I wondered what emotions bled into my eyes. Whatever it was she saw in them, it had her panting, her breasts pinkening, and her arousal seeping into the air.
Wetness soaked my pants, making my cock throb painfully.
She wanted this as badly as I did.
I peeled off my shirt and settled between her thighs. It felt too natural, every inch of her body calling to me like a siren, like no matter what either of us did, this is how things would have ended up.
She would have become mine eventually. Everyone did. But I found myself thankful that my little thief caught my attention while her heart still beat. My living queen of the dead.
Once again, I felt the fear zip through my chest, and I faltered.
Who would have thought the only thing to terrify me to my bones was getting exactly what I wanted?
Tomorrow, if everything fell into place, she’d become mine. Because I’d tricked her. Not because she actually loved me.
Before I could dwell on the anxiety creeping up my spine, I moved to position us so we lied diagonally across the bed. “Put your wrists over your head.”
I praised her when she obeyed, her wrists settling around the bedpost, and I leaned back to grab the manacles off the bedside table. I secured them around her delicate wrists, the chain connecting them looped behind the bedpost.
Rayven chewed her bottom lip as I worked, her dark eyes watching me with increasing curiosity. “Is something wrong?”
“Hmm?” Her question jerked me from my deep mire of thoughts, and I realized I was idly stroking the cuts on her wrists. Two on one side where I’d carved the passage of days in her flesh as the Lord of Bones, and one on the other where she’d called me to help her. Scars she’d wear forever because of me–my own brand on her skin.
“I’m just admiring you,” I said truthfully, surprised by the tender bend in my tone. “Cuts and all.”
I sat back on my heels, my thighs still clamped around her hips. Thinking. Plotting. I tapped the chin of my mask, grinning beneath its frozen lips. “I want to keep you here forever.”
Another truth.
Rayven’s muscles stiffened beneath me. But there was no fear or panic in her brown eyes. She probably just wrote it off as meaningless filthy talk. Even if she had no idea how much I meant those words—and the lengths I was going to make them a reality—she was enjoying the fantasy of being mine forever.
It was as plain as the blush on her cheeks.
“What would you do to me, if you kept me here forever?”
“I’d shower you in every luxury possible for a demon of my station.” My fingers roved over her thighs, coming close enough to her seam that her breath quickened. I pushed her legs wide, my gaze dropping to her folds.
Hells. I’d barely touched her and she was already soaking the sheets.
“I’ve told you before. You are a drug, especially in a place like this,” I said, my fingers still exploring her soft skin. “Warm pussy. Beating heart. Perfect, gorgeous skin. Your eyes are filled with fire, your mind churning with beautiful, dark thoughts. You are kind, but you aren’t weak. You’re stubborn to a fault. If you were mine I’d spend eternity breathing you in, tasting you, branding every part of you onto my very bones.”
Her thunderstruck expression had my cock pulsing hot.
“Now… I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll be begging for me to do just that, little human.”
I reached for the white dress she’d been wearing and ripped it out from under her. Then I tore a long strip of fabric from it. Folding it in half to make it less sheer, I fashioned a decent blindfold out of it.
“Up,” I demanded, and she raised her head for me to tie the fabric over her eyes.
Her heart gave a delicious lurch in her chest, and the hint of a smile danced across her lips. She liked not knowing what was coming.
I trailed my fingers over her stomach, up over her chest, playing with the jewelry adorning her nipples.The more I toyed with my mortal pet, the wetter she became, her sweet smell bleeding into the air, making my cock unbearably hard.
“You’re a fucking tease, you know that? I don’t have all of eternity to wait for you to get on with finally fucking me,” she snapped, though the severity of her voice was lost when the words were chased with a moan.
I zeroed in on her bratty little mouth, dark thoughts stirring as I imagined all the fucked up things I could do with it—the things Ihaddone to it.
“Careful little human…” I leaned over her, bringing my masked face so close to hers that her lips began to quiver under the wash of my heated breath. “I told you I’d be gentle. But you still have a full night at my mercy. I could keep you chained up, just like this, and bring you close to the edge without ever letting you come.”
