Her eyes open, dark with a mixture of fear and reluctant desire.
"I want you to remember this moment," I tell her, my voice strained with the effort of holding back. "The moment you truly became mine."
I push forward slowly, watching her face contort with discomfort as I breach her virgin barrier. Her nails dig into my shoulders, her body tensing against the intrusion.
"Breathe," I instruct, pausing to let her adjust. "The pain will pass."
"It hurts," she whispers, a tear escaping from the corner of her eye.
I catch it with my thumb, surprising myself with the tenderness of the gesture. "I know. But it gets better."
When I feel her begin to relax, I push deeper, not stopping until I'm fully seated within her. The sensation is overwhelming—tight, hot, perfect. She surrounds me completely, her body clasping mine like it was made for me.
"Mine," I growl, the possessiveness I've been feeling since I first saw her surging to unbearable levels. "Say it."
She shakes her head, defiant even now.
I withdraw slightly, then thrust back in, harder this time. She gasps, her back arching. "Say it, Fiona. Say you're mine."
Another thrust, another gasp. Her hands clutch at my back, no longer pushing away but pulling closer.
"I'm..." she begins, then bites her lip.
I establish a rhythm—slow, deep strokes that gradually increase in speed and force. With each thrust, I demand the same thing. "Say it. Say you're mine."
Her resistance crumbles by degrees, her body betraying her as pleasure begins to overtake pain. Her hips rise to meet mine, her thighs spreading wider to take me deeper.
"I'm yours," she finally whispers, the words torn from her like a confession. "God help me, I'm yours."
The admission breaks something loose in me. I can no longer restrain the primal need to claim her completely. My thrusts become harder, faster, more desperate. I hook one arm under her knee, lifting her leg to change the angle, driving even deeper.
She cries out, her head thrown back, throat exposed in unconscious submission. I bend to taste that vulnerable flesh, sucking hard enough to leave a mark—my mark—on her pale skin.
"No one else," I growl against her throat. "No one else will ever touch you like this. Have you like this."
She doesn't respond in words, but her body speaks for her—tightening around me, trembling on the edge of something she's never experienced before.
I reach between us, finding that sensitive bundle of nerves again. "Let go," I urge her. "Let me feel you come undone."
A few firm circles of my thumb, and she shatters. Her cry echoes off the stone walls as her body convulses around me, drawing me deeper still. The sight of her—flushed, eyes closed, lips parted in ecstasy—pushes me over the edge. I bury myself to the hilt and release inside her, marking her internally in the most primitive way possible.
For several moments, we remain locked together, our breathing harsh in the quiet room. Then, slowly, I lower myself beside her, keeping one arm draped possessively across her waist.
She lies still, eyes closed, tears tracking silently down her temples into her hair. I didn't expect the sight to affect me as it does—a sharp twist of something unfamiliar in my chest.
Without thinking, I reach out and brush the tears away with my thumb. "It gets easier," I tell her, my voice gentler than I intended.
Her eyes open, confusion clouding their green depths. "What does?"
I gesture vaguely between us. "This. Us."
She turns her face away. "There is no 'us.' Just a conqueror and his spoils."
The words sting, though they shouldn't. It's nothing less than the truth. Yet I find myself wanting to correct her, to insist that what just happened was more than simple conquest.
Instead, I pull her closer, my arm a firm band around her waist. "Sleep, Princess. Tomorrow comes soon enough."
She doesn't resist, perhaps too exhausted by all that's happened. Her breathing gradually evens out, her body relaxing into sleep within my embrace.
