“I was forced to make…otherarrangements while you slept,” he said, and traced the outside of my thigh with his palm. “Had to get creative to contain the empath after the riot. After you’d tasted true power.”
“A wall,” I said, my voice reedy and thin with a desperate edge, trying to deny what I couldn’t bear to admit. “Another one.” And then, to flatter him, I added, “Abetterone.”
He tisked. “Come, now. I expected better thanthatfrom my warrior priestess.”
My lip trembled. Breath caught.
Because I knew.
The truth was woven through the very fabric of my being.
Undeniable.
That from this, there would be no escape. No clever maneuvering. No covert plans born from the shadows, for he ruled the dark and everything in it. My body. My mind.Everything.
“Nooo,” I whined, an admission in a single syllable leaked through a quivering pout. Seeking comfort from the very man who’d ruined me, I was helpless, leaning into his touch when his thumb skated over the edge of my jaw. When he cupped the back of my neck and cradled my skull, leaning over me without an ounce of shame or regret.
“It was the only way,” he murmured, and moved to cover me with his muscular frame. Blocking out the light, consuming my vision until there was nothing but him. “You have to know that, Mila. That you couldn’t be trusted. I had no choice.”
I tried to pull a ragged breath through my teeth, and failed. It was stuck in the clog blocking my throat. In the choking, wretched heartbreak gushing through the rip in my chest that was stuffed full of him.
He hushed me, kissing the corner of my eye. “It’s over now. You’ll never want for anything,” he soothed, and his black gaze flicked down. Watching as he fingered my lips, exposing the point of modified canines, not quite able to disguise the gleam of greedy, dark flames flickering in his eyes. “You’ll never have to fight, or struggle, or suffer again—unless it’s for me,” he murmured, and tipped my neck back, pressing our foreheads together. “But I promise you’ll beg for this brand of torment, pet. Over”—he rocked against me—“and over again.”
Breath hitching, I let my eyes drift closed. Shutting him out, trying to find some tiny forgotten place that was quiet, untouched by his power. His all-consuming awareness.
It didn’t exist.
One rough hand slid down, to knead my breast. Tweaking a nipple that beaded beneath his touch with an eagerness that betrayed me. An excitement he felt before I could so much as try to disguise the rush of taboo lust.
Giddy with excitement, he pressed his lips to my ear and I felt the smirk catch in my hair. “Come,” he whispered. “Let me show you how easy this can be.”
I blushed. Hot and prickly, shamed by all the many things I had no control over. “Take what you want,” I whispered, because despite the way my pulse pounded at my temples—in my wrists and throat—it didn’t matter. The fight was over. Lost while I had been sleeping.
He pulled me from the sheets. Shifting first one, and then the other leg over the edge of the mattress, his hands dipped to my lower back as he helped me to stand. Supporting me when I swayed on unsteady, atrophied legs and clutched at his shirtfront with fingers that were thinner than I remembered them being. More claw-like than ever before.
He didn’t sweep me off my feet. Didn’t scoop me up and simply carry me—he let me walk, despite the thin layer of sweat that bloomed on my brow. Ignoring the way my nails caught on his skin as I clung to his shirt. Supporting me when I began to wheeze, without a single snarky word to point out the obvious deterioration of my muscle.
Because he knew.
Because he was already under my skin and understood just how badly I needed to cling to the illusion that I could controlsomething, even this one small thing.
By the time he closed the bathroom door behind us, the room was spinning. My face and lips tingling and bloodless as the tiles danced in an alarming pattern that beckoned me to rest my head on the unforgiving floor. At speed. Regardless of the force.
“Sit.”
I obeyed, plopping down onto the frigid toilet seat with the splat of naked skin. My knees folded without a second to spare, and I took several deep, steadying breaths with my eyes squeezed shut. Sound ringing in my ears, and nowhere else.
“Ready?” he said after several minutes of watching me fight the welcoming dark where a leviathan waited in the gloom.
I peeled my lids apart, squinting at him through one watery eye.
Yards of naked, bronzed flesh. Forearms crossed over tight muscle, utterly absent even the merest hint of shame, he was watching me from an unblinking glare. Cloaked in steamy mist, backed by the dim lighting. Still, except for measured breaths as he witnessed my struggle to remain upright.
“You’ll feel better after a shower,” he said.
I glanced at the shower stall, remembering the particulars of our last shared showering experience. The flash of a clenched fist that directed rope after rope of salty come as he marked me with his seed, then pushed it inside. “You think so, huh?”
A tight grin played at the corner of his lips. Quick. Devious. There and gone between one blink and the next, but long enough that I saw what lurked beneath. Beneath the ill-fitting cloak of an ally, there was a predator coiled and ready to spring.
