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“I know you’re not,” he says, a wry smiling crooking his lips. “I wasn’t thinking about that kind of safety, Jules. I was talking about what you’re going to do to my heart.”
I bristle. “I’m not going to do anything to it. I’m not interested in your heart.”
“Exactly,” he says, his grin still in place but sadder at the edges than it was before. “But that’s okay. I have hope you might come around.”
I sigh, not wanting to crush him, but not feeling like I have a choice. I can’t let him labor under delusions that this whatever it is between us will ever be more than physical. “I don’t think so,” I finally say, as gently as I can. “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in that kind of future. With anyone. It’s not personal.”
“But you can feel it,” he says, his eyes burning into mine. “You feel what I feel. That we were meant to be together, that it’s fucking inevitable and right and good. That’s why you were so angry before.”
“I feel something,” I admit. “A connection, a…possibility I didn’t realize was there before. But nothing’s inevitable. We both have free will, Ford.”
“And you’re stubborn as hell,” he says with a humorless laugh.
“I know what I want and I’m not going to let anything divert me from my course,” I counter. “That’s not stubbornness, that’s determination. And commitment.”
“It might also be cutting off your nose to spite your face. To spite both our faces.”
“This is why we shouldn’t have done this,” I say, crossing to the table where the locket still rests on the towel. “And why we shouldn’t do it again. We have enough to worry about without adding unnecessary drama onto our plates.”
I turn my back to him, but before I can put the locket on, he’s suddenly behind me with his arm around my waist.
“All right,” he says, tugging me sharply back against him, until my ass is pressed against his still rigid erection and his breath is hot on my neck. “But when it’s all over and we’ve passed the trials, you have to promise me one thing.”
“I don’t have to promise you anything,” I say, even as I arch my back, pressing closer to his hard-on because my body is weak when it comes to this man. So fucking weak, I’m okay with putting the locket on and numbing out a little, no matter how good it’s starting to feel not to have my senses stunted.
“After the trials, you keep the locket off when we’re alone together,” he says, reading my mind again as he cups my breasts in his big hands. He finds my already hard nipples with his fingers and pinches them through the fabric of my dress, making my pussy throb. “If I have to fight the things I feel for you without any help, it only seems fair that you should, too.”
“Since when is life fair?” I rasp as vivid fantasies of Ford bending me over this table and taking me from behind pulse through my head, sending fresh heat rushing onto my panties.
I fumble for the locket, needing every bit of help I can get fighting the urge to beg Ford to fuck me, but he covers my hand with his, pinning it to the table.
“Or are you afraid you can’t cut it?” he asks, nipping at my ear as one hand leaves my breast to skim down to my waist. A moment later, he’s flipped up my skirt and shoved my panties aside, wrenching a hungry sound from low in my throat as he slides a finger inside me. “Are you afraid, without your crutch, you’ll be too weak to be the ice princess all alone on her throne?”
The throne.
It’s the best thing he could have said.
It reminds me that Ford wants my throne as much as he wants me—probably a hell of a lot more. This isn’t just about desire or fated connection for him. It’s all wrapped up in his lust for power that, by rights and tradition, is mine, and mine alone. That’s never going to be acceptable to me. Even if I fell head over heels for him, I could never be sure if Ford wanted me or my birthright.
There would always be a power imbalance. He would know I wanted him for him, in spite of my serious reservations, and I would always wonder if I would have been enough all on my own.
Clinging to that truth, and how shitty I know it would be to live that kind of life, I pull in a bracing breath and say, “I have to go, Ford. I have to rest for first day of classes. I have everything on my list that you have on yours, as well as learning to shift practice after dinner.”
“Where are you practicing?” he asks, brushing one finger over my clit as he pulls back and thrusts into me again.
I swallow hard, fighting the shiver of pleasure building at the base of my spine. “I’m not sure yet. Catherine and Alexander are going to help me so…they’ll probably…” I bite my lip until it hurts and will myself to focus. “They’ll tell me soon, I guess.”
“I’ll touch base with Alexander then and meet you there,” he says, still finger fucking me with a skill that has me trembling again, no matter how hard I try to fight it. “I want to do everything I can to help you succeed.”
“Then let me…go,” I say, a gasp escaping my lips as he grips me harder in response, holding me prisoner with one strong arm as he drives the other faster between my legs.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” he says. “Not until you promise to play fair with me after the trials are over.”
“Fuck, Ford,” I growl, the words a curse and a secret wish, all wrapped up in one.
“I won’t ask for another thing from you,” he says, quickly bringing me to the edge all over again. “I’ll devote myself to helping you make it through the trials and craft a takeover plan that can’t fail. I just want to know I won’t be alone in this fucking overwhelming, soul-crushing need while I do it.”
I cry out as I come on his hand again, shaking from head to toe as I sag onto the table on my belly. But even as pleasure burns through my every cell and my skin starts to glow pink again, a part of me still wants to beg him for his cock. He’s brilliant with his hands, but they’re not enough. I need to be joined with him, to drown in him, to merge with him so completely words like “yours” and “mine” become irrelevant because there is only “us.”
