The dagger slips from my grasp, clattering to the bed beside us, forgotten as my hands find her body, palming her breasts, rolling her nipples between my fingers until she gasps into the kiss, her back arching, offering me everything I’ve hungered for.
My touch is everywhere, owning her, and when my fingers finally slide between her thighs again, she’s so wet, so ready, that I groan against her lips. “Fuck, you’re perfect.”
Two fingers plunge into her without warning, curling upward to stroke that sensitive spot inside her. Elara cries out, her bound wrists straining against the silk as her body convulses around my fingers.
“That’s it,” I murmur, a flash of crimson hazing over my eyes before I blink it away. My lips trail down her neck, my teeth scraping over her pulse. “Take what I give you. Come for me like a good girl.” My thumb finds her clit, pressing down in tight, relentless circles, and the world narrows to the way she feels beneath and around me, to the way my fingers fill her, stretch her, own her. “Now, my love,” I command.
The orgasm crashes over her like a rogue wave, brutal and all-consuming, her body locking as pleasure wrings a broken scream from her throat. I don’t let up, my fingers working herthrough it, drawing out every last tremor until she’s a boneless, panting mess beneath me. Only then do I withdraw, fingers glistening with her arousal, and without hesitation, I bring them to my lips, sucking them clean with a dark, satisfied hum.
Elara’s chest heaves, her skin slick with sweat, her wrists still bound above her head. The dagger lies beside her, its blade catching the light, a silent reminder of how close she’d been to the edge—in more ways than one.
I loom over her, and I know my gaze burns with something far more dangerous than lust. “And we’re just getting started.”
She lies very stillin the aftermath.
And then, in the quiet, I feel it—the wrongness prowling just beneath her skin, the faint tug of a leash held by someone far away. Her breath hitches. The shadows around the door shiver like something outside the room has taken notice.
“Lucien,” she whispers. “They’ll feel this.”
“Let them.” I tighten my arms, bare my throat to her without thinking, the oldest sign of trust I own. “Let them feel what it means when you come home.”
Her fingers press to my molasses-slow pulse.
For one sweet second, the bond between us hums like it remembers the route. Then she flinches, a pain blooming in her eyes. “If I stay, I endanger you.”
I feel the old fury try to wake. I force it back down. “Everything in this house was built to endure a siege,” I tell her. “And so was I.”
She looks at me, torn to pieces. “You don’t understand. I can feel the call…like a hook. If I don’t answer?—”
“Then don’t answer.” I tilt her face up, thumb stroking the hinge of her jaw. “Answer me instead. Answer to us, only us. To this.” I pull her closer until we’re one flesh, one blood.
Her mouth trembles against my neck and I feel a sob moving within her.
Her arms and legs wrap tight around me, nowhere near the strength and power I possess to bind her to me but it will do.
For now.
And for a heartbeat, I think I’ve won. Then she shuts her eyes and the hook pulls again, harder; I feel it through her, a shudder that doesn’t belong to either of us.
“Stay,” I say, a rough bark lined with bewildered desperation. “Stay, Elara. I command it.”
“I can’t,” she breathes, and the apology in it nearly kills me. She glances at the shadowed corridor, already calculating escapes she shouldn’t be able to see. “To stay will be to rip us both apart.”
I hold her tighter. “Why? Tell me now. Is this another trick? Another torture?” My voice cracks on the last word. “You said you were mine. Did you lie, Elara?”
She looks confused, stricken, as if the room blurs out of focus for her. “No. I didn’t.”
“Then why won’t you fight?”
She swallows. “I’m trying. Believe me, I’m trying, Lucien. But…I don’t know. Something…they call to me and I don’t know if I can ignore it.”
“You can. You will.” I press my forehead to hers. “Say it,” I murmur. “Say you will stay with me. Fight, Elara.”
She doesn’t answer with her lips.
And the tears falling from her eyes terrify me more than her silence.
The fire snaps. Somewhere in the house, a clock decides to chime midnight. Her breath trembles against my mouth.
