“Master.” I correct.
He doesn’t say it. I still in him, making him whine.
My hand grazes over his thighs, my fingertips tracing in between his legs. I graze his balls, causing him to gasp.
“Touch me.” Elias rolls his hips back against me, trying to shove me deeper into him.
“Say it, Elias. Say you’re mine,” I growl.
“No.”
I touch him then. I massage his cock and thrust my hips. His cries of pleasure making me furious.
“Don’t stop. I’m so close.” He holds his wrists behind his head. His face is flushed in that beautiful way of his, making me almost forget that this is a punishment.
I pull out. My hands release him.
My chest is heaving, my cock hard and angry, but I don’t care. I tuck myself back into my pants.
“Lucian, what the hell?” He sits up. The beautiful, lush expanse of his skin calls to me like a siren.
“Leave,” I say without preamble.
Elias looks at me, shocked. He rests his bound wrists in his lap.
“Why?” His voice is low, baffled. The fight has been a salve.
“Because I need to think,” I say simply. “Because I don’t trust you.”
The red ribbon swings a small, ridiculous pendulum at his wrists. I kneel and untie it with a slow hand, careful, like erasing a line in pencil. His wrists are marked with a faint indentation.
I hand him his robe that has made its home on my chaise.
He looks at me for one long second, face unreadable. Then he turns away and pulls the robe on like armor.
And he leaves.
I feel the room close in on me. I am left with the aftermath of what we did: whispered confessions, wounded trust, the knowledge that a man who can command a city can also make mistakes in small, human ways.
Hartford’s photo burns in my pocket like a talisman I cannot destroy. I will find Xavier Long. I will unpick the web that led him to that alley. I will find out who put a gun in his hand and why they shot at the edge of what I claim.
12
Elias
The crash of the door rips me out of sleep so violently the world pitches sideways.
Hands—too many of them—clamp around my arms, my ankles, dragging me off the bed before I can even form a thought.
“Wh-what the hell?” My voice cracks, raw with sleep and panic. The sheets twist around my waist as I claw at the mattress, trying to anchor myself. “Get off me!”
They don’t. They aren’t here to listen.
My feet hit the floor. The cold jolts through me, clears my head just in time to recognize two of the men hauling me: Vincent and Johnny. Lucian’s men. The same ones who dipped their heads politely at me in the hall yesterday. Now their grips are iron and punishing.
“What are you doing?” I twist, slam my shoulder into Vincent’s ribs. “Where’s Lucian? Let me talk to him!”
No answer.
