I take her mouth the way I used to take the noblewomen who used me, taking my time and coaxing her mouth to open. She makes a sound against my lips, surprise or protest I don’t know, and I take the opening to slide my tongue against hers. My hand fists in her hair, tilting her head back, and she lets me. She opens for me. Her fingers curl into my shirt the way they did before, and this time … this time I don’t pull away.
The bond ignites between us.
Her want floods through me, tangled up with shame and fear and desperate confusion. She doesn’t want to feel this. Shehatesthat she feels this. But she wants it anyway.
The Hell-Thorn from her histories is kissing her, and she’s kissing him back and hates herself for it.
And she can’t stop.
I feel it all through the bond. The heat building low in her stomach, the ache between her thighs, the way her body is responding.
I pull her away from the wall, and walk her backward, my mouth never leaving hers, until her thighs hit the edge of the table. One hand on her hip, I lift her onto it without breaking contact. She makes another startled sound against my lips, her hands grabbing at my shoulders, then I’m standing between her legs, and pressing her back until she’s lying across the surface, sprawled beneath me.
Maps and papers scatter. I don’t care. I lean over her, one hand braced beside her head, and look down at her. Her hair is spread across the table. Her chest heaves with each breath. Her lips are swollen from my mouth, eyes dark and dazed and terrified.
But she doesn’t tell me to stop.
“This,” I say, my voice rough. “This is how I hid. This is howI survived. I became the thing they couldn’t resist.”
I drag my mouth down her throat, and she arches into it, a moan escaping before she can bite it back. My hand slides under her tunic, finding bare skin, and she gasps, her stomach contracting under my palm.
“Three hundred years.” I reach for the fastenings of her tunic, and undo them one by one, spreading the fabric open, baring her to me. She makes another sound, and her hands fly up to cover herself. I catch her wrists, and pin them above her head against the table.
“No. You wanted to understand how I survived without them discovering who I was. So understand.”
She stares up at me, her skin flushed, lips parted.
“Thousands of human noblewomen. And not one of them thought to ask what I was called. They only cared about what I could do to them.”
I lower my mouth to her throat, trailing kisses down to her collar bone, to the swell of her breast, my hand sliding up to cup it while my mouth explores. Through the bond, her pleasure builds, fed by my own until I can’t tell where hers ends and mine begins.
I suck her nipple into my mouth and she arches into it, moaning when I nip at the hardened peak, before lifting my head.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes meet mine.
I want to take her. Here, on this table. I want to bury myself inside her, and feel the bond between us catch fire. I want to hear her scream my name. Myrealname, not the one I gave her.
“This is what I am.” I trail my free hand down her body. Over her throat, her breast, her stomach. She shudders beneath my touch. “This is what they made me.” I watch her face as my hand slides lower, over the fabric of her pants, pressing betweenher thighs. Her hips jerk.
She’s making sounds now, small desperate noises that she’s trying to swallow. Her back arches off the table, her hands strain against my grip. And through the bond I feeleverything. The pleasure building, the shame of responding to me, the fear that never quite goes away.
I lean down and kiss her again, slower this time, drinking in the sounds she makes. My other hand keeps moving, dipping beneath the pants, finding the wetness between her thighs. She gives a strangled cry when my fingertips come into contact with that most sensitive part of her, and I swallow it down, while I learn what makes her gasp, what makes her moan.
She’s close. I can feel it. Her body is tight as a bowstring, her pleasure spiraling higher?—
“Well, this is new.”
I freeze. Alleria’s eyes fly open, horror flooding through the bond.
Therin is standing just inside the entrance, arms folded, one eyebrow raised. His expression is caught somewhere between amusement and surprise.
“I did call out.” His voice is mild. “Twice. You didn’t answer. Now I see why.”
I straighten slowly, but I don’t move from between her legs, and I don’t pull my hand away. I just look at him, and the fury that was coiling through me redirects and finds a new target.
“Get out.”
