Time After Time (Cora's Bond) by V. M. Black Page A

torturously so, and I gripped his wrist in both my hands, trying to force him to go faster. But his strength was too great, and all my urging had no effect.
    “Exactly the way I wanted to.”
    And then there was a third finger, invading me, spreading and stretching me as he laid them side by side.
    “Until you begged for mercy with pleas that no one could hear.”
    His fingers hooked up inside me to catch the place that sent ripples of reaction through my body, and his thumb found my clit at the same time, rocking me, stroking me with merciless precision right up and over the edge so fast that I had no time to brace myself.
    He kept going, matching his touch to my body’s responses until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Noises were coming from my throat, but I didn’t know what they were—insensible, garbled sounds, further muffled by his hands across my mouth and my inability to formulate a coherent thought, much less beg for anything at all. And still he went on, pushing me deeper into the grips of the orgasm. The edges of the world went dark, eaten away as my world narrowed to nothing but a thin, hot stream of sensation that burned along all of my nerves.
    Then, when I’d lost all sense of myself, he stopped as swiftly as he’d begun, withdrawing his hand—but it was only to move me, to push me down onto my stomach on the soft leather seats. His hand was still clamped around my mouth and jaw, and my hips hung off the end of the seat. A moment later he was there, between my legs, driving into me and carrying me up again to the peak and over until he came, too.
    Only after, when he’d pulled my limp body into his lap again, with my naked legs sprawled across the seat where he’d just taken me, did he let go of my mouth to kiss it long and tenderly.
    He pulled away and looked down at me. “I didn’t tell you goodbye because I knew I had to come back to you, Cora. It doesn’t matter what happens. It doesn’t matter who or what comes between us. I will always, always come back to you.”

Chapter Nine
    “P ar-TAY!” Lisette squealed, bursting into our apartment with Hannah, Sarah, and Clarissa in tow. And, to my disbelief, Paquita, Marie, and even the agnate Rebecca were there as well, the last standing behind the rest of the girls looking bemused. Of my wedding party, only the improbably named Karen was absent, along with the cognate whom Dorian had requested to fill in at the last moment for the slain Hattie.
    “Are you ready to go?” Lisette demanded of me as Chelsea and Christina came out of their rooms to join us.
    I put the last touches on my makeup and stepped out of the open door of the bathroom. “Thank you, Lisette. Yes, I’m ready, and I’m wearing the shirt, and I look ridiculous.”
    “You should just be grateful that I didn’t get you penis-shaped noisemakers,” Lisette said unsympathetically. “And I think you look as awesome as any bride at her bachelorette party ever has.”
    I looked down at my white rhinestoned shirt with the word Bride emblazoned across it in cursive. Lisette had a pink one that said Maid of Honor, while everyone else wore black shirts with Bridesmaid written on them.
    The week before, Lisette had related some long story about Swarovski crystals being too expensive and their more affordable alternatives, but my eyes had just glazed over. I’d just nodded, smiled, and handed over all the money that I’d owed her for meals from the last several months with a nice premium on top—interest, I insisted, refusing Lisette’s attempt to give it back. And Lisette had turned around and spent most of it on these silly shirts and, of course, a beribboned headband with a short veil that she now plopped onto my head.
    “Now you’re ready,” she said. “Let’s go!”
    She herded all of us out of the room, and I grabbed my wallet and keys and shoved them into my pocket with my phone. I bobbed along obediently in the middle of the pack, finding myself next to Rebecca,