Because I can, she’d laughed.Because you’re here, and you’re mine.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” Her terror spikes again. She knows that I’m on the edge, that one wrong word could end her life … and yet she keeps talking. “You know exactly how this feels. Every humiliation and command. You know because someone did this to you first.”
My grip tightens on her wrists. She doesn’t flinch.
“Shut up.”
“You know how to break someone down because someone brokeyoudown.”
“Isaidshut up.”
She doesn’t. Her mouth keeps moving, shaping words I don’t want to hear, and I’m close enough to see the tear tracks on her cheeks, the tremble in her lower lip, the pulse jumping in her throat. My eyes narrow. Her voice falters, and she stops mid-word, eyes searching my face, and whatever she sees there makes her breath catch. Her lips part to say something else.
Then my mouth is on hers. I release her wrists, and fist my hand into her hair instead, angling her head back, and taking her mouth like I can force her to take back everything she’s just said.
She goes rigid, her hands flying up to press against my chest.
The connection between us ignites. Her shock pours throughfirst, then confusion, then heat—unwanted, unwelcome, but there. She doesn’t want to feel this. She’s horrified that she feels this.
Yet she feels it anyway.
I drag her closer, my free hand finding her waist and pulling her against me until I can feel her body through the thin fabric of the tunic. We’re both on our knees, pressed together, chest to chest, heat spreading like wildfire through my veins. She makes a sound, and her fingers curl into the front of my shirt.
The connection flares brighter. Her want bleeds into me, heat unfurling low in her stomach, the ache between her thighs, the desperate confusion of wanting something she knows she shouldn’t. It tangles around me until I can’t tell whose desire is whose.
My hand slides from her waist, finding the bare skin where the tunic has ridden up. Her thigh is warm under my palm, and she gasps against my mouth, hips jerking toward me.
Good. Just like that.
The memory crashes through me. A noblewoman’s voice. Her hand in my hair as she guides my head between her legs.
I wrench my mouth away from hers, and let her go.
She nearly falls without my grip to hold her up. Her eyes are dazed, unfocused. Her lips are swollen and red. Her chest heaves with each breath, and the tunic has twisted, ridden up and leaving nothing to the imagination.
I make myself look at her, force away every emotion threatening my control, and when I speak my voice is flat and cold.
“Interesting. At least now I know what it takes to shut you up.”
The daze clears from her eyes. Understanding floods in, followed by hurt bright enough that the connection nearly chokes me with it.
I stand, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, cursingthe way her taste lingers on my lips.
“Kneel properly. Therin and Vel will be here soon.”
She doesn’t move, staring at me with that wrecked expression, but as I watch the tears are slowly replaced by the first sparks of fury.
“I said kneel.”
She shifts into position. Her face has gone blank. An expression I recognize. It’s the way every fae looks after a century or two in the cages.
I turn my back on her and stare at the table, while the words she threw at me echo in my head.
She isn’t wrong. About any of it. I am doing exactly what they did to me, using the same justifications.
Because I can. Because you’re mine.
