“You want it?” he rasps.
“Yes,” I choke.
“You need it?”
“Yes. Yes—please?—”
He presses harder. Just enough friction to destroy. Not enough to relieve.
“Then beg me without using your voice.”
I look back, confused. Panting.
He just smirks.
“Show me. Show me you’re mine.”
I don’t touch him.
But I want to.
God, I want to.
My fingers twitch where they rest in the sheets, curling against the fabric like I can claw my hunger into the mattress instead of reaching out and doing what I shouldn’t. My thighs are slick, my lips parted, my breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob I don’t want him to hear.
He’s watching me. I know it. I feel it in the scorch of my skin, in the heat crawling across my back like his eyes are a brand.
And he hasn’t said a word.
That’s the worst part. The silence. The punishment isn’t in his touch—it’s in the denial of it. It’s in knowing he could devour me whole and he’s choosing not to. He’s choosing to wait. To watch. To drag this out until I’m nothing but need and shame and the echo of his breath in my ear.
“Are you learning yet?” he finally says, voice low and cruel and sharp as broken glass under bare feet. “Or are you still clinging to the fantasy that you’re in control?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip. My hips shift.
His boot scrapes the floor as he steps forward, and I nearly lose it from just that sound—rough and deliberate, like he’s dragging it out just to hear me gasp.
And then he’s there.
Close enough for the scent of him to wrap around me, leather and sin and something darker, like he’s stitched his soul from the ashes of every girl he’s ruined before me.
I don’t move.
I don’t.
But my head tilts up on instinct. My lips part. My breath shakes.
His hand doesn’t touch me.
His hook does.
Just a ghost of it. The cool metal grazes the side of my throat, skimming the curve of my jaw. Not hard. Not painful. Just… intimate.
Dangerously so.
“I didn’t say you could look at me like that,” he murmurs, leaning closer until his mouth hovers over mine, not touching. Never touching. “Like you want to be ruined and hate yourself for it.”
