"Why?" The word is ragged, confused. "I want you."
"I know." I press my mouth to hers, soft this time, gentle in a way I have not been since she arrived. "But when I fuck you, when I knot you and claim you as my mate, it changes everything. Forever. The bond completes. There is no goingback." I release her wrists and stroke the hair back from her face. "And I want you desperate for it. Aching. I want you to come to me not because your heat forces you, but because you cannot stand another moment without me inside you. When I finally take you, Iris, you will beg for it. And you will mean it."
She stares up at me, her eyes dark and wide, her lips swollen from my kisses. I can see the war playing out across her features. The part of her that wants to argue, to demand I finish what I started. And the part of her that knows it will do no good.
I don't wait for her to decide.
I slide down her body and settle between her thighs, spreading them wider with my shoulders.
"What are you?—"
"Taking what I want." I hold her gaze as I lower my mouth to her center. "Lie back and let me watch you shatter."
I taste her, dragging my tongue through slick heat, and her hips buck off the bed. I pin them down with one hand splayed across her stomach and take my time. Long, slow strokes that make her whimper. Tight circles around her clit that make her curse. I learn what makes her thighs tremble, what makes her breath catch, what makes her fist the furs so hard her knuckles go white.
She is soaked. Dripping for me. Every stroke of my tongue brings a fresh flood of arousal that I lap up like a man dying of thirst. I slide two fingers inside her while I suck her clit, curling them against that spot that made her scream earlier, and she shatters with a cry that echoes off the stone walls.
I don't stop.
I work her through the first orgasm and straight into the second, relentless, my mouth never leaving her cunt, my fingers pumping steadily while her walls clench and flutter around them. She tries to close her thighs, tries to push my head away,but I growl against her flesh and she goes limp, surrendering to whatever I want to take.
The third orgasm breaks her. She comes soundless and shaking, tears streaming down her temples, her body arched like a bow, and I watch every second of it. Watch her fall apart beneath my mouth. Watch her become mine in a way that has nothing to do with bonds or bites or ceremonies.
This is ownership. This is what it means to belong to me.
When it is over, I pull her into my arms and wrap the furs around us both. She is asleep within minutes, her body curled against mine, her breath warm against my chest.
Outside, the wind howls against the fortress walls and somewhere in the cells beneath us, Ragnar nurses his broken arm and dreams of revenge. Korren's wolves patrol our borders, testing, probing, waiting for a weakness to exploit. Tomorrow there will be challenges to face, threats to neutralize, a pack to hold together through force and will and the kind of violence that has kept me alpha for fifteen years.
But tonight, Iris sleeps in my arms. And for the first time since I caught her scent all those years ago, the hunger that has driven me feels something close to peace.
Tomorrow, Korren's wolves will test our borders again. Tomorrow, I will deal with what remains of Ragnar's rebellion. Tomorrow, the world will remember that I am not a man who rests.
But tonight, she is here. And that is enough.
9
IRIS
Idon't recognize myself anymore.
The woman who woke in Stellan Varen's arms, who came on his fingers and his tongue until she lost count, who wanted him so badly she forgot to hate him—she's a stranger wearing my face. I stare at my reflection in the small mirror above the basin in my room and search for some trace of the person I used to be. The fighter Helena raised. The woman who was supposed to be stronger than this.
That woman would be disgusted by what I did last night. By how easily I surrendered. By the way my body still hums with satisfaction even as my mind recoils from the memory.
I can still feel his hands on my hips. His mouth between my thighs. The rough command in his voice when he told me to lie back and let him watch me shatter. I did exactly what he wanted. I shattered for him over and over, until I was crying and shaking and so wrung out I could barely remember my own name.
And the worst part is that I want to do it again.
I press my palms flat against the cold stone of the basin and force myself to breathe. Helena trained me for this. Not for the sex, obviously, but for the psychological warfare. She warned meabout captors who could become saviors in a prisoner's mind. The slow erosion of resistance through manufactured intimacy.
Is that what this is? Am I simply responding to his dominance because my omega biology has rewired my brain? Or is there something real underneath the manipulation, something that exists between us separate from instinct and blood pacts and the power he seems to hold over every aspect of my life?
I don't know anymore. I don't know anything except that I woke up reaching for him this morning and he was already gone, and the disappointment I felt was sharp enough to draw blood.
I need to talk to someone who will tell me the truth, even if the truth is brutal.
I need Signe.
