He slid the panties up my legs, then helped me to stand. Tugging the towel from my hooked fingers, he adjusted the silly scrap of fabric to his liking, then tipped my chin back with the backs of his knuckles. Dark eyes flicking between mine, he ignored my plea. A question written on his brow. Seeking answers in my blood, where I couldn’t hide them.
Where shame had crashed into lust and had become something new. My definition of sex forever tied to him. Defined in the swirl of an inky black glare, and rough fingers that took without asking.
And he knew it.
A crackle of devious, elite energy zipped through my skin. Reeking of victory and lewd, piqued interest. “You can go about convincing me after I’ve dealt with Carina, if you must. Until then,” he murmured, and his thumb caught and pulled at my lower lip. “Knowing your panties are soaked through with my comeandyours?” He tisked, tongue clicking as that wayward digit bumped over the points of my modified teeth. He loosed a ragged breath as a fresh wave of arousal began to build between us once more. “Knowing that my little virgin is soiled, inside and out?”
Trembling, I tried to step back. Couldn’t, for I was already caught in that sticky trap.
“I can feel how you ache,” he said again, voice a deep, quiet purr. “Even now, so soon after strangling my dick with a truly spectacular orgasm.” Fingers bumping down, over bones that had never poked through my skin before, he cupped my mound over the panties. Tracing my clit with flawless accuracy, only to push back, tempting me where I throbbed for relief. And then he pushed that fabric inside, just enough to make my breath catch. Just enough to make the gusset slick with liquid seed. “I’m not the only one who can’t stop thinking about it, am I?”
A ragged whine crackled over my lips, but I did not blink when the question came unbidden. “Thinking about w-what?”
“How perfectly you gape for me,” he said, teasing me with a tendril of energy that stole my breath and made me clench where he wasn’t. “That you can pretend, even as you beg so prettily.”
I swallowed. “Pretend?”
“Oh, yes,” he hummed, pushing his thumb between my lips. Almost daring me to sink my teeth into the knuckle. “Mustn’t shatter the illusion, hmm? That you’re not soaked and slick, ready whenever I feel like bending you over my mattress. Dripping wet, aching to be bred by your enemy. It wasn’tyourankles locked around my hips.” He grinned. “That would be impossible, because I’m the big bad villain, hmm? And you, the helpless, fragile little virgin. Such an elegant dance.”
He kissed me, then. Stooping to catch my breath between his lips, Asher framed my face in big, rough hands and slipped his tongue between my lips. Tasting. Drinking me in, before he tugged the towel from my fingers and slung it about his own hips. Hardly bothering to conceal the furious erection tenting the fabric as he exited the bathroom with a flourish of swirling steam.
Draping my forearm over my breasts, I blushed all the deeper, even as I scowled after him.
“Have Mila dressed and fed,” he said, smirking as he pinned me with that inky, bottomless stare. “I won’t be long.”
Alicia dipped her head. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and Mila?”
My lip curled.
“Please, feel free to tidy up, if you’re feeling brave. I’m only too happy to fill you up again… and again… and again…”
We listened as he rummaged in his closet. Silent as the man stepped into what I could only imagine was a fresh uniform, perhaps something more casual, now that he’d been officially relieved of his duties. Humming to himself as he strode from the bedroom.
He left me, then. Alone. With Alicia. The woman who’d betrayed me for nothing but a passing, careless thanks from her master. A fellow whore for the empire, who now held absolutely no illusion that the captain had just spent the last hour indulging himself between my thighs.
Cheeks flushed with a pulsing heat that refused to fade, seething as I recovered my wits, I sat with my forearm slung over my breasts. Dressed in nothing but pink cheeks and borrowed panties, I kept my knees pressed together in such a way that stopped the slow, steady pulse oozing from between swollen, tender lips. Soaking that silly strip of fabric with a not-so-secret flood of fluids.
Eyes fixed to a scrape on my left knee that I had no memory of, the room was lit with a gentle, prominent hue of gold glowing at my wrists and throat. Evidence that the captain was with me, even now…
… when he’d gone to entertain his bride to be.
Alicia cleared her throat. “Good to see you awake, priestess,” she murmured. Quiet in the tight, humid space that reeked of what had just happened. Too intimate a place to share with a woman I hated. “At last.”
My jaw flexed, but I clung to my silence. My every muscle held tight enough that I’d become brittle with the need to shatter.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, and retrieved the bundle of black silks from where the captain had left them on the vanity.
“I can dress myself,” I snipped.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” she returned, but flung the fabric out with a snap and draped it over my shoulders anyway. Every inch the harem leader, with her cool efficiency and seeming indifference toward nudity. Twisting and fidgeting with the silken folds, coaxing them to hang artfully off my skeletal frame, until I was cloaked in Caledonian blacks once more. Elegant. The very picture of the slave I’d become.
“It’s been a trying couple of days,” she said, and touched my arm. Fingers warm and light, she held that contact until I met her gaze. Dragging the moment out.
A certain type of intensity burned in that lovely shade of green, but I was left to guess at her intention. Helpless without the empath to lend me insight, for her energies were… not for me to sample.
I shrugged, because I couldn’t lend my voice to the pain.
