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He moves slowly between my thighs, hands roaming across my body like they'd always belonged there until he's hovering above me. My head jolts to the side in an attempt to hide from the way his eyes are swallowing me whole, but his fingers grip against my chin, pulling my face to look at him.

"You can't hide from me, Amora. There's not a place on this Earth that I won't find you. You can run, escape, but I'll always find you." He leans closer, his lips brushing against my neck, heat hot against my skin. "And I'll always remind you that you're mine. Mine to indulge. Mine to discipline. Mine to fucking break."

His words settle in my stomach like something swallowed wrong. I press my hands against his chest, pushing with all my might, but he moves quicker, gripping my wrists hard against the bed as he presses his erection into my sex, grinding hard against me.

"Fighting only makes the inevitable come quicker." I meet his gaze, then find the dark smile on his lips. The want in his eyes. "I can feel your wetness on my fingers, you can't hide it, Amora. I know how much you want this, too. Your body is screaming for me to touch you."

I say nothing. I do nothing but turn my face and stare at the wall as he releases one hand and begins to undo his tie. My body has already betrayed me in a way that I didn't think was possible. He slowly moves, sliding the silk around my wrists and tying the material into a knot.

His mouth runs freely across my skin, trailing my neck and chest in small kisses whilst his hands push my thighs further apart. I don't move my gaze from the painting on the wall, the stormy seas as black as I feel. The single boat in the distance is somehow comforting.

Take me away. Take me far away.

I hear the tear of my dress, the way his kisses become feverish as his mouth finds my nipple, his teeth grazing against me. I react as my spine arches toward him before I can stop it, and I hate it instantly—hate it more when I hear him notice.

"Oh, you liked that."

His words make me sick. His fingers move, thumb finding its way back to my clit. I keep staring at the painting, the boat blurring at the edges as his fingers slowly enter me.

Everything starts to go blurry. The painting. The room. The sound of my breathing that I can't control.

"You don't understand how long I've waited for this, Amora. How badly I've wanted to know your body. Fuck, how much I've wanted to know you. I want to know what you dream about when you're alone, what you pray for in the dark, what you'd do if you thought no one was watching. I want it all."

Hearing my name fall from his mouth makes it feel more like his and less like my own. Heat begins to pool in the pits of my stomach as tears continue to slide down my cheeks. It'll be over soon, it'll be all over.

But his thumb doesn't stop massaging me. His fingers so deep he's pressed against the sensitive spot inside me. With every thrust my body jerks, my toes curling. I want to scream at him, I want to scream at myself, but I'm scared of the sound that'll fall from my mouth as soon as my lips part. So I continue to chew against my cheek, even as the blood glides over my tongue.

Please, God, please kill me. Don't let him take this from me.

"That's my girl. Give in, give it to me." His voice is breathless, his desire and arousal taking over. I can hear him with his free hand, pleasuring himself as he fucks me hard with his fingers. My nails dig half-moons into my palms, but it doesn't reach far enough to compete with anything else my body is doing.

I can't hold it back, I can't fight it. My eyes roll to the back of my head as my body shudders around his fingers, tightening against him as I succumb to the pleasure I've so desperately tried to fight. A pathetic, disgusting moan breaks through, raw and unrecognisable. My body is alight with hatred and shame that's all for me, and for one unbearable second, there's nothing else. Not him. Not the room. Not even the shame waiting to flood back in. Only a single question that I don't think I'll ever know the answer to:

How could my body betray me like this?

Above me, his rhythm breaks, breath catching hard in his throat before the sticky wetness empties out of him in one long exhale against my skin. He doesn't move for a moment, like he wants to stay inside whatever just happened to both of us.

Then his weight presses down, warm and final, his heartbeat hammering against mine like he's trying to memorise the sound. He leans his head against my breasts, his hands moving to my side as he lays there, fingers slowly caressing me. He doesn't move, and neither do I. My eyes find their way back to the painting.

If I'd have just stayed in my cell, he wouldn't have claimed me. He wouldn't have the sound of my moans ringing in his ears. His body wouldn't be pressed against my own whilst he listened to the way my heart beats beneath him.

The silk restraint aches around my wrists, the knot pulled tighter due to the way my body writhed around his fingers. "Please untie me," I whisper, but he doesn't flinch. My words settle into the silence almost like I'd never spoken.

"You know, my mother used to lay with me like this. I used to press my head against her sternum, listen to the way her heart would beat like a drum after Father had his way with her." His words are soft, gentle but the image is sick in my mind. "Hers wasn't like yours, though. Yours is like a train, hammering away. You should be grateful, too. I used silk, he used cool metal chains."

I swallow, wrists aching as his body presses down deeper on my chest. His mother was like me; locked away, forced to give her body for survival.

Before I'd have asked, but right now, I don't care. I don't have anything left inside to care.

"This is how it felt to watch you today, Amora. To watch your face crumble at the sight of John's eyes being devoured by crows. I wish you could have felt the way my heart was beating, Amora, the way it beats only for you."

"Untie me, please," I ask again. It's all I can say. It's all I have left.

He doesn't push back, his eyes stay on me as he picks up the dagger that lies beside us and slices through the tie. My shoulders ache, wrists bruised from the tightness. I rub at them, waiting for him to shift from between my thighs. I want him to leave, to give me a moment to myself where I'm not dying under his gaze.

I need to scrub at my skin, to scrub and claw at every part that he's touched just to get the feel of him away.

He finally moves, and I let out a sigh of relief that makes him scowl. Tucking himself away in his trousers, his usual coldness returns. "You're to have breakfast with me and my family tomorrow. They'll want to meet my new favourite pet."