Page 66 of The Tower

“Tell me to fuck you.”

She didn’t even hesitate. No shyness, no hesitation. Just her voice, breathy and low as she begged. “Fuck me. Please, please fuck me.” The need in her voice made him that much harder, but it was the desperation in her tone, the way her body trembled against his, that truly wrecked him. Power and vulnerability intertwined, hers and his, impossible to separate. She might be begging, but in that moment, she owned him as surely as he owned her.

“Not yet,” he said, then pulled her mouth to his.

The kisses were deep, wild, even crazed. Tongue and teeth and a wildness that felt like fucking. He tasted blood—hers or his, he couldn’t tell anymore—and something deeper, more essential. The flavor of surrender, of boundaries dissolving between them.

His hands roamed her body, mapping every curve, every hollow, every place that made her gasp or whimper or arch against him. He memorized each response, filing it away. This was Sasha giving herself to him, not Vale responding to Prince Killiam. This was real, and he couldn’t remember ever being more turned on, more desperate to want to mark a woman. To lay his claim to her. To make her his.

And that was exactly what he intended to do.

Slowly, he stroked her bare ass, teasing her crack, knowing that he would take her there, too. Would claim her in every possible way. Slowly. Methodically. So that she remembered every delicious moment. The heat of her against his fingertips was intoxicating—blood-warm skin, silken texture, the subtle shift of muscle beneath as she moved.

“Rock your hips,” he whispered, and she did, her hips moving back and forth, each motion teasing his cock, just as his fingertip teased her clit.

Her eyes were closed, and she was biting her lip in a little-girl-lost way that almost made him come right then, but he held on, wanting the moment to last. Hell, wanting it to never end. The sight of her above him, lost in sensation, was more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen—more real than any fantasy, more precious for being freely given.

“Open your eyes,” he said, and when she did, the wild, needy heat he saw there reached straight into his chest and grabbed hold of something he’d thought long dead. “Tell me you like this,” he said, even as his cock practically begged to be inside her.

She shook her head, her smile teasing when she said, “If you can’t tell that I do, then one of us must be doing something wrong.”

God help him, he laughed. And damned if he didn’t want her even more. This—this spark, this intelligence, this unexpected playfulness—was something he’d never experienced in Elysium. It was uniquely Sasha, a gift she hadn’t even known she was giving.

He felt it then, beneath the lust and the need and the hunger—something deeper, more terrifying. A connection that went beyond physical desire, beyond the bargain they’d struck. Something that felt dangerously like belonging.

He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so damn hard. When he’d wanted a woman with such a vibrant intensity, he could almost taste the desire. Or when he knew with absolute certainty that if his cock wasn’t inside her soon, his body would burst from the pent-up longing. Every nerve ending screamed for release, for completion, for the joining of their bodies in the most primal way possible.

He needed her. Needed to be inside her.

Needed to take her hard and fast—to burn it out of both of them—and then to spend hours exploring every sweet, delicious inch of her, even as he teased her closer and closer to the wildest, hardest orgasm of her life. He wanted to worship at the altar of her body, to make her forget every moment before this one, to remake the world until it contained only the two of them and this bed and the liquid heat building between them.

“Liam, please.”

It was his name on her lips that threw gasoline on the fire already burning inside of him. His first name, said in a voice that was intimate and raw and pleading all at the same time. The formality stripped away, the barriers between them crumbling with that single word. “Say it.” His voice was practically a growl. “Say what you want.”

“Fuck me. Please,” she added, her hips moving so that she was stroking herself against the length of his cock as he teased her ass. He stopped the teasing, using one hand to hold her ass cheek steady, as he slipped his other hand between their bodies, his fingers sliding easily into her warm, wet heat.

Her body clenched around his fingers, tightening rhythmically as if trying to draw him deeper. She was so responsive, so ready, the evidence of her desire coating his hand. His cock throbbed in sympathy, demanding to replace his fingers, to feel that same grip, that same welcoming heat.

“Baby, I don’t think you’re wet enough.”

She groaned, then slipped two fingers inside that sweet little cunt before smirking at him. “Liar,” she said, then rose up, her weight on her knees as she straddled him, using her already slick fingers to tease his cock as she wiggled until her core was right there, and all he wanted in the world was to be inside her.

Her boldness stole his breath—this wasn’t the shy princess he’d seduced in Elysium, but a woman claiming her own pleasure, making her own choices. She was magnificent in her shameless desire. And he was helpless before her, willing to be used however she wanted, if only she would keep looking at him with those hungry eyes, with that beautiful mouth parted in anticipation.

Her eyes locked on his, and she leaned forward, thrusting her hips back as she took him in, gasping from the size of him, then slowly riding him, up and down, as her body adjusted.

The sensation was exquisite—hot, tight, wet, perfect. But it was the expression on her face that nearly undid him—the slight furrow between her brows, the parted lips, the flush spreading across her cheeks and down her throat to her heaving breasts. She looked shocked, overwhelmed, not by pain but by pleasure so intense it bordered on revelation.

He watched every move, every shiver, every bite of her lip, every blink of her eye. She looked like a woman who’d found ecstasy, and he wanted to hold that moment. To lock it in one of those crystal memory balls. Because he was the man who made her feel that way.

And if he could put that look on a woman’s face, then maybe he wasn’t such a prick after all.

Twenty-One

Beautiful & Broken

I thought I’d been fucked before.