1
Adense fog swirled between my ears. Echoing with a distant call to wake, yet mocking my every effort to obey. In my wrists and throat, a lingering ache gnawing at my sinew. Pressing burning kisses to the hurt.
And through it all, white-hot flames lit the dark. Calling me back.
Demandingmy return.
When at last I was able to peel my lids apart, it was to find I was curled around myself on a couch, fully dressed. Clad in a black knee-length wrap. Knotted behind my neck, my back left bare all the way to the top of my bottom. Exposed to the chill of a darkened room.
How I had come to be this way, I could not recall.
Blinking, groggy and disoriented, I brushed at the hair sticking to my sweaty brow.
A flash of gold caught my attention.
Manacles.
Onmyskin.
Horror bled through my veins with the return of memory, and with a cry, I clawed at the warm gold only to recoil in pain.
They were deep. The seam between gold and flesh utterly indiscernible, as if melted into my skin. Buried into the meat in such a way that I knew they might never be removed.
“Nooo,” I moaned, voice trembling, gaze transfixed to what I couldn’t change. There would be no chafing, no getting snagged on clothing, and no itching beneath the gold.
A smooth, cultured chuckle skated across my nape, making me whirl where I sat, fists raised.
“They’re quite permanent,” the captain said, dark eyes two gleaming pricks of light that watched from across a darkened room. Cruel amusement etched into every line of his face.
I gasped.
Naked from the waist up, hair still damp from the bathhouse—tousled and unruly—his lower half was encased in dark slacks. Muscle rippled as he fidgeted with a length of fabric, watching me without so much as a blink.
“Where am I?” I asked through dry lips.
“We are in the master bedroom of the house I occupy, in what used to be Elora,” he replied, closing the distance between us with a slow, relentless roll of his hips.
Heat flared across my cheeks. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed, and pressed my back to the couch.
He hummed through a smirk. “Ah, but I own you, Mila. It is my right to do whatever I damn well please with my property.”
“You don’t own me,” I snapped, baring teeth. Braced for the invasion of my personal space. Strainingnotto see the shape of long fingers, to remember the press and slide—
“Mmm,” he purred, stepping too close. Enough that his heat touched my collarbones. “Andthatsounds like a challenge.”
“It shouldn’t,” I hissed, and hopped onto the back of the couch. Crouched at eye level, knuckles white—until he straightened, towering above me.
“Such a saucy mouth,” he crooned, grinning now. “I can think of plenty of things to keep those pretty lips of yours busy.”
In response, I merely showed him my teeth. A silent dare for him to put something delicate in my mouth.
He lunged for my arm with a bark of cold laughter, but I was ready.
Throwing my weight in the opposite direction, I made a beeline for the door.
“Oh, Mila?” he sang, and in an instant, my every muscle seized stiff and solid against my will.
A fine tremor rippled through my body, but no matter how hard I tried to struggle—to fight or flee—I was frozen.
