My mouth watered, and I took a step.
“Mila,” he said without looking up, unsurprised that I was standing in his space. A lurking, vengeful shade in desperate need. “You’re back sooner than I thought.”
I said nothing. Pushing off the door, I staggered toward the well of vibrant, hypnotic flames I knew were waiting to soothe this pain. This bottomless ache of hunger denied time and again.
Onehehad caused.
One only he could free me from.
At my silence, he turned to look. Inky gaze falling to where his shirt sagged across my breastbone. My cleavage all but spilling free, the towel long since having fallen away.
His lips parted, pupils dilating with a slow pulse as his jaw grew tight at the corners—but the words died on his tongue. The concern turning to smoldering jealousy that peppered the air between us with tension.
With the bitter scent of anger.
Tongue darting out, I wet my lips and prepared to bend like the desperate, coy whore they’d wanted me to become. Padding across the floor until I was close enough to reach, until my fingertips brushed the hard pectorals I knew were secreted away beneath a fresh, crisp shirt.
I reached for it.
Took what I wanted…
… because for this, I needed no permission.
He sucked a breath between his teeth. Turning to face me, his lap was made available.
Without shame or hesitation, I climbed into his chair. Knees spread beneath the tails of a borrowed shirt, I hooked my calves through the arms of the chair and claimed my perch.
“Asher,please,” I whispered, and spread my palms across the ridges of his collarbones. “It hurts…”
The captain swallowed, watching me through twin pricks of obsidian that glittered in the half light.
But the clink of metal on metal intruded on this moment. Ensnared his attention and tore it away from my efforts to beg for what I needed. To play the whore and seduce.
He captured my wrist and found a spare manacle jangling where the general had left it. The attempt to claim me obvious, for the chains had no other purpose. “Harper,” he spat, and pulled the golden bracelet over my knuckles and tossed it onto his desk. “Did he—”
“Please,” I said again. “It hurts.” I took his hand and place that rough, calloused palm on my breastbone.
Where I’d been left bare.
Touched by another man.
Exposed.
Encouraging his fingers to spread so he might feel what the Head Priestess had done to me, I bade him look deep inside, where only he might see the hurt and undo it as he had before.
“I’ll give it to you,” I breathed, and shivered when his free hand found purchase on my hip. Grip hesitant, but firm. “The empath. You can have it if you make the pain stop…”
A breath puffed over his lips. Pupils blown wide enough that they swallowed any subtle hint of color there might have been in his dark gaze.
“Help me.” Hips tilting, I ground against him, knowing just what this game required of me. That the naked, melting flesh between my legs was a lure he could not resist when it traced the growing bulge at his inseam. “Please,” I gasped. “Look what she did to me.”
Sending a barb of pure, electric heat singing through my chest, he looked and saw the wall the Head Priestess had built.
“I can’t feelanything,” I whispered. “She took it all. Asher”—I swallowed, breath hitching when his fingers tightened at the sound of his name on my lips—“I’m so hungry…so cold…”
Shuddering beneath me, the captain relented. Worked to unravel all that Sasha had done, he sent fire to cleanse me of her influence. Chipping away at the shackles that held me in thrall, he thawed me of the frosted ice.
A tiny, fractured moan bubbled up and I sagged against him. Forehead dipping as the sparkling haze began to fade. As he warmed me, bit by bit.
