"I hate you," she sobs, her head falling back against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut. "I hate you so much. You're a monster."
"Ask me properly," I say, my voice a growl.
"Go to hell," she spits, her eyes snapping open, blazing with that fierce, unrepentant fire I can't stop craving. "Go to hell, Lorcan. I hope you die in there."
I smile. It’s a cold, hard, pleased expression. I can feel the way her body is screaming for me, the way her clit is pulsing against my palm in a frantic, desperate rhythm. She’s fighting the urge to beg, and I find it almost exhilarating.
I pull my hand away.
The sudden loss of contact leaves her gasping, her body sagging slightly. I let go of her wrists, stepping back until I’m standing by the door.
"Stay here," I say.
I'm reaching for the door when her voice stops me.
"You didn't come here because of the security detail."
I don't turn around. "Go to sleep, Atara."
"You came here straight from doing something downstairs you can't stand to think about." Her breathing is still ragged, but the words come out level, and that's what makes them land. "It isn't cologne I can smell on you. You walked out of whatever that was, and the first door you opened in this whole house was mine. Not Kieran's. Not a bottle. Mine."
My hand stops in the air.
"You don't do all this—the pinning, the cruelty, leaving me strung up on the wall—because you're in control of it." I hear her push away from the wall behind me. "You do it because for ten minutes in this room you get to not be the thing you were down there."
The quiet after that has a current running through it.
I have men who wouldn't hold my eye on the night I burned a traitor out of my own walls. This woman, denied, shaking, furious, just told me exactly what I am, to the back of my head, and got it right on the first pass.
I could turn and tell her she's wrong. She'd see the lie the way she sees everything else.
I turn and walk out, shutting the door behind me.
I stand in the hallway for a moment, listening. There is absolute silence inside the room, followed by the sound of a frustrated, muffled scream and the thud of a pillow hitting the door.
I head to my study, my cock throbbing with such intense, persistent ache that I have to adjust my trousers. I sit in my chair, staring at the empty desk, the scent of her still clinging to my skin like a curse.
She thinks she won. She thinks that because she didn't beg, she held onto her pride.
She doesn't realize that as long as she stays here, as long as she keeps looking at me with that desperate, wet hunger, she is already lost.
She won't give me the satisfaction. She won't give me the 'please.'
She’s wrong.
I can feel the clock ticking. I can feel the tension winding tighter, and tighter, and tighter, until something finally snaps.
And when it does?
I’ll be the one holding the pieces.
15
Atara
The dining room of the compound is a big space, all vaulted stone ceilings and polished dark wood that usually makes me feel like I’m dining inside a tomb. But tonight… Tonight is different.
Maeve is sitting across from me, her legs swinging beneath her chair, currently deep into an enthusiastic, rapid-fire explanation of why a velociraptor would be the best possible choice for a roommate in a high-rise. I’m doing my best to keep a straight face, spearing a roasted potato while she paints a vivid picture of a dinosaur trying to navigate a narrow hallway with a tail that takes out everything in its path.
