Even Better

Skye Warren

Thank you for reading the Stripped series! EVEN BETTER is a novella about Blue and Lola, the couple from BETTER WHEN IT HURTS. It’s best read in sequence, but this story can also stand alone. And it includes an extended preview of PRETTY WHEN YOU CRY, the next novel in the Stripped series.

You can join my Facebook group for fans to discuss the series here: Skye Warren’s Dark Room. And you can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases at skyewarren.com/newsletter.

Enjoy the story…

Chapter One

Blue traces circles on my skin, leaving goose bumps in his wake. I’m still panting and shaking from the orgasm he gave me, but he looks completely relaxed. This is really the only time he looks relaxed, in the seconds after orgasm. In the brief, breathless moments when he’s just spilled his come inside me.

Now he’s lying next to me, touching me. Always touching me.

Even sated, he doesn’t lose his fascination with my body. He runs blunt fingertips along my collarbone and down my side. I gasp at the ticklish sensation. My arms are still above my head, right where he tied them. I thought he’d let me go when he was done with me.

I guess he’s not done with me.

It feels good, being wanted. Kind of like it felt at the club, but without the steady stream of strangers and humiliation aspect. Well, he still humiliates me—but only in ways we both enjoy.

He cups my breast and runs his thumb over my nipple. I shudder.

“Blue,” I whisper.

“Beautiful,” he says, nice and easy.

“I want… I need…” I can’t even explain what I need. An orgasm? He’s already given me three, and I know we’re not done. I can already feel his cock twitching against my thigh, getting ready for another round.

I’m not sure I’ll survive.

“I know, baby,” he says, almost sympathetic. Almost. Not quite. He knows how hard he works my body, but he doesn’t let up. He takes my nipple between thumb and forefinger—and squeezes. He doesn’t let up even one goddamn inch.

I squirm against the pain, but that only makes it worse. “It’s too much.”

“Is it?” he asks casually, and I know he doesn’t believe that for one second. He draws a wavy path down my body, across my stomach, and down to my pussy, where he slips two fingers inside—sudden and thick.

I’m still wet with his come and my arousal, and that eases his way. He draws out that moisture and taps his forefinger against my clit, the slickness cold. It feels like ice, my own arousal used against me, and I twist, trying to get away. I don’t end up anywhere.

He makes a tsk sound. “This doesn’t feel like too much. It feels like you’re ready for more.”

“No,” I moan, but it’s a lie. My body does want more. Whatever he does to me, I want more of it. It’s sick and depraved—and God help me, I want more of that too.

His lips turn up in a lazy smile. “I like it when you tell me no.”

My breath shudders out of me, and I don’t have to force the fear in my voice. “What are you going to do?”

You might think he’d take it easy on me. It’s just a random Thursday night, and we’ve been going for hours already. If anything, he gets more worked up as we go—as if everything that came before is just a warm-up. As if he’s constantly thinking of new dirty things to do to me.

He looks thoughtful as he examines my body, spread open for his perusal. “I think I’m going to claim you,” he says.

Claim me? I’m already his. Already owned by him, body and soul.

He dips his fingers into my wet channel once more, curling his fingers just enough to make my hips jerk. Then he uses the wetness—his come—to write across my breasts. The letter M. The letter I. Then N and E.

MINE.

My breath hitches. It’s just come, but it feels like he’s branded me. I can feel it drying on my skin, soaking in and becoming part of me. I’m his.

Then his hand trails lower, back to my stomach.

He rests his palm there, flat. “I’m going to claim you completely,” he says. “I’m going to keep fucking you until it takes, until you’re round with my seed. And I’m not going to stop fucking you then either.”

I bite my lip, because that scares me worse. It’s not the first time he’s brought that up. Starting a family. Making me pregnant. Getting turned on by the thought. I’m still on the pill now, and he’s never asked me to stop. Right now it’s just talk—an extension of the dirty talk he whispers in my ear every night. But even as just talk…

God, it terrifies me. Not because I think he’ll abandon me like my parents did or all the foster parents that came after. At least I don’t think he will. More that I’m scared of what kind of mother I’ll be. I never grew up with one.

The closest thing I had to a parent was Mrs. Owens, an older woman who was my foster mom for a few months before they pulled me out again. Once I turned eighteen, I looked her up and found her house in disrepair, her Alzheimer’s getting worse every day. I ended up spending more time taking care of her than she did of me—not that I begrudged her that—but I am the last person who knows what a good mother is like. The last person to know what a family is like.

Blue’s eyes darken. He leans forward, and the brush of a kiss on my forehead is more gentle than anything that came before—or anything that will happen next. “I’m claiming you because you’re the strongest, most courageous, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my entire fucking life.”

Now I’m fighting the bonds on my wrist in earnest. It’s one thing for him to use me, for him to degrade me and fuck me raw. It’s another entirely for him to compliment me. I’m not made for that. I’m not used to it. It makes me itch from the inside out, like I don’t fit in my own skin.

“Shh,” he soothes, petting me, stroking me.

I don’t calm down, can’t calm down, until he pinches my nipples. The bite of pain brings me back to this bed. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can bring me back. I see a flash of disappointment across his face, so quick it might never have been there.

He understands how hard this is for me. He could whip me bloody and it wouldn’t be as hard as this—as letting myself hope for the future.

The only time I’ve ever had anything, the brief moment in time when Blue was my foster brother and he cared about me, almost loved me, I’d lost him. I think he isn’t going to leave me. I know damn well I’d never leave him. But it’s hard not to think, to fear, in my darkest moments, that I’ll lose him again.

He pinches my other nipple, harder this time, and a cry escapes me.

“That’s right,” he says, his voice stern. “You focus on me. Understand?”

It’s that low timbre that has me nodding yes. I’d do anything he orders me to in that voice, give anything to please him when he’s like this, greedy and harsh.

He rises up to kneel and kicks one knee across me, straddling my chest. “Now you’re going to suck me until I’m ready to fuck you again, got it? We’re going to keep doing this until your pussy is full, aren’t we? And then I’m going to set you up with a pillow under your ass and let all that seed work its way up.”

God. His words shouldn’t turn me on so much, but my hips are already rising up, begging to be filled.

He just gives me a low chuckle and presses his cock against my lips. “Suck.”

I open my mouth as he pushes inside. My hands are still tied to the headboard, my head supported by a pillow. I can barely move at all—instead I just lie there while he fucks my mouth. I don’t have a choice, and that makes it hotter.

He can fuck me shallow or deep, fast or slow. He can shove all the way inside and cut off my air. He’ll do all of those in turn, first letting me run my tongue around the head of his cock, tasting the flavor of his come and my arousal coating him.