HANNAH
I’m in the bedroom,polishing off the last bites of the dinner I brought with me and idly thinking about going back for seconds when the door slams open so hard I nearly drop the plate. Thank God I just set it down.
I should have barred the door. Of course I didn’t. Of course Abaddon ducks inside, huge as a shadow, and shuts it behind him like he’s sealing me in a glass globe. The light from the windows shivers and then dwindles under the spread of his wings.
“You go nowhere without me by your side,” he barks.
I cross my arms over my chest because, apparently, we are having this conversation for the hundredth time. How many ways do I have to tell him I’m not his dog? Talking is obviously futile—he doesn’t hear me as an equal—so I employ the oldest trick in the book again: silent treatment. I turn my back and start making the bed.
“Hannah-consort,” he says in a demanding tone.
I keep ignoring him and stuffing the duvet in, imagining how absurd he must look towering over the doorway. I once had a friend who used the silent treatment like a martial art; I learned from the best. Briefly, I remember when I tried this with him last time and it blew up spectacularly in my face, but stubbornness tastes better than caution right now.
“Hannah-consort,” he repeats, louder.
I hum under my breath to drown him out and yank the bearskin taut until it snaps like a whip. The motion is satisfying, a small, private joy. I have as much rage as he does, I realize suddenly—maybe more. A lifetime of being told I’m a burden has built a well I didn’t know I had. It collects and waits.
“Hannah-consort,” he bellows. “Pay attention to me.”
Or you’ll do what?I know exactly how volatile his temper can be. But he’s not the only one who can get angry. Maybe I never learned how deep my own well of fury ran until now.
His hooves pad closer across the cobbles of the bedroom.If he explodes, I tell myself,I will leave. Really leave. I’ve done impossible things before. I can do them again. The thought steadies me; my movements become sharper as I make the bed like I’m tucking a life into order.
Then his voice changes. Low. Controlled. Dangerous in a different way. “Hannah-consort will go nowhere without me at her side. And if she will not agree to these terms, then she will also go nowhere.”
My mouth opens.What does that mean?But I stubbornly don’t ask. I get my answer soon enough.
He pounces.
One second, I’m smoothing the bearskin covers; the next, he’s across the bed and bearing down over me. If he’d used force—if his claws had been out—I would have ripped at him like a wildcat. But every time he’s been brutal, he’s also been careful with me, and that carefulness makes my pulse do traitorousthings. And he is so careful now: claws sheathed, movements controlled, weight distributed so he doesn’t crush me.
He pins me to the bed with a knee between my legs; his wings fan like a blackout over the room, and the daylight dies under their span.
Stubborn to the core, I don’t make a sound at first. I stare at him, furious, then turn my face away so he can’t draw any satisfaction from my eyes.Deny him that, I tell myself.Deny him everything.
“Hannah-consort will make noises for me again,” he breathes, and his fingers close around my wrist. I should pull away. I should, but I don’t. It makes me mad that my chest beats a different rhythm from my brain.
He loops a length of rope from under the bed. I want to ask what he’s doing, but the motion gives me an answer: the rope slides over my wrist, snug and inevitable, and he shifts and ties it to the bedpost. Then my other wrist, and my ankle. Wings press warm and heavy at my sides, pinning me while he works. The coil is practiced—quick, efficient, and not too tight—but also leaving me unable to move.
“Yes,” he purrs, the word velvet and dangerous, “you will scream for me soon enough.”
The sentence dries the moisture from my mouth like a breath of winter. The same cold seems to migrate down to that other place, and for reasons my head refuses to honor, my legs begin to squirm.
Abaddon isn’t finished. Not by a long shot.
He moves down my body, wings beginning to flutter all around me. I know that flutter; it’s the one that means he’s strung tight with want.
Then his hand closes around my left ankle. Anticipation and dread spike like a double-shot hit of adrenaline.
Last time I was face-down, and now I’m on my back and can see everything he’s about to do, which is both worse and somehow more terrifyingly interesting.
I kick with my one free leg, and he snatches it out of the air, gentle about the claws as always but iron-strong in his grip. He drags it back to the bed and loops another rope around it. Where the hell are all these ropes coming from anyway? Does he keep them under the bed like some romantic MacGyver stash? Jesus. He’s prepared. Of course, he’s prepared.
Alarm spikes. But confession: there’s a lurching, stupid little spark of excitement under it. What iswrongwith me? I squeeze my eyes shut because logic is useless here.
That doesn’t save me. He moves back up my body before I can regroup, and my cunt betrays me, clenching on nothing and getting wet, and I feel my whole pelvis arch toward him like a moth to heat.
I am, predictably, way too ready.
