“...you’d run. Not because you felt caged?—
But because of what it would mean to let me have you the way I ache to.”
She swallows hard.
“I would ruin you so gently the gods would write psalms about it.”
She tries to shove past me, but the second her arm brushes my chest, the bond detonates. Lightning floods every nerve.
I feel her hatred.
I feel her need.
Her head tips forward, and she reaches for me.
“Don’t,” I say, barely holding the line, but of course she doesn’t listen.
Her fingers graze slowly up my ribs. My vision turns red...that’s never happened before.
The beast howls.
I grab the frame above her, wood splinters beneath my grip.
“Keep pushing me away, Saelûn,” I hiss. “And one of us is going to break.And it won’t be me.”
Her breath stutters. Her pupils flare. But she still won’t meet my eyes.
She knows if she does, she won’t leave.Not that I’m going to let her anyway.
Her fingers fall from my chest... and drag across the top of my thighs on the way down—my pulse throbs.
She hasn’t realized that the brattier she acts, the more I want to prove how easily she’d submit to me.
I let her step past me.
“You want to leave still?” My voice scrapes the edge of something feral.
“Go ahead.”
She hesitates.
A broken laugh slips from me.
“That’s what I thought.”
She lifts her chin and meets my gaze.Velorin ael’veskai tharûl.(Even your defiance is sacred to me.)
“You don’t think I will? You don’t own me, Andrik.”
“No,” I breathe, stepping closer. “But the bond does. It owns me, too. It longs to devour us both.”
She stiffens. That little chin tips higher.
“But I won’t...” I growl. “Not until you beg.”
“Not until you say it in Vraksûn—on your knees—and mean every word.”
Her breath stutters. Her thighs shift.
