Chapter 26: Morning Claim
The light had shifted from morning gold to a flat, midday white. Maria lay on her side in the rumpled center of the king-sized bed, watching dust motes dance in a sunbeam. Her body felt heavy, used, a map of where he’d been. Between her legs was a persistent, dull ache, a pleasant soreness that made her shift her thighs just to feel it.
She heard the shower shut off. The silence that followed was thick, expectant.
The bathroom door opened, steam curling out ahead of him. Joe stood in the doorway, a towel slung low on his hips, water beading on his chest and shoulders. His dark hair was pushed back, dripping. His eyes found her immediately, that same relentless focus pinning her to the sheets.
“You’re still here,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
“I said I wasn’t leaving.” He walked to the foot of the bed, dropping the towel. He was already half-hard, the sight of her naked in his bed apparently all the invitation he needed. He didn’t join her. He just stood there, letting her look, his gaze sweeping over the faint bruises beginning to bloom on her hips from the table. “Hurts?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He moved then, a predator’s silent approach. The mattress dipped as he knelt on the edge. His calloused hands, still damp, settled on her ankles. He pushed her legs apart, not roughly, but with an absolute certainty that made her breath catch. The cool air of the room kissed her damp, sensitive folds.
“Joe…”
“Shhh.” He leaned down, his breath warm against her inner thigh. “I’m just looking. Taking inventory.” His thumb brushed over her, parting her, a clinical, proprietorial touch. “Swollen. Beautiful. Mine.”
He lowered his head.
The first touch of his tongue was a lightning strike. A slow, torturous lick from the very bottom of her slit all the way up to her clit. She jerked, a gasp tearing from her throat. Her fingers tangled instinctively in the sheets.
“Tastes like me,” he murmured, his mouth against her flesh. “Tastes like us. And morning.” He did it again, slower this time, his tongue flat and firm, mapping every fold. Then he focused on her entrance, his tongue tip pressing, circling, before spearing deep inside.
She cried out, her hips lifting off the mattress. He held her down with a firm hand on her stomach. “Stay.”
He ate her with a single-minded intensity that was closer to worship than sex. His tongue fucked into her, shallow then deep, mimicking the thrusts of his cock from hours before. He lapped at her own wetness mixed with his dried come, cleaning her, claiming her all over again in a way that felt more intimate than anything they’d done on the table. Her orgasm built quickly, a tight coil in her gut, amplified by the soreness, by the raw vulnerability of being spread open and devoured in the stark daylight.
“Please,” she whimpered, unsure what she was begging for.
He lifted his head, his chin glistening. “Please what?”
“Don’t stop.”
A dark, satisfied grin. “Wasn’t planning to.” He shifted, sucking her clit between his lips, applying a gentle, rhythmic pressure before suddenly scraping it with his teeth.
She screamed, her back arching violently. The climax detonated, a series of sharp, blinding pulses that ripped through her, leaving her trembling and boneless. He gentled, licking her through the aftershocks, soothing the overstimulated nerve until she pushed weakly at his head.
He moved up her body then, his weight settling over her. He was fully hard now, his cock pressing insistently against her thigh. He kissed her, deep and slow, letting her taste herself on his tongue. It was filthy. It was everything.
“Need to be inside you again,” he breathed against her mouth. “Need to feel you wrapped around me while you’re still soft and come-drunk.”
She could only nod, her capacity for speech obliterated.
He reached between them, guiding himself. He entered her with a single, smooth, deep thrust that made them both groan. The feeling was different now—softer, wetter, an intense fullness that soothed even as it stretched. He didn’t move immediately, just buried himself to the hilt, his forehead pressed to hers.
“This,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “This is home. Right here. Don’t you feel it?”
Tears, hot and sudden, welled in her eyes. She did feel it. A terrible, perfect rightness that had nothing to do with forgiveness and everything to do with fitting. Her body recognized its counterpart. Her cunt clenched around him involuntarily, a pulsing, possessive grip.
He began to move, a slow, rolling rhythm that was somehow more devastating than his earlier violence. Each withdrawal was an agony, each return a relief. He watched her face, studying every flicker of pleasure, every wince of over-sensitivity.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he chanted, his pace increasing incrementally. “This perfect, tight, greedy cunt. Taking me so deep. Milking my cock. You missed this, didn’t you? Missed your fucking owner.”
“Yes,” she sobbed, the admission torn from a place beyond pride. “God, yes, I missed it.”
Her confession shattered his control. His rhythm broke, turning into frantic, driving plunges. He hooked his arms under her knees, pushing them back toward her shoulders, opening her impossibly wide, and fucked into her with a savage, pounding intensity. The carved vines of the headboard knocked a steady, frantic beat against the wall.
“Gonna come,” he grunted, his face a mask of agonized ecstasy. “Gonna pump you so full. Mark my territory again. You want it? You want my come dripping out of you all day?”
“Yes! Joe, please!”
With a roar that was part triumph, part anguish, he slammed home and erupted. She felt every hot, pulsating jet, deeper even than before, a flood of possession. Her own second climax seized her, triggered by the feeling of him filling her, by the raw, unfiltered claim in his words. It was less a peak and more a prolonged, shattering convulsion that clasped him tight, milking him dry.
He collapsed, his full weight driving her into the mattress, his breath sobbing in her ear. They were a mess of sweat and come and spent desire.
Long minutes later, he softened and slipped out of her. A warm trickle followed immediately, a visceral reminder staining the sheets. He rolled to his side, gathering her against him, his hand splayed possessively over her lower belly.
The silence returned, but it was different now. Charged not with expectation, but with a daunting, unspoken future.
“I have a meeting at three,” he said into her hair, his voice rough.
She didn’t answer. She just listened to the beat of his heart, felt the evidence of his claim already cooling on her skin, and wondered if this was salvation or a deeper, more exquisite hell.
The steady thump of his heart against her ear was a war drum fading into aftermath. Her own skin felt foreign, a landscape altered by occupation. The warm seep between her thighs was a damning contract, still wet.
“I have a meeting at three,” he repeated, his fingers absently tracing the jut of her hip bone.
“So go.” Her voice was flat, stripped. “You’ve done what you came for.”
His hand stilled. The air in the room changed, grew charged and brittle. He shifted onto his elbow, looming over her, his shadow blocking the light. “Is that what you think this is? What I came for?”
“Isn’t it?” She met his gaze, her brown eyes hard and glittering with unshed tears. “You fucked me on a table. You fucked me in this bed. You’ve… deposited yourself. Twice. Transaction seems complete.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. The tenderness of moments ago burned away, leaving something dangerous and raw. He moved so fast she flinched. In one motion, he flipped her onto her stomach, his knee wedging between her legs to force them apart. His palm came down on the curve of her ass, not a slap but a firm, possessive press, holding her down.
“Transaction?” he hissed, his mouth at her ear. His free hand slid beneath her, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her belly. “You think a transaction leaves you smelling like me? You think a transaction makes your cunt pulse when I just fucking look at it?”
He ground his hips against her, and she felt him, already hard again against her backside. A broken sound escaped her. It was a sob, or a laugh.
“I can feel you clenching right now, empty,” he snarled. “Begging for it again. Your body knows. It’s the only part of you that isn’t a lying fucking coward.”
His words were a lance, finding the tender, infected truth she couldn’t voice. She struggled, a feeble twist of her hips, but he pressed down harder, the weight of him immense and inescapable. His fingers left her belly, trailed through the wet mess he’d made of her, and pushed two inside with a rough, curling twist.
She cried out, her face mashed into the pillow.
“See?” he whispered, fucking her with his fingers, the sound obscenely wet. “Greedy. Taking my fingers like it’s my cock. Soaking them. This is a transaction? This is a hunger.”
He withdrew his fingers, brought them to her lips. She turned her head away, squeezing her eyes shut. He grabbed her jaw, his grip unyielding, and forced her face back. He smeared his fingers, slick with their combined fluids, over her mouth, painting her lips with the taste of their collision.
“Taste it,” he commanded, his voice low and venomous. “Taste your own fucking need. Then tell me it’s a transaction.”
Revulsion and a dark, dizzying arousal warred in her gut. Her tongue darted out, a traitorous instinct, and licked at the bitter-salty truth on her lips. He watched her do it, his eyes black with a kind of furious triumph.
He released her jaw, positioned himself at her entrance. He didn’t guide himself in. He just pressed the broad, relentless head against her, a blunt threat. “Say it. Say you want me to stay.”
She shuddered, her whole body a live wire of conflict. “I can’t.”
“You can.” He pushed forward, just an inch, stretching her swollen opening. A choked gasp was ripped from her throat. “Your body is saying it. Screaming it. Let your mouth catch up.”
“Joe…”
“Say it.”
The word was a surrender, a fracture in her soul. “Stay.”
He drove into her in one deep, brutal stroke. She screamed into the pillow, the fullness a shocking relief, a violation she had begged for. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each thrust a piston of ownership, his hips slamming against the backs of her thighs. The room filled with the sound of skin on skin, of the bed groaning, of his ragged grunts and her muffled cries.
He leaned over her, his chest plastered to her sweat-slick back, his mouth at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His breath was fire. “Whose?” he grunted, punctuating each word with a deep plunge. “Whose. Fucking. Cunt. This?”
“Yours!” It was a wail, torn from the deepest, most shameful part of her.
“Damn right.” His teeth grazed her skin, a promise of a mark. He fucked her harder, deeper, his control fragmenting with every driving impact. “And I don’t walk away from what’s mine. Not again. You hear me? Never again.”
His hand fisted in her short, curly hair, pulling her head back to an painful angle, arching her spine. The new position made her feel impossibly open, speared. He was everywhere, in her, around her, the scent of him and their sex a thick fog in her lungs.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his rhythm turning frantic, animalistic. “Gonna fill this perfect, greedy hole until it’s leaking me for days. You take it. You take all of it. Every fucking drop.”
His release triggered hers, a cataclysm that shattered her from the inside, waves of pleasure so intense they bordered on pain, wrung from her by the feel of him pulsing deep within. He held himself there, locked, as she spasmed around him, his own groan long and ragged against her neck.
In the shuddering silence, his breath hot on her skin, his teeth found the same spot on her shoulder. They pressed, a warning. Then, with a possession that was final and absolute, HE BITES HARDER.