She rolls her hips and pulls me in even deeper. It feels so damn good and this is such a perfect moment that I almost hate what I have to do next.
I grab the cuffs and clink one set on and then the other.
“What the fucking hell!”
“There’s that fury.”
I’m either going to love the outcome or really loathe my life come morning. I stand there for a long moment, watching her shoot daggers from her eyes and dripping with my sperm.
I know one thing with absolute certainty.
Walking away from her once nearly destroyed me.
I won’t survive doing it again. But that talk can come later. I have to make sure she’s not a dirty FED and get her to safety.
I grab one leg and tie it up with a scarf and then the other with my shirt before her shock wears off.
A clock chimes somewhere in the cabin. “Oh, midnight. Well, Merry Christmas, baby. Now, about the danger you’re in…”
4
HARLOW
Iam going to prison for Christmas for murdering my former lover.
That’s the thought that slams through my head as soon as the cuffs bite my wrists and the bed creaks beneath my weight. Red flashes behind my eyes, violent and bright, and for one unhinged second I can see it so clearly. Cipher Gravemont sprawled over the edge of the mattress, blood pooling beneath him, his mouth open like he’s still trying to say my name.
That’s my head talking.
My body, traitorous thing that it is, has other plans.
It’s still humming from the way he filled me, from the way my muscles haven’t quite remembered how to unclench. Heat lingers between my thighs, slick and sensitive, and when I shift even a fraction, the ache blooms again like a reminder I didn’t ask for but can’t ignore.
I test the cuffs out of reflex. Steel against skin. No give.
“Fucker! The second I’m out of these you and I are gonna have a huge reckoning.”
“You mean like the one we just had?”
That infuriating smirk he likes to wear when he thinks he’s won a disagreement between us sits on his face and makes my hand itch to knock it off.
I jerk my wrists again, but the cuffs bite into my skin as a dull, persistent reminder that I am not in control of this situation.
My pulse kicks hard, fast, and traitorous.
My ankles are tied wide, secured to the bedposts with fabric that smells like him, and the position leaves me exposed in a way that makes my pulse trip over itself. I hate that my body reacts from the way he sweeps his gaze over every exposed inch of me. Like he owns me.
I also hate that my breath hitches when he straightens and looks at me like this is exactly where I belong.
Cipher stands at the foot of the bed, naked and unashamed, his chest rising slow and steady like he didn’t just wreck me many times over. Water from my shower still beads along his skin, catching in the dark hair dusting his chest, sliding down the hard planes of his stomach. There’s a faint smear of red at the corner of his mouth where he kissed me too deep, too hard, and the sight of it makes my thighs tense again.
I jerk my wrists, chains clinking.
“Untie me,” I snap, my voice rougher than I want it to be.
His green eyes flick up, sharp and alert, then soften in a way that makes something dangerous twist low in my belly.
“What is this about?” I fight against the handcuffs again, despite the burst of pain I know is coming
