A dark smile lit his features, but I pressed on, forcing my words through clenched and pointed teeth. “I long to see every filthy Caledonian parasite brought low. Everything you’ve stolen returned and made whole.”
He hummed, pressing his lips to my temple, and said, “Because you’re a little ball of fire, Mila.” At the press of his thickly muscled thigh between my legs, I gasped. Tried to buck his influence and failed. “All fire and fury,” he said, stroking the delicate skin of my throat. “Just begging to be tamed.”
“Even if that were true,” I said as he dipped his head to lick my collarbone, a lock of his silky black hair teasing the underside of my jaw, my cheek, “it willneverbe you.”
“Mmm, yes, you hate me,” he said in a voice that sent wicked amusement rumbling through my chest.
My reply rolled off my tongue without an instant of hesitation. “With every fiber of my being.”
He straightened, all sharp angles and hard lines. A predator closing on the kill. “And that, my dear Mila, is the most passionate emotion of them all,” he whispered, and, lips moving against my ear, he cupped my bottom. Spread my cheeks and pulled my core against his thigh before bending at the knee. He lifted me, left me to ride his thigh while his hands remained free to roam. “It’ll take nothing to flip that coin and turn your hatred into devotion.” Making a fist in the hair at my nape, he angled my head back. Exposing my throat to his lips and teeth. “It’s a challenge I relish. Oneyouare unequal to, priestess.”
Voice breaking, I said, “Don’t touch me.”
“Frightened?” he murmured, lips tracing my thrashing pulse.
“Nauseated,” I snapped, trying not to squirm. My feet dangling, body useless. Disobedient to my silent commands.
At that, he withdrew with a devious chuckle. Issuing a pithytskas he said, “Mmm. Then I know just what you need.”
“Oh? Like I need a good steak, Asher?”
“And that,” he said in a deadly whisper, “is the third time you’ve used my name. A privilege I have not granted you.”
A chill spilled down my back. “So it’s to be another whipping then?” I asked, voice trembling despite the nerve I’d struck. Because of it.
“No, my beautiful, wild pet.” He kissed the shell of my ear. “I’m going to fuck you on every piece of furniture in this house. Show you what it means to be a priestess bound to an elite.”
But before I could respond, he hiked my skirts, jerked me away from the wall, and spun me. Giving me barely enough time to get my feet beneath me before he had me bent over a hall-stand topped with a vase full of drooping, cut flowers.
I gasped, scrambling for purchase and sent the vase flying with a careless backhand. An instant later, the small desperate noises he’d torn from my throat were swallowed up by the sounds of shattering glass.
The full weight of an aroused, Caledonian elite fell across my back. Pinning me more effectively than even his influence might, and at my ear, he breathed a husky, “That was my favorite vase, Mila.”
Squirming, I tried to drag a breath through clenched teeth—and my eyes caught on the edge of an ornate picture frame. “And I suppose this is your favorite painting?” I snarled, and tore it from the wall in a shower of paint chips and dust.
A heavy hand fell between my shoulder blades, forcing me flat. His grin spreading across my nape, where his lips teased. “Nothing more than trashy Eloran art, pet.” At this, both of his hands slid down my back. He found purchase around my ribs once more, before they slipped forward. Beneath the flimsy illusion of modesty that was my silk dressing, he took liberties that stole my breath.
Cupping my breasts, squeezing the fat, he pinched my nipples between forefinger and thumb, rolling until he drew the points into tight little beads of aching tension. Before he released me and shoved my dress clear, both sides pushed down and forward. The material gathered in a single fist that rested in a rope between my breasts, his fist bunched in the hollow spot where my ribs met my sternum. My breasts hanging free, nipples grazing the chill wood of the tabletop beneath me.
But it was his free hand that made me whine, terror and something without name lodged high at the back of my throat. “Wait,please—”
His grip landed on my right hip. Fingers clenching hard enough to bruise, the captain pressed his nose into my hair and drew in a ragged breath. And on his exhale, a raspy, “Intoxicating,” ruffled the fine hairs shielding my ear, leaving me coated in a layer of gooseflesh and shame.
Straining for breath, for sanctuary, I shouted a desperate, “I have diseases!” in a voice that tasted of splintered glass.
His hand trailed down my hip, twisting in the fluttery loose fabric that kissed my ankles. Drawing it up, higher with every bunching twist. “Mmm. What kind of diseases, pet?”
Choking on an anguished sob, I whispered, “The sexual kind.”
The puff of a sinister chuckle kissed the back of my neck. “Veryconvincing.” And, kicking my ankles apart, he exposed the flesh at the top of my thighs. Leaving a heap of fabric bunched on the shelf of my bottom, where I was bent and vulnerable. Laid bare, when a moment later, the captain wrenched the last of my dress clear. Leaving me exposed to the evening chill. Unwrapped only enough to suit his lewd intentions.
One fist anchoring me to the hall-stand, he leaned back and I felt the heat of that obsidian glare ravaging my most intimate parts. “Such beauty,” he cooed as his fingers trailed over the curve of my hip. Thumb hooking the right cheek of my bottom, he spread me. Groaning at what he saw. “It’s a wonder you managed to evade us for so long.”
Wheezing, I squeezed my eyes shut and heard the ominous whirr of a zipper.
And then I knew.
He was right.
