It felt so good.

His hand left my sore scalp and roamed over my neck. I inhaled sharply as he wrapped it around my throat. It was tight, but loose enough for me to breathe evenly as he rested his chest against my back and grunted with the force of every thrust. I felt a finger roam to my mouth, pushing in between my parted lips, forcing me to suck it as he pounded relentlessly into me, never losing rhythm, never stopping to check on my own pleasure.

I hated myself even in that moment. I had a criminal on my back, and he was fucking me with a hand around my throat. It was crazy. It was wrong. It was everything filthy I never wanted to be a part of. Yet the peak approached again, and all I wanted was my pleasure that was in the hands of this mercurial man whose moans riled me up like none other before him.

I squeezed my eyes shut and cried out, biting at his finger and causing him to groan along with me, as the wave of bliss exploded through me. I remembered vaguely tasting copper on my tongue as I rode it out.

It was heaven before hell, and I savoured the seconds with everything in me, wanting nothing more than for it to last forever because I knew what was waiting on the other side.

He thrusted harder inside of me, that index finger re-joining the others around my throat. Moments later he stilled, cursing into the air right before he came. I felt his cock jerk within me. His face dropped to the back of my head as he rode out his own wave.

“Holy fuck,” he cursed out, his body shaking above me. “Holy fuck.”

I felt a few other jerks of his cock before he pulled out of me and collapsed beside me. Finally able to move, I rested on my side facing him and watched his chest heave up and down. His whole body was stricken with sweat; his hair was damp, falling over his forehead. He looked thoroughly fucked.

I willed myself not to think. I was successful for about a minute before the sounds of our breathing died down and there was nothing but silence in the room. It was unbearably awkward, and I was left to my thoughts.

What the fuck had I just done? Now that my arousal was as dead as the victims of Borden’s past, I felt sick and dirty. This wasn’t me! This had never been me! I never wanted him in this way.

Or did I?

Of course you did.

In the back of my mind, how many times had I wondered what he would be like? How many times had I fantasized about his hands roaming my body, fucking me into submission because I knew he was a dominating fucker?

Oh, God.

He looked at me, and there was still lust there in his eyes. Then he leaned over to me, and I jumped when his hand went for my face. He froze at the reaction, his brows coming together.

“Hey,” he whispered soothingly, “I’m not going to hurt you, babe.”

I didn’t respond, but my body was quaking. I felt so sick.

His fingers rubbed at my cheek. “There’s blood on your face.”

My breathing went still. “Yours?”

“Yeah.” He raised his finger, and I vaguely saw a smear of blood on it.

I sat up immediately and touched my face. I felt the moist feeling of his blood coated on me and shuddered in dismay. What the hell had possessed me to hurt him like that? Or all the times before that?

Oh, my God.

I was a fucking sadist, wasn’t I?

Oh, my God.

“Emma?”

I tensed, unable to hold it together any longer.

“Please go,” I said quietly, the dismay oozing out of my voice.

I felt him stir beside me. He sat up and looked at me, but I couldn’t look back. I didn’t know if I crossed a line by telling him to go, so I waited with bated breath for his reaction.

To my relief, he slid off the bed and stood up. I didn’t want to watch this massive hulk of a man dress. I turned away and buried my face in the pillow. I listened to the sound of him dressing and then the zip of his pants.

“If anyone asks,” his cold voice said from behind me, “I was here the entire night.”

His heavy footsteps disappeared out of the room, and a moment later I heard the front door slam shut.

I tore my heels off, leaped out of bed and raced into the bathroom with a hand cupped under my aching vagina. I sat on the toilet and wiped away the tiny bit of blood that was trickling out of me. My whole body shook in the raw pain, and I wept with a hand over my face, looking disgracefully down at my naked, aching, bloody state.

I had become one of those girls – those stupid fucking girls that did the dumbest shit, the kind that you roll your eyes at and think, “You deserved that, you dumb bitch.” How could I have let my body control me like that? Why did I feel like an orgasm was worth throwing away my dignity to a man I swore I would never get close to?

Stupid. So fucking stupid.

Now look at me. I was bleeding thanks to a pierced cock that belonged to a man I hated to admit rocked my body like a sex god.

BORDEN

That blood on her cheek. Shit, it was like a spitting image of her back at that alleyway nine years ago, but just an older, hotter version.

Borden recklessly drove down the road away from her apartment building. He didn’t care how fast he was going. He just needed to get away. His head was all kinds of messed up after that. What he was pissed off the most about was the strange feeling that sprouted the second he’d finished inside of her…

It was the feeling of guilt. He’d treated her like a whore. Fucked her to oblivion without giving a shit about her needs. She hadn’t been prepared for that. Frankly, neither had he been. For the first time in ever, he’d lost control and fucked her the way he’d always fantasized about.

He crossed a line. There was no going back and he couldn’t undo his mistakes. But Kate’s face haunted him and he ended up veering off the road and to the emergency lane. He rubbed both his hands over his face and tried to get that nagging, disgusting feeling of guilt out of him.

Fuck this feeling. He did nothing wrong! He consoled himself of this over and over again. She wanted it. She begged. Hell, she came too. It wasn’t all take, take, take.

He didn’t know how long he sat there with that bitch of a feeling festering inside of him. If Kate was still alive, what would she have said to him? She would have ripped those balls out of him and then she’d have asked him if he was proud of himself for what he’d become.

No. He wasn’t proud. He hated his past, and it had become him somehow, tangled in his being, unwilling to go away so he could move forward. But since meeting that firecracker, his whole life seemed all the more bearable. It was like… like he was feeling purpose all over again. And maybe he was being a pussy thinking along these lines, but purpose was what drove him back to this place long ago. When that was torn from him, he lived in his emotionless tomb and did what he was best at: controlling. There wasn’t anything around him he didn’t have power over, and maybe that had cheapened the thrill of it after so long.