But he didn't stop.
His fingers curled inside me, stroking that spot that made sparks explode behind my eyes. His thumb worked my clit intight circles, relentless, perfect. I could hear the sounds my body was making, wet and obscene, could feel the arousal dripping down my thighs, pooling on the stone beneath me.
"Five," he said, counting as another orgasm tore through me. "You've been starving for three days. I can feel how hungry you are."
I couldn't speak. Could only moan, cry, shake in his grip while he played my body like an instrument he'd been practicing his whole life. He knew exactly where to touch, exactly how hard, exactly when to ease off and when to push harder.
Six. My voice broke on a scream that echoed off the bone walls.
Seven. I was sobbing now, tears streaming down my face, pleasure and relief and desperate need all tangled together.
"Please," I managed. "Please, I need?—"
"What do you need?" His voice was rough, strained. I could feel his cock against my thigh, leaking fluid, twitching with his own need. He was aroused too, had been for days probably, watching me suffer. "Tell me what you need."
"You. Inside me. Please, I need you inside me."
His fingers stilled. I whimpered at the loss of movement, my inner walls clamping down on him, trying to keep him there.
"Not yet," he said.
"Why?" It came out as a wail. "You want me. I can feel how much you want me. Why won't you?—"
"Because wanting isn't enough." He pulled his fingers out slowly, dragging against my sensitive walls, making me shudder. "You need to understand what you're asking for."
I felt it then. His cock. Pressing against my thigh, having emerged from behind his armor plates. Hot and hard and massive, slick with something that might have been preparation fluid. The head nudged against my entrance, right where his fingers had been, and I moaned at the sensation.
Yes. Finally. Finally he would fill me, would give me what I'd been aching for, would?—
He rubbed the head of his cock through my folds. Gathered my wetness on his length. Pressed just the tip against my entrance, just enough to stretch me slightly, just enough to let me feel how big he was.
"This is what you're asking for," he said. "When you're ready, when you truly understand, I'll give you every inch."
Then he stepped back.
Left me slumped against the wall, empty and ruined and so desperate I couldn't see straight.
"What—" I couldn't form words. Could barely stand. "Why did you stop?"
He stood three feet away, his cock jutting out from his body, massive and ridged and dripping with fluid. His amber eyes watched me with satisfaction.
"Because you're not ready."
"Iamready!" The words came out as a scream. "I'm so fucking ready I can't think! I need you to?—"
"You need me to fuck you," he finished. "To fill you. To breed you." He tilted his head. "But you don't want it yet. Not really. You want relief. That's not the same thing."
I pushed off the wall, meaning to go to him, to grab him, to force him to finish what he'd started. My legs wouldn't hold me. I collapsed to my knees, shaking, and he watched me fall without moving to help.
"When you come to me," he said, "it won't be because the tonic made you. It won't be because you're desperate for relief. It will be because you understand what I'm offering, and you want it."
"What are you offering?"
"Structure," he said. "Permanence. A home that doesn't collapse."
The masonry I'd built around that wound cracked. Hairline fracture spreading through the mortar. He couldn't know. There was no way he could know about the family that had crumbled around me, about the brother who'd collapsed my future, about the parents who'd chosen him over me so many times I'd lost count.
I knew what structural failure looked like. I'd seen it in buildings and bridges and relationships that couldn't hold weight they were never designed to carry. I'd seen it in my family, in the foundation that had crumbled under Jonah's failures and my parents' choices. I'd felt it in my own life, the slow collapse of everything I'd tried to build on sand that kept shifting.
