He kissed her, his tongue sliding into her mouth with deliberate sweetness, dancing with her until she was soft as clouds. Her leg wrapped around him, her hands running over the muscles of his back, down to his ass, gripping with a need that didn’t have time. Hunger and pain mingled together, and she let them, sure he was strong enough to sustain both. He ran his hand along her side and then, with a slow, fluid shift of his weight, he pushed her arms up and pinned them there, his body straddling her lower half while holding her steady.
She tried to move, but his hand was a vise on her wrists. Panic slithered in. He felt it, of course he did, but he didn’t let go. He dropped little kisses on her face that didn’t do much to quell her anxiety, her fear. She couldn’t move, not with him holding her wrist up and lying halfway on her.
“You’re safe,” he told her.
She hated the strain in her voice when she said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you.”
“How weak I am? That you could do anything you want with me right now?”
“No, sweetheart.” Suddenly, she didn’t feel his body only where they touched just a moment earlier, but she was covered by him, or by something that was him, but was not. Like he was made of nothing, and that nothing touched all of her at the same time. “I’m showing you that you’re loved. That you’re safe.”
“How?”
Thinking was getting harder, her brain hijacked by every brush of his impossible touch. That warm, all-over sensation bloomed lower now, pressing her hips to the ground.
“Because I have control,” he said, his voice rich with an authority made of velvet and thunder. “But you say the word, and I’ll stop. Trust yourself to feel safe. Trust me. Let me carry you for once, Daphne. There’s no shame in it.”
“You’re shackling me,” she managed, breathless.
“In a way,” he murmured.
It wasn’t rope or cuffs. It was power, his power, coiled around her wrists like silk and steel. Holding her in place, while his hands were free to roam, stroking her breasts with greed, massaging and teasing until her back arched without permission.
And the pressure on her clit, damn it, it didn’t stop. A phantom touch driving her wild while he never moved faster, nevergave more. Just held her there. Suspended between pleasure, frustration, and fear. “I don’t understand,” she whispered right before the moan slipped past her lips, uncontrollable.
“You don’t have to,” he said, and then his mouth was on her, taking a nipple between his teeth with a low, sinful sound. His lips closed around the swell of her breast, his tongue warm and wet and all ravenous indulgence. “Let go,” he growled against her skin. “Let me–”
“Fuck me?” she breathed, voice broken, raw.
“Ah, sweetheart,” he purred, dragging his mouth up her chest, “you always read me so well.” Then he nipped her again, his voice low and dangerous. “Just say the word, and I’ll stop. But if you don’t, then...”
She didn’t.
Because it was maddening.
Because it made no sense.
Because from the waist down, he was still fog. Dense, tangible, living fog, pressing into her with impossible precision, slipping around and between her thighs like heat made sentient, teasing and coaxing and owning every inch of her, every point of pleasure, all at once, without mercy. It circled her clit in a delicate suction, a soft vibration, while the mist stroked her inner thighs, wrapped around her hips, her wrists pinned overhead like translucent manacles, his mouth hot on hers.
She couldn’t move. She was at his mercy. Held open, breathless, helpless.
And his cock, damn it, she could feel it, thick, hard, pulsing at her entrance. Not fully flesh, not fully fog, but something in between. Heat and pressure. Promise. Threat. Feats. Famine.
He didn’t move as much as he hovered there, touching her in all those ways she couldn’t quite rationalize. Taunting her. She wanted to buck her hips or grind down. Do something, anything.
But she couldn’t.
Because she wasn’t in control.
She’d asked him for that, hadn’t she? Not to take her away from here, not to fix her. She’d asked him to hold the storm while she took a breath.
And he did.
So she stopped fighting, bracing, working, thinking.
And she gave in.
