Fighting Fate (22 page)

Ivy hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but when she heard the clatter of a door close, her eyes popped open and she realised that sleeping was exactly what she’d been doing. Rolling onto her back, she stretched and kept her eyes closed, anticipating that Dax would join her. Except he didn’t and there were no more sounds to indicate what he was doing so curling up to sit in the middle of the vast bed she was confused to see him in the doorway of the closet, doing nothing.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Did you fix it? Did everything get worked out?’

‘I think it did.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said awash with relief that made her sigh out a smile. ‘Do you want me to cook you something and you can tell me what happened?’

‘No,’ he murmured.

She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or get up and run away, because his static form wasn’t giving much away. ‘Are you ok? Was it rough? Was he pissed?’

‘Brad was pissed, so was Bruno.’

‘And Mauri?’

‘I knew I could count on Mauri.’

Their relationship must be stronger than Ivy had given it credit for because she hadn’t expected Mauri to be understanding. Dax wasn’t upset or angry, at least she didn’t think that he was, he was still just standing there.

‘What are you thinking about, tough guy?’ she asked, resisting the urge to exhale a nervous laugh.

Reaching for the back of his tee-shirt, he grabbed the neck of it and pulled it off then bent down to unlace his boots enough to pull them off. Ivy didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking after he shirked his jeans.

Giving her a full frontal view of his healthy form, her own smile slipped into the understanding range. ‘Never mind,’ she said, tossing aside the sheet she’d managed to twine herself in while she was sleeping. Ready to get to her knees and close the space between them, he held up his hands and she paused.

Dax made the journey on his own, bringing that bodacious body onto the bed where she waited, her arms open wide. As he ascended the length of her body he snagged the sheet and held it. He slid his open hands up her arms, tickling the delicate flesh and almost making her laugh. But the laugh faded when he clamped her wrists around the headboard and used the sheet to tie them both in place.

Lying naked, stretched out on this warm bed made her shift with discomfort. She didn’t mind being naked, and was even used to being restrained by Dax, though he tended to tether her leg rather than her arms.

‘You randy?’ she teased trying to kiss his mouth, but he took it away from her and pressed his face into her throat instead.

Clasping her breasts, he skimmed downward and with one punishing jerk he opened her thighs and pushed the head of his dick into her. Wincing into the unexpected intrusion, she wished that her hands were free, because this man on top of her didn’t touch her with the same respect he had last night.

‘Dax—‘His mumbles cut her off and she strained to hear his words. Often he mumbled when he was buried in her, but she never figured out what message he was trying to convey to her.

His head left her neck and he licked down to one nipple, which he took in his teeth and pulled upward, stretching her skin and making her yelp. She was all for rough play, but the frown on his face didn’t seem to be having fun and after that incident she wasn’t either.

‘Dax—‘

‘Shut the fuck up!’

Pulling out, he flipped her body over, crossing her arms in the binds causing more pain to build in her. The position was uncomfortable and would make her stiff, but she quickly got over that when his hands landed on her ass. A gentle finger slap was followed by a full hand smack, then he squeezed.

‘What the hell is going on, Dax?’

‘If I’ve gotta get rid of you then I’m getting the most I can out of you first.’

‘Rid of me,’ she repeated me, trying to see him over her shoulder, but her awkward position meant twisting was almost impossible.

Dax’s shins pressed into the back of her thighs, holding her in place with her legs still spread wide. Parting her ass cheeks, he drew a finger down between them and pressured his thumb on her rear opening.

‘No,’ she said, trying to infer just how serious she was about him pushing the limits of their intimacy, especially in a moment as tense as this.

‘We’re married now,’ he said, but there was no love in him. ‘I get to have all of you.’

‘I’ve said no, if you force the issue it’s still rape. I don’t care if we’ve known each other ten minutes or ten years.’

‘Making me happy in bed has been your priority since the start of this.’

‘I care about making all of you happy, at all times,’ she said. ‘And you should care about the same thing, and it will not make me happy if you violate me. You’re supposed to love me.’

‘Supposed to,’ he said. ‘Is that what you’re supposed to do too? Supposed to make me believe that you did?’

‘Please talk to me,’ she said with rising panic. ‘What went on with Mauri?’

‘We’re going over there tonight,’ he muttered, brushing her hair away from her back. ‘You’re going to be introduced to the family.’

‘I’ve met them all,’ she said, almost growling through the teeth gnashing she was doing to try and calm her frustrations. ‘Why did you say you were getting rid of me? How can you get rid of me and take me over there?’

‘Never mind,’ he said and his body came down atop hers. The burning rod of his erection emblazoned itself on her soft butt cheek.

Grabbing her hair at the back of her head, he twisted it in his fist to force her head up and back, but she still couldn’t see him.

Pouring disgust into the mist of his poisoned breath he snarled at her. ‘Disrespect is the greatest of enemies,’ he exhaled into the shell of her ear. ‘You are disrespect, Minx.’

‘I’m your enemy?’ she asked, wondering how he could ever have reached such a conclusion in such a short time. When he had left her here in his apartment she had been worried for his safety, not for their relationship. Now it became clear to her that she should never have let him go back to that place alone; he wasn’t as secure in their relationship as she was. Though that security, she now realised, may have been misplaced. ‘What did he say to you?’

‘Forget that, don’t talk about my family or even think about them.’

‘Dax, this isn’t you. I love you and you know that I do.’ He yanked her head back causing her to gasp for air.

‘How can I believe that? How could I think that’s true? You wanted freedom and it’s what you got. That’s why you needed me.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ she spat, angry that Dax was being manipulated to turn against the one true bout of happiness he’d had in his life. ‘That bastard told you that I had seduced my way out of Trystan’s bed and into yours?’

‘Yeah, it’s pretty damn clear when somebody says it to you like that.’

‘Fine, believe that if you want to, because you know what? It kind of did start that way, I thought about it, thought about how I needed an ally because I was in fear for my life. When you come from the streets you’re used to doing whatever it takes to get by.’

‘So you turned to turning tricks? Fucking me for liberty instead of green?’

‘You had an ulterior motive too,’ she said, being squashed under his body with his hand still twined in her hair and her arms stretched to the headboard. Ivy wasn’t in the most civilised of positions to argue, but he needed this dominance over her and right now she resented the hell out of him for that.

‘My ulterior motive was to fuck you, and you knew that.’

‘Your ulterior motive was to groom me for your buddy. It’s sick, Dax. I didn’t know that when we started sleeping together. Hell, I thought you were being coerced too, I actually thought that there was a chance you were being blackmailed or bribed to be so cruel to me. I see now that it’s just the way you have to be in order to fit into your family.’

‘Damn right, and we’re proud of it. No one disrespects us and gets away with it.’

‘According to you, I did,’ she said, spitting a section of hair from her mouth when it tumbled from her matted locks above. ‘According to you, I got you all the way down the aisle. I must have some serious skills in the sack. You actually believed that the marriage thing was your idea.’

Grunting, he thrust her head forward and it landed in the pillow. His body weight disappeared and she tried to see through her hair where he had gone but could not. Thinking that he had left the bed, she tried to move onto her back again and untwist her arms. Except she got barely a quarter turn when he snatched her hips and forced her onto her front again.

‘I don’t want to look at you,’ he said, holding her down.

‘That’s called guilt, Dax. You know that you’re wrong and you can’t look at me because hurting me hurts you.’

‘It’s not going to hurt for long,’ he sneered and opened her thighs again and this time continued from her rear opening to her front one, pushing his fingers through the pleats of her body.

‘Fuck my pussy all you like, Dax,’ she said. ‘Maybe some of that frustration will give us both a head start and you’ll be through before I have to think about faking it.’

She had never faked orgasm with him before, but if they had sex now she couldn’t really see herself being in a place to relax enough to enjoy it properly.

‘If you’re so pissed at me, why would you want to have sex?’ he asked.

And when the truth came to mind before words came out, her heart grew sick. ‘Because if you’re about to get rid of me then this might be the only chance I have to be with you one last time.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ he grumbled.

Because she couldn’t see him it was a shock when his swollen dick plunged into her. Their conversation thus far hadn’t meant much in the way of foreplay and so her juices were on the sparse side, mostly just residual from when she’d awoken and watched him strip.

But her hissing curse didn’t stop him from pulling back and sliding back in, on a path much easier to forge this time. She closed her eyes and tried to loosen the clamping tension low in her gut that had to be hindering his path. He slid in and out, gaining pace, but other than the occasional spank he didn’t touch her. There were no fingertips on her spine, no kisses on the back of her neck or smoothing of her thighs.

He kept going at it and cursed a few times, but his pace slowed then after a few more pumps he withdrew and vanished from his place between her raised thighs.

‘What are you doing?’ she panted. ‘You weren’t done. I wasn’t done.’

He didn’t say anything, just flipped her onto her front and freed her arms from their binds. Anger saturated his expression and she considered what she would do if things got violent because against a man like this she wouldn’t stand a chance.

His body lunged for hers and she braced, but it was a kiss he planted on her mouth. A kiss that was so deep and punishing that the sickness in her heart metastasised to all of her cells. With her hands now free she could touch him, so she did.

Cupping his face, she ran her hands into his hair and to the back of his neck, caressing his shoulders, his arms, and his ribs, all while he kissed her mouth. The severe force of his kiss seemed to be his way of chastising her for everything her mouth had made him believe. Ivy knew that her words and her actions had all been true, but Dax didn’t, he didn’t trust her.

This time when her legs parted around him they did it by choice. And when he slid his unsated appendage into her now slick channel he pushed all the way into her, as far as he could go. He remained there, still within her, while continuing to kiss her mouth. But other than holding her chin in one hand to direct the kiss, he didn’t touch her.

His other hand was busy keeping his body above hers. She wanted to believe that he was being considerate and that it was a sign of care, but it wasn’t. If he wouldn’t touch her with his hands then he wouldn’t touch her with the rest of himself, it was too intimate, and he didn’t want to be reminded of a time when he had faith in her.

Eventually his pelvis rose then came back down and he was making love to her slowly. At almost the same time the description came into her head it must have occurred to him too because he pulled away from the kiss and rose onto his knees, pulling her pelvis up with hers.

‘Come,’ he demanded, pushing into her, the angle left her neck awkwardly positioned but it also meant that the blunt head of his fat cock was constantly pounding against the g-spot hidden inside her.

‘No,’ she said, unwilling to follow his order just because he gave it.

Maintaining hold of her hips with one steadying arm, Dax licked the tips of his free fingers and began to rub her clit. ‘Come!’

‘No!’ she retorted, her rebellious nature didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but the more he worked her inside and out, the harder it was becoming to resist him. ‘No, geez, Dax, don’t!’

‘You want it, don’t you fucking dare deny how hot you are for it.’

His pants and increased pace made her teeth clench, all she needed to do was hold out longer than he did because once he tipped over the edge, she could relax. ‘You’re a fucking jerk!’

‘Squeeze my dick with that tight snatch, Minx, come on, girl. You do it now!’