Page 123 of What We Burn

“Ask nicely.”

“Fuck. You.”

“Wrong answer, little savage.”

Eli’s laugh curls low and dangerous against my ear, sending a fresh rush of heat straight between my legs even as my wrists pull uselessly at the silk. I twist under him, bare and bound and still tasting him on my tongue, but he just shifts back down my body, knees pinning my thighs, and slides one callused palm down my stomach like he owns every inch.

“I asked if you wanted more,” he says, voice a rough scrape, “and you chose to be a brat about it.”

My pulse hammers everywhere at once. “Maybe I did.”

He doesn’t smile. His fingers find me slick and aching, and he circles my clit with deliberate, punishing slowness until my back arches off the mattress and a broken sound slips out of me. The ropes creak. The headboard groans.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, pressing two fingers inside, curling them just enough to make my thighs shake. “Still running your mouth while you’re dripping down my hand. You want me to stop?”

I bite my lip, defiant heat flooding my chest.

“Yes?” He stills his movement and an involuntary whimper leaves me. “Use your words, Sage.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

“Good.” He fucks me with his fingers, slow and filthy, until I’m gasping his name and straining against the bonds, every nerve lit up and raw. Then he leans down, mouth brushing the shell of my ear. “Because I’m not nearly finished with you, little savage.”

His free hand wraps around my throat again, thumb stroking the scar like a promise, and I feel the hard line of him already stiffening against my thigh. He shifts, lines up, and thrusts into me in one deep, claiming stroke that knocks the breath from my lungs.

I cry out, hips lifting to meet him, and he starts to move—hard, controlled, every snap of his hips designed to remind me exactly who caught me. The rope bites. My skin burns. The denim shoved down to his hips bites at my thighs.

Pleasure twists tight and sharp inside me.

He fucks me like he’s reclaiming me, hammering away at every moment of bullshit that kept us apart. And I let him because I need this. I need him to claim me. To keep me. To understand that whatever we are is inevitable.

“More,” I gasp. “Please. I want⁠—”

“Everything,” Eli finishes for me. “I’ll give you everything.” He drives deeper, hips snapping hard enough to jolt the headboard, the silk burning my wrists with every thrust, and I clench around him because there’s no room left for anything but this. Us.

“Yes—fuck—Eli—” I arch up, taking him to the root—the wet slap of our skin is obscene.

He growls low, teeth grazing my jaw. “I will never let you run from me.” His thrusts turn brutal. “You don’t get to tease the monster from its cage then escape me like I won’t drag you right back to where you belong.”

My thighs shake.

“Harder,” I beg, voice almost gone from the tears and the humiliation and the way nothing else in my life has ever felt this good or this real.

He gives it to me. Brutal, relentless. Holding me down with one hand on my throat and fucking me harder, faster, chasing the edge like he wants to break the bed and maybe break me with it. I rock up against him, and the ruined sounds coming out of my throat are nothing I’ve ever made before.

“Eli, please,” I gasp, not sure what I’m begging for.

He tightens his grip. “You want to come, little savage?”

“Yes—fuck, yes⁠—”

He doesn’t slow, doesn’t let me have it. “Hold it,” he says, voice raw. “You can wait for me, or not at all.”

I hold. I keep my hips moving, hands fisted in the ropes, every nerve singing. I wait for him like he told me. The seconds stretch, warp, melt into the sound of skin on skin and the sharp, helpless whimpers throttled out of my lungs. I’m desperate and humiliated and furious that he has this much power over me, that just being told to wait can reduce me to this—an animal, panting, begging, no pride or anger left anywhere except in the place where I want him more than breath.