“I love you when you are fire and fury. I love you when you freeze the world to its bones. I love you when you rule from a throne. I love you now, kneeling on bare floorboards in a forgotten cabin.”
Her chest rose with a trembling inhale. This wasn’t their game. There were no veiled commands, no submission laced with hunger, no careful, calculated power exchanged in silence.
This was raw. Unmasked. And it terrified her.
“I will be your sword or your shield. Your bed or your battleground. Whatever you need for the rest of our lives.”
Graham reached down. He didn't put his hand around her throat. He didn't thrust his fingers into her weeping core. His palms found her waist. Rough hands gentled as he brought her to her feet.
She looked up at him, no longer grinning. She met his gaze not with tears or with tenderness but with the steel of a woman who had always survived by staying untouched by softness.
"What game are you playing, huntsman?"
"The game is over, my queen. I let you win for the last time."
"Let me?—"
He scooped her up into his arms. Raveena let out a sigh of relief. Now they were getting somewhere. But he didn't toss her onto the bed. He set her down… gently.
"Stop this," she demanded. "We don't do foreplay."
"I told you, I'm not playing with you."
Raveena balled her hand into a fist and aimed it for his chest. Graham caught it easily. He stretched first one arm over her head and then gathered up the other and followed suit.
Raveena breathed a sigh of relief that was heavy with desire. This was what she wanted. His control. His command.
Graham gave her his kisses. But these weren't the kisses she had come to crave. These were soft caresses at the corner of her eyelids. They were whisper light at the tip of her nose. It cracked something inside her, a fissure blooming wide and sudden beneath her ribs. Her heart surged against it, trying to crawl up into her throat, trying to become something she could speak or scream or swallow.
"Graham, don't," she warned.
He ignored her. He let one wrist go. She bared her teeth, ready to lash out with her free hand, demanding that he recapture it and hold her firm. Then she realized it was only to gather her wrist with his other hand. With his free hand, he reached between them to free his hard length.
Once again, Raveena felt a surge of relief tinged with desire. His big head might be playing with her, but his even bigger head would take her side in this battle. Graham's cock was built for conquering, not caresses.
However, when the head of his weapon nudged her entrance, it did so carefully, asking for permission. Not barging in.
"No," she hissed.
Graham progressed inch by inch. Raveena struggled against him, raising her hips to take all of him at once. But he was too big, too strong. She was helpless against his tenderness.
She was getting what she wanted but not how she wanted it. He was inside her. Filling her over and again. His thrusts were a steady, relentless siege on every wall she’d ever raised. One by one, they came crumbling down.
He'd said this wasn't a game. He'd said he wasn't going to let her win any longer. And now she understood the consequences of the game that they were not playing.
This wasn't a game of bed sport. Graham was a man of action. He'd said the words, and now he was making good on his word and making love to her.
"Stop," she pleaded.
"No," he said with a kiss to her temple and a deep thrust inside her.
"I can't."
"You already do."
It was three against one. Their two bodies moved in perfect cadence, not in submission but in communion—two warriors carving a sacred truce into flesh and breath and rhythm. Graham’s mouth was the leader of this coup. It was only Raveena's mind—her sense of self-preservation that had kept a crown on her head for all these years—that was a raging opponent.
"Don't worry, Ray. I won't make you say it."
