Page 41

I reach down and grab a fistful of her hair. I feel her response move through her before she can decide whether to let it happen.

If I touched her right now… If I reached down and slid my fingers into those knickers, she'd be soaked, and I know it.

I don't look away. I let her see whatever's in me, all of it—the dark, the want, the years, and the part of me that is genuinely dangerous.

I unfasten my trousers. Wearing boxers makes this easy. I lean back and fist my cock. She eyes the glint of metal from my piercing, her brows arched.

“Why do you have that?”

“You’ll see when I fuck you.” She doesn’t hide her shock well enough, or the flush creeping over her cheeks.

”Go on then,” I tell her. “Let's see you earn your way out of punishment.”

She looks pretty on her knees. She looks pretty with my hands on her throat. She looks pretty when she cries.

I thread my fingers through her hair again and pull. Her mouth opens. She leans forward, and I take over. I thrust my cock into her throat until she chokes and her eyes water, widened, staring up at me.

Then she sucks, and I nearly lose my fucking mind. She takes me deeper, and I feel the metal drag along the roof of her mouth. She makes a sound around it. Christ, this feels good. I lean back and stifle any noise at all. She licks and sucks, her head bobbing between my legs. I tighten my hand in her hair. “Put your hands behind your back,” I growl. “Now.”

She does, so her chest bows out as she obeys me, pulling my length down her throat, gagging, tears streaming down her face. She sucks and licks, and it's the best fucking thing I've ever felt in my goddamn life.

I can't help it. I reach down and finger her peaked nipple. She moans, and her eyes flutter closed as I work her breasts and she sucks my cock. She wants this too, whether she says it or not. I take both her nipples, thumbing them, kneading them.

She sucks as if her life depends on it. Fuck it, maybe it does.

I release her breasts and lean back, lacing my fingers behind my head. She moans, her pretty little lips wrapped around my cock. Her tongue laves the side of my piercing. My cock throbs in her mouth. She sucks until I can't take it anymore. I'm on the edge of release. I feel it building, and I can't hold myself back.

She's nowhere near as afraid of me as she should be, and for some reason, that sends me straight over the fucking edge.

I reach for her hair again, grab it, fist it, and yank her back while I come hard. Her eyes meet mine, a dare and a promise. She swallows down every fucking drop. I fuck her face until she's crying, until tears fall down her cheeks, and she doesn't stop. She doesn't back down.

Christ, that felt so fucking good. Didn't plan on it, not this time, but it was everything.

Now it’s her turn, and she’s in so much fucking trouble.

I stand, rip off her flimsy outfit, lift her in one arm, and march her to the side of the bed.

I grab my tie on the way.

Chapter Ten

VALENTINA

When I was younger, my mother told me that women may be the physically weaker sex, but that only means we have to be more clever about how we gain power.

Mama was right.

I asked her once how she had my father eating out of her hand when he was brutal to everyone else. She just smiled at me and said, “When you're old enough, you'll understand what a man wants. And how to use it against him.”

I am genuinely afraid of what Torin is going to do to me. And the truth beneath that, the one I will not say out loud, is that I am so fucking turned on.

This is wrong. This is twisted.

I don’t care.

When he lays me on the bed with one arm, as if the question of my cooperation never occurred to him, I gasp. The sound comes out before I can stop it.

He reaches for the tie, loops it around my wrists, and ties the end to the iron bar of the headboard. I test it once. The knot is not decorative.