He started to pull out.
"NO!"
I grabbed him and tried to hold him inside me. He was stronger than me. Infinitely stronger. My hands on his arms did nothing.
"Tell me," he said. "Why are you really here?"
The head of his cock was barely inside me now. One more inch and he'd be gone. One more inch and I'd be empty again.
"Because they didn't want me!"
The words tore out of me. Raw. Broken. A truth I'd never admitted to anyone, including myself.
"Because my parents chose Jonah every single time. Because I was never good enough. Because I spent my whole life building things for people who didn't care about me, and when I finally said no, when I finally stopped giving, they threw me away like I never mattered at all."
I was crying so hard I could barely see. His face was a blur above me.
"The debt was an excuse. I could have paid it off eventually. But they called—my mother called—and she didn't ask how I was. Didn't care that I was drowning. She just wanted me to take Jonah in. After everything. After he ruined my life. And I realized I would never be enough. No matter what I built. No matter what I gave. I would never be the one they chose."
I gasped, shuddering. "So I chose to disappear. I chose to come here and never go back. I chose to let a monster hunt me through a bone maze because at least that was honest. At least you weren't pretending to love me while you took everything I had."
Silence. The only sound was my ragged breathing and the distant moan of the storm.
Then he pulled out completely.
I screamed. The emptiness was devastating. After everything, after finally having him inside me, the loss was unbearable. I tried to grab him, pull him back, force him to finish what he'd started.
He caught my wrists and pinned them above my head, holding me still while I thrashed and sobbed and begged.
"Thank you," he said.
"Fuck you." I was beyond reason. Beyond pride. "Fuck you. You can't do this. You can't?—"
"Tomorrow." His voice was gentle. Almost tender. "When you can tell me what you want. Not what you're running from. What you're running toward."
He released my wrists. Stood. His cock was still hard, still jutting from his body, still wet with my arousal and his own leaking fluid. He was suffering too. I could see it in the tension of his muscles, the way his hands shook slightly.
But he walked away anyway.
Left me on the sleeping platform. Empty. Ruined. Shattered.
I curled into a ball and sobbed until I couldn't breathe. Then I tried to touch myself, tried to finish what he'd started, tried to find any relief at all.
It didn't work. Of course it didn't work. My body only wanted him now.
I spent the night in agony. Physical, emotional and everything in between. The truth I'd finally admitted echoed inmy head, mixing with the desperate need until I couldn't tell where one pain ended and the other began.
They didn't want me. I'd never been enough.
And now I was lying naked in a monster's Keep, begging him to breed me, because at least he saw something in me worth waiting for.
Tomorrow. He'd said tomorrow.
I didn't know if I could survive until the next day.
But I was starting to understand what he was asking for. Not just surrender. Not just my body.
My choice. My real choice. To stay not because I was running away, but because I wanted to run toward something.
