“I don’t like secrets, Ren. Not from you. And do you know why?” He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers digging grooves into my skin, his teeth bared in a ferocious sneer. “It’s not because you share my bed. Not because you invade my thoughts constantly without a moment’s respite. Not even because you’ve let me adore you through my words, worship you with my body, and punish you by my hand. But because inch by inch, you have fought your way into the darkest part of my heart. And instead of fleeing from what you saw there, you invited me into yours. And for that I’d sooner have us both die than ever let you go. Everything that you are is mine, Ren. Everything.”
Tears rolled down my face, and I lowered my gaze, but Einar’s fingers wound themselves around my hair, and he jerked my head up rudely to force me to keep looking at him.
“When will you finally understand?Whateverit is you’re keeping from me,” he looked into the depths of my soul, and Icould no longer tell myself that he didn’t know the truth, “no matter what you have done, no matter what you might do in the future, it doesn’t change a thing. There’s no going back for me, Ren. Because the way you are mine, I am yours. I won’t let anything come between us,” he told me, his voice softening and the lines of his face letting up. “Not even you. And how dare you even try?”
He then pushed me on my back and, towering over me, he proceeded to slide the pale blue sheet off my naked form. Sunlight fell on us from the high window overlooking the sea, and Einar’s hair glinted with metal like a crown. Grabbing me by my ankles, he dragged me unresisting to the foot of the bed.
“I promised not to raise my hand to you in anger,” he drawled without a trace of humour, “which is why I’ll have to find another way to make you pay for what you do to me. Now, will you be a good girl and hold still, or do I need to tie you up?”
“I’ll be good,” I whimpered, my breath catching in my throat and cold excitement creeping up my body.
He knelt. Wedging his hands between my knees, he parted my legs and leaned forward. I whimpered and squirmed despite my promise. His lips were rough against my skin, and he let out a pained groan as his languid trail of kisses led him further up.
An ornate faux gold chandelier hung from the high ceiling above our heads. Its flower-etched arms were joined delicately by spider webs, thin and soft like a baby’s hair. I traced them with my eyes as Einar’s voice rasped against my inner thighs.
“God, the delicious smell of when your body yearns for me, Ren. Even if I wanted to refuse you, I wouldn’t have it in me to resist.”
Then his teeth grazed the most sensitive part of me, his lips closed around my clit, and he sucked on it hard and without mercy.
“Mas—”
“No. He’s not here today. This is too personal for him.”
“Einar ...” I gasped as a powerful arctic tremor slashed through me.
“That’s it, call my name,” he told me before assaulting me anew with his tongue, delving into me like a man starved.
I convulsed with a cat yowl tearing at my throat, my fingers closing around the sheets, and my whole world tilting on its axis. But the high I chased was elusive, always just around the corner, just beyond the horizon, so close and yet so far, the combination of a perfect touch and a perfect angle an enigma I was unable to solve.
“I can’t. I can’t come. I can’t do it,” I cried. “Please stop, this is torture.”
“You can and you will,” he growled with harsh confidence, barely lifting his head, his breath hot on my skin.
His mouth was back where it could best torment me, and his fingers entered me with no-frills efficiency, rubbing my front wall, as his other hand pressed my lower abdomen, aiding generously the friction inside.
And suddenly I knew the answer to what lay beyond the horizon, because I was there.
I threw my legs over his shoulders, lifting my hips, pressing myself closer to his face. I whimpered and moaned and cried, begging him to stop in one moment and urging him to carry on with the next.
And then, finally, I lost the gift of coherent speech altogether, and I half laughed and half howled as I arched my back in euphoria.
“That’s my good girl. But don’t get up.” I heard Einar as if from afar. “I’m nowhere near done with you yet. If I can’t let myself give you ten licks of my belt, I’ll have to settle for ten of these instead. Just as well ...”
He traced his tongue up my inner thigh, and I whined feebly, the after-effects of one culmination already building foundations of the next one.
“It doesn’t matter to me whether you scream with pain or pleasure. I get off on it all the same,” Einar droned on in a tone of voice that was as mercilessly cold as it was aflame with emotion. “Both are music to my ears because they both belong to me. You understand what I’m saying, babydoll? You’re never to feel pain or pleasure by anyone else’s hand but mine. And those who’d be insolent enough to try and steal what’s mine? An eternity in purgatory would sound like a nice holiday to them by the time I’d finally send them to hell.”
His teeth sank into my flesh, and I yelped with lustful surprise. The bite wasn’t hard enough to break the skin, but sufficiently so to leave an angry red mark. He kissed it tenderly before turning his head to the other side and proceeding to inflict the same gentle injury on it.
“Einar ...”
“Ren, you must learn. Just as I know you love the darkness within me because it sets you free, I adore the darkness in you. It is because of it that with you alone, I can be my true self. Don’t you ever try to hide it from me again, you understand?”
I raised my head from the pillows to glance at him, his eyes gleaming with sin and his face rugged with passion.
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Good girl.” He patted my hip. “Now tell me what you did.”
