Then he’s following me over that edge with a groan that sounds like it’s been ripped from somewhere deep inside him.
His face buries in my neck, his breath hot and ragged against my skin, and for one fleeting moment, his carefully maintained control completely shatters.
For just a second, he’s not the cold, controlled killer. He’s just a man, lost in pleasure, vulnerable.
Then reality crashes back in.
4
DIMITRI
I hear my name on her lips—breathy and desperate and completely undone—and something savage roars through me.
Mine.
The word echoes in my head with every thrust. She’s mine. Legally, physically, completely mine. Her body arches beneath me, trembling, making sounds that drive me absolutely insane with little gasps and whimpers that shouldn’t affect me the way they do.
This was supposed to be a standard consummation and nothing more. It should have been boring.
It’s not.
It’s the most intense thing I’ve ever experienced, and that fact enrages me almost as much as it intoxicates me.
She responds to me in ways that should be impossible given that I’m her enemy, that she’s clearly scared out of her fucking mind, and that this entire situation is fucked beyond repair.
But her body doesn’t lie. It arches into my touch, trembles under my hands, and her pussy clenches around me like she was made for this.
Made forme.
And when she comes apart and cries out my name, darkness and satisfaction surges through me. The power of it. The knowledge that I can make her respond like this despite the hatred and the fear and the circumstances that brought us here.
It’s intoxicating in a way that scares the shit out of me.
I tell myself it means nothing. It’s just biology, the physical response, her body betraying her the way bodies do. Simple mechanics, chemical reactions, nerve endings firing, etc.
But the way she surrenders to me (fighting it every second but surrendering anyway) speaks to something dark and primal deep within me.
I want to break her. I want to make her admit she wants this. That she wants me. I want to hear her beg for it.
And I hate myself for wanting that. I hate that this is affecting me at all when it should be nothing more than a formality.
When I finally let myself finish, it’s with a growl that sounds more animal than human. I bury my face in her neck to hide whatever expression is threatening to break through my carefully maintained control, breathing hard against her skin.
For a heartbeat, pressed against her with both of us breathing hard and shaking, I want to stay.
The urge is so strong it confuses me.
Then reality crashes back in. I remember who she is. What she is. An Ashford. The enemy. The daughter of the man whose family murdered my brother.
This meantnothing. It has to mean nothing.
I pull away immediately, rolling to the side. The sudden loss of her warmth and softness feels wrong. We lie there in the massive bed, not touching, both breathing hard, and the silence is overwhelming.
I can feel her confusion radiating off her in waves and can sense her trying to process what just happened. She’s trying to understand why her body responded the way it did to a man who hates her.
Good. Let her be confused. Let her wonder. Let her lie there and think about how her body betrayed her, how she responded to the man who’s supposed to be her enemy.
Maybe that’s a punishment all its own.
