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Once upon a time, I prided myself on never running out of words, especially the sharp kind. Yet there I lay, boneless, panting, and utterly ruined. All the while, the King of Theïkós licked the taste of me from his fingers as if I were the finest thing his immortal tongue had ever encountered. It really wasn’t fair. He got to look like sin carved into a man, while I looked like someone who had lost a fight with his mouth.

Which, to be fair, I had.

Spectacularly.

He rose then, slow and unhurried, and the sight of him stole whatever breath I’d managed to claw back. Firelight slid over every hard line of him, all that restrained power gathered into one impossibly patient man. His eyes never left mine as he climbed back up the length of my body, caging me beneath him, and the heat radiating from his skin sank into mine.

“Atlas,” I breathed, reaching for him.

“I’m right here.” He caught my wrist, pressed a kiss to the marks etched there, and I felt the bond stir in answer, a soft pulse of warmth chasing up my arm. “I have you.”

His mouth found mine again, and I tasted myself on his lips. I should probably have been embarrassed by that. Instead, it only stoked the fire still burning low and insistent in my belly, the one he had coaxed back to life with infuriating ease. My hips lifted of their own accord, seeking, and the groan he gave me in return was the most gratifying sound I had ever heard.

“Greedy little thing,” he murmured against my jaw, but there was no complaint in it. Only heat. Only hunger.

“Have I not given you enough?” he teased with a knowing grin.

“Not even close,” I managed, and felt his smile deepen.

“No,” he agreed, “I don’t suppose I have.”

Then he rose, and for one disorienting moment I thought he meant to come straight back to me.

Instead he stood. Unhurried. Utterly unbothered. His hands dropped to the waistband of his trousers, the last scrap of fabric still standing between us, and he worked the laces free with a slow, deliberate ease that bordered on cruelty.

He was watching me the entire time. Watching me watch him. And God help me, I watched! My gaze drinking in every inch of him as the fabric finally gave way and fell, leaving him gloriously, unashamedly bare.

Hard… Thick… Ready… His glorious length.

All of it ached for me as plainly as I was aching for him.

His hand wrapped around the thick length of himself, palming his erection in one slow, lazy stroke, and the low sound of approval he made when my breath caught was nothing short of obscene. Those dark, gold-flecked eyes never once left my face.

“You like what you see, little bird?” he murmured, and the sheer arrogance of it should have irritated me.

It absolutely, traitorously, did not.

“Get back here,” was the only answer I could manage, my voice embarrassingly breathless. “Before I start without you.”

His grin was pure sin.

Then he was moving, prowling up onto the bed and over me like a predator who had finally cornered his prey. One arm hooked beneath me, shifting me higher up the mattress and deeper into the mountain of pillows. At the same time, he crawled up the length of my body and caged me beneath him once again.

“Patience, beautiful girl,” he breathed against my mouth, settling himself between my thighs, the blunt heat of him pressing exactly where I needed him most. There was no complaint in it. Only heat. Only hunger.

And then, just like that, the wicked, unbearable man held himself there, poised on the edge of giving me everything, and waited. I tried to lift my hips again, tried to take what he refused to surrender, but one large hand splayed across my belly and pinned me down with that same effortless strength that should have annoyed me far more than it apparently did.

“Atlas.” His name came out as a warning and a plea all at once.

“Eyes on me.” The command was low, but no less demanding. “Keep them open, Alexandra. I want to watch every moment of what I do to you. I want to consume it.” His thumb stroked once across my hip, gentle where the rest of him was iron. “And I want you to see me. To know exactly who it is that has you.”

As if I could have forgotten.

As if there were a single cell in my body that didn’t already know him. But I held his gaze, because the truth was, I wanted to see him too. Wanted to watch the great and mighty king come undone for me, the way I had so thoroughly come undone for him. So, I forced my heavy eyes to stay open, locked on those dark depths shot through with molten gold, and whispered the only word that mattered.

“Then have me.”

And he did.