for him to go harder and faster; his big, rough hands covering my naked tits as he bounced me on his lap like a doll. His cruel mouth between my legs, insatiable and as merciless as the rest of him, licking and sucking me as his muscled arm bunched and moved just out of view so he could masturbate while he ate me.
There was nothing like Church in the grip of an orgasm. It was like watching potency itself, and it was so erotic to see his jaw flex and his eyes hood and his stomach and thighs jerk with the force of his spend that I’d usually come again just from witnessing it.