A sharp nip of pain pricked at my throat. Teeth followed by wet, soothing heat of his tongue where he washed away the ache. And then, another step forward and only one more left to go before my knees would bump that mattress.
“I know,” I said, “know th-that you hate me.” I squeezed my eyes shut so I couldn’t see that last doomed step. “Passionately, because you are me. Just the other side of the same coin. The order to my chaos. And the empath?” I whispered, dragging a breath through lungs that had grown frigid and stiff. “It’s only a baby monster next to the one you wrestle with every day.”
He shifted, laying a trail of burning kisses along my nape, letting my words hang in the gloom. Growing heavier with every passing second, until he caught my opposite ear between his teeth, and pulled a rattling breath through his lips.
“Berserker,” he said, naming it at last. Barely more than a heated whisper, it was a sound that somehow felt… wrong and seductive all at once. Three hissing syllables murmured against my ear that drew a shiver up from the base of my spine. Like naming it had brought it forth.
My breath caught, eyes snapping open as I felt him move at my back.
He spun me. A single, sharp movement that threw my balance off as my hands flew out. Catching at his uniform. Clinging to a mountain in the eye of a storm.
My enemy.
For a moment, he merely watched me. Grip so tight on the bond, I could feel nothing but the emotions flicking and dancing through my own chest as I fell forward. Swallowed by the swirling pools of inky pitch.
And then a grin. “And the warrior priestess finds her teeth once more. Figured that out all by yourself, hmm?”
I swallowed. Blinking up at him as his breath warmed my cheeks. “You showed it to me,” I murmured. “When Sasha died. You used it… the…”
“Say it.”
“Berserker.” My throat worked. Suddenly parched. “You used it to force—to stop the riot. To stop…me.”
Something indescribable flicked through him, then. An emotion strong enough to wriggle free of his control, spilling over the wall erected between us, it howled through my blood. Razing my fragile resistance, he reduced me to cinders, then snuffed out the smoke in a single breath that robbed me of good sense and left me panting through parted lips as I stared up at him, bewildered.
Utterly.
And then he drove me back that last step. My hamstrings whispered against silken sheets.
“You feel it?” he hissed, and seized my braids in an unforgiving grip that twisted at my nape. Pulling my head back, exposing my throat. “This thing you call hate?”
I couldn’t feel anythingbut.
The rage that burned brighter than a thousand dying elites with as many faces. Each facet a different shade of emotion I didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce. Crackling dark magic pulsed and lashed, and he let me look. Held me enthralled to the beast howling for my submission so it could feast and drink and gorge until I begged for that sweet torment. Until I knew nothing else.
The berserker.
The match to my empath, it sent a tsunami to wash away everything I’d ever been. Letting me feast, as long as it was fromhim. Turning my vision black, lit by shades of violet that painted the captain as he really was.
A conquering force bred and built for war.
“On your knees,” he hissed, the words slipping through clenched teeth. “Taste what you do to me. What you plainly see, but cannot name.”
I folded before him, knees striking the carpet with a dull, graceless thump.
“You caught a glimpse of true power and you think you know?” He laughed, low and cruel. “You understandnothing,” he snarled, and pried my lips apart with the pad of his thumb. Adding weight to my jaw until my lips gaped as I panted against his wrist. “You play games with forces you cannot control. But”—with his free hand, he flicked the latch of his belt and did not blink—“you will learn.Iwill teach you.”
Freeing his cock, he took himself in hand. At the base where his sack sat high and tight. Swollen and heavy with seed he meant to spill.
Balls flexing, he traced the length of swollen flesh with a clenched fist, and sent a bead of furious, gleaming want gushing from his slit.
I whimpered.
A tiny squeak that slipped from my lips on a hitching breath.
“Fuck,” he snarled, and wrenched my head back. Further. Leaving me panting in his shadow. “Wider,” he ordered, and held still before me when he might’ve plunged inside. Pausing to look. To admire my bewildered defeat as I knelt before him.
I didn’t ask permission.
