Emily is here again, her cheek pressing into the thin mattress, matching the pulse of the hard cock moving within her. Sharp, shallow strokes. A strong hand was clamped over the back of her neck, holding her in place to prevent a struggle.
Not that he had to worry, they had an understanding. A silent agreement.
It was routine, now, for them to meet this way. Barely a year ago this would have been unthinkable. How far they had fallen. How broken they were.
She can hear words between the panting breaths of the man atop her: "hate you", "promised David", "after everything I did."
Emily allowed Nolan to have this, offering her body as an outlet to absorb his fear, his humiliation, his fury. She had learned that there was a rage that had lived within the man for most of his life, waiting just under the surface of his true sweet nature. It was a rage carried by every lifelong misfit, born from the pain of being different, of years of suffering for that difference. His isolation as a young man, the estrangement from his family that had followed.
Emily allowed him this, returning again and again for their private visits, ever since the first time the guards had brought him out to meet her in the conjugal room. She had done her best not to react on seeing the cuts and healing bruises coloring his face.
Her friend had once told her that he wasn't built for hard time, and here was the proof.
Three weeks inside, three weeks of violence, of nights spent in furious, paranoid thought, and he was a changed man.
He'd been confused to see her at first, but she had explained: here, in this room, they were not being recorded; here, in this room, it was just them.
It was in that first visit that Nolan had raped her, attacking in a blind rage after learning that Emily had dared to bring Jack into the secret that he had suffered for years to protect.
He'd screamed at her as he'd held her down, bruising her neck and face as he'd held his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet and Emily swore that his eyes had changed color, going fully red as rage rose up to devour him.
He'd viciously snapped his hips forward, pushing into her, and on seeing this, the destruction of her gentle friend, her loyal right hand, she'd willed her body to relax, to lie still and accept his assault as the reward for his past twenty years of loyalty to the ruins of the Clarke family.
Halfway through that first violent bonding, Nolan had started to cry, sobbing an apology and his love for Emily and all that she was, but he made no move to still the thrusting of his hips and the stalk of flesh had remained as a heated, painful invader inside her body. He'd grunted in his release, spilling his pain and fury into her, and then pulled away, horrified by what he had done.
Emily had left him there, cowering in the corner of the conjugal room, and walked out with his seed smeared between her thighs.
That was the last time she had seen Nolan Ross as she knew him.
When she'd returned, nine days later, having taken the time to think, to plan and heal, there had been nothing to discuss and she was not so foolish as to bring up Jack Porter in his presence again.
On stepping into the room and seeing her waiting for him, Nolan had attempted an apology, begging for her forgiveness, begging her to kill him where the other inmates had failed. Emily ignored his pleas. She needed him to survive this, and if he was to survive, then he needed something to live for. Without words, she climbed atop the cot bed provided them, hiking her dress and presenting herself like an animal.
And Nolan?
He was a man tormented and starved for touch. He did not speak before freeing himself and mounting her.
From there began the affair, a twisted thing born of sacrifice, secrecy, and a deep, poisoned love.
Emily gasped softly as she felt Nolan's hand come around, his fingertips searching, seeking a way to please her in tandem with the movements of his body within her own.
There.
He could feel her responding to his touch, her breaths deepening, her thighs trembling. He remembered this. Before Emily, it had been near a year since Nolan had fucked a woman. It had been Padma, that simpering little Indian whose helplessness had lead him into this cage of concrete and steel. But he remembered her, and the love he'd tricked himself into believing he felt, even when all the while it was Emily's face that would swim into his vision as he'd had Padma spread beneath him, cooing her false sentiments of love as she worked to paint him as the mind behind Americon Initiative, a murdering terrorist, a monster. The David Clarke of a new generation.
How he'd mourned, then, that night of the masquerade when he learned Padma was dead. It had struck him, how his efforts had been wasted, how a woman of such beauty, such kindness and talent had been ripped away from the living. How he'd mourned, how he'd burned with anger at the world and oh, how he'd promised to avenge her...
Now, his only regret was that Padma was dead already and so he would never know the satisfaction of choking the life out of her himself.
Emily gave a sharp intake of breath and he could feel her tighten around him even as he pushed into her harder, faster. He trailed his fingertips over her in loose tandem with his strokes. In all the times Emily had given herself to him, Nolan had not reached to offer her any kind of relief. In short - Emily would come to see him, random visits without warning, and allow Nolan to fuck her like a dog on the thin cot bed, in exchange for his silence. He never touched her, and they rarely spoke any more.
Things between them would never be as they once were.
But Nolan's fingers were working her now, hard and fast, the movements complementing the slamming pulse of his cock. He wanted to please her, but by the same token he wanted her to hate herself for learning to crave his touch. He leaned forward, his deep voice curling over the shell of her ear, "Come for me, Ems."
She gasped, and Nolan bit her, his teeth clamping the slope of flesh between shoulder and neck as her body clenched on him and his release echoed her own. He did not pull from her as he usually did, when his body was spent and she was nothing but a vessel to his climax. They would turn from each other, meeting adjourned, Nolan returning to his cage and Emily would go back out into the world, to continue fighting for him, fighting to bring his ragged, broken self back home again.
Instead, Nolan rode it out, taking a sick delight in pulsing his hips into her, stroking her sensitized flesh, making her come, making her want more. Dazed, Emily almost didn't notice as Nolan withdrew his spent manhood from her body, and he lightly pressed against her shoulder, rolling her onto her back. She laid back on the cot, breathing hard, body throbbing, and she watched as he pulled at her shirt, untucking it from the waistband of her skirt, carefully unbuttoning it, from neck to navel, parting the material to reveal her mounds of flesh, lightly cupped by lavender lace.
He removed the brassiere, unsnapping it at the front, freeing the flesh to his searching fingers. He watched her face as he touched her, cupping her breasts, massaging them, rolling her nipples between his fingertips and cruelly pinching them for the mere fact that here, here in this dingy little room, Emily Thorne belonged to him.
And then, their first kiss.
Nolan bent to kiss her, his lips touching hers, his tongue spearing into her mouth, invading her even as she shivered to feel his fingers move lower to invade her body once more. His free hand lifted to stroke through her hair, as his fingers probed, stroking, stabbing into her with a savage determination to both hurt and please her. He watched her face, wanting to see her come again, from pleasure, from pain, from shame and disgust.
Some minutes later, Emily gave Nolan his silent demand, as she had so many times in the past. She gasped against his mouth, her hands clawing his back as her body clenched tightly once more, spilling over his fingers.
They rested for a time, curled together in a semblance of lovers.
There was no solace here, only the air heavy with sex and their every unspoken regret.
After, the guards came to collect the man, separating them once more. She watched as Nolan was shackled at the wrists and ankles before being lead down a hallway and back to his cell.
Emily wandered the familiar path out of the prison, through the parking lot and back to her car. Sitting behind the steering wheel, Emily sobbed with hate for the thing that she had forced Nolan to become and then with relief, knowing that the protection of his silence had been bought for another few days.