The memory of her face when I'd stopped. The betrayal. The rage. The desperate, broken need as she'd begged me to continue. She'd wanted me. In that moment, she'd wanted me more than she'd ever wanted anything.
But wanting wasn't choosing. Wanting was the tonic doing its work, overriding her mind, reducing her to biology. I needed more than that. I needed her to understand what I was offering and choose it with full awareness.
I lowered myself from the wall and continued working. Another section. Another path closed. Another step toward the future I'd been building for twenty cycles.
Dawn broke over the Ossuary.Pale light filtering through the bone formations, casting long shadows across my territory. I stood on the eastern ridge and watched the spring where I'd left her.
She was gone.
For a moment, fear gripped me. Had the ferals found her? Had something happened during the night while I was reshaping the maze? My cock throbbed with sudden urgency, the possessive instinct surging through me like a physical force.
Then I found her. Moving through the bone field, picking her way along the only path I'd left open. Heading toward the Keep. Her movements were unsteady, her gait wrong. She keptstopping to press her hand between her legs or brace herself against the walls.
I could imagine what she was feeling. The constant throb of arousal. The emptiness where my fingers had been. The memory of pleasure that had been ripped away before it was complete. She was suffering, and part of me hated that I was the cause.
But she was walking toward me. Not running away. Not fighting the maze. Walking, one painful step at a time, toward the structure I'd spent twenty cycles building.
She stopped at one of the walls I'd constructed overnight. Studied it. Ran her hand along the join the same way she'd done with my other construction, testing the angle, checking the load distribution. Even suffering, even desperate, she couldn't stop being an engineer.
The sight made my chest ache with something that wasn't arousal. Something softer. More dangerous.
The storm would hit by nightfall. She'd reach the Keep before then, if she kept moving. And once she was inside, once she was trapped with me for three days minimum...
I would give her another chance to break. And another. As many as it took until she understood what she was choosing.
The ferals would test the boundaries while the storm raged. I would drive them off. Would prove that I could protect her, could provide for her, could offer her everything a mate should offer.
And when the storm passed, when she'd had three days to see what I'd built...
Maybe she would choose. Really choose.
Or maybe she would keep fighting.
Either way, I would wait. I would build. I would give her time.
Because she was different. Because she saw structure. Because she carried building in her bones the same way I did.
Because after twenty cycles of constructing a home for no one, I finally had someone worth building for.
My cock throbbed in agreement. My patience held.
For now.
KERRIS
Day five. I'd stopped fighting the maze.
There was no point anymore. Every path I tried led to walls that didn’t exist the day before. Every shortcut doubled back on itself. Every attempt to go anywhere except toward the skull formation ended in dead ends and wasted energy.
He was herding me. Had been from the beginning. The only question was whether I'd arrive at his Keep before the storm killed me.
I walked the path he'd carved for me and tried not to think about how badly I needed him to touch me again.
The edging had ruined me. Before, my body had been desperate but directionless, craving relief without knowing what that relief would feel like. Now I knew. Now I had seven orgasms burned into my nervous system, seven memories of his fingers working me, his body pressing against mine, his cock nudging at my entrance.
Seven orgasms that hadn't been enough. Seven that had only made the need worse.
I could still feel where he'd touched me. Every place his hands had gripped, every spot his fingers had pressed, every inch of skin that had been pressed against his massive body. Thememory was physical, tactile, impossible to escape. My pussy clenched every time I thought about it, which was constantly, because the tonic wouldn't let me think about anything else.
