He disbelieves me because he knows I’m lying. Still, he captures my free hand and guides me into his room of mirrors. The sight of them tickles a faint amusement I hide.
“Why are there so many mirrors?” I ask instead, facing him.
Humor glints in his eyes as he claims the candle from my fingers and sets it aside on the dresser. The same long fingers return to close around my throat. The restraint is firm, but gentle. A show of power while locking the air from my lungs.
“Would you like me to show you?”
I do even while the voice in my head prickles with uncertainty. I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t feel the hot rush of heat between my thighs or the excited tightening of my nipples.
But I remember forgetting. For those fleeting seconds last night, I only knew the coil and release of my body. The thrill muffled my grief. The pain. There was nothing but that breath of surrender.
Would it be terrible if I need it again? Need the crutch. It could be alcohol or drugs. It’s only orgasms, and I have already promised him my body.
“Yes.”
The light in his gaze only darkens. The hunger of a wolf capturing his wounded rabbit, too helpless to fight. Not that I would. Instead, I let myself be guided back. I let the back of my knees catch the edges of the mattress. I tumble across the tangled sheets.
Overhead, the mirror-me bounces. Dark locks spill across white fabric. Her gown hem bunches high around her thighs,thighs that are pushed wide by the big hands of the dark-haired man looming over her.
“Don’t look away,” Marcus tells me in that low gravelly purr that scatters my skin with goose bumps. “Watch how beautiful you look for me.”
I obey.
I lie still and watch long fingers hook into thin straps and pull them down my arms. The layers of fabric follow over my breasts, over the lines and valleys of my torso. It’s tossed aside and I’m flushed and bare to the room.
The mirror.
To the thing inside the mirror.
The eyes of the man studying me with a need that almost scares me.
“Open, Linny. Wider. More. Lift your hips so you can see your pretty hole.”
Ames talked like that. He used to whisper the filthiest commands in my ear while making me rub my mound over the hard length of him. He’d guide my hips and taunt how I was soaking him. That everyone at dinner would smell me on him and know what a dirty girl I was.
But he’d never done this. Never splayed me so wide I could see my slick and glossy opening reflected down at me.
Carefully, Marcus reclines next to me, head balanced on one hand while the other ventures back to my jaw. My stare-off with myself is momentarily broken with the tilt of my face to his. To the mouth he closes over mine. The tongue he sweeps in. There is no hurry. Like we have years to get to the end.
“Eyes open,” he coaxes. “Keep watching.”
The hand at my jaw unfurls and drifts down to cup my breast. Brush the sensitive nipples. No pinching. No tugging. Light skims that have my hips twitching restlessly.
“So responsive,” he murmurs, lips grazing the side of my face.“Une si bonne fille pour moi.”
The throaty praise telling me I’m being such a good girl for him has a pool of arousal rushing from my body. Has my stomach muscles tightening with a need only he can satiate.
As a reward, he gives my nipple the lightest pinch. The very sweetest taste of pain that rockets straight through me.
“Marcus…”
“Shhh. Watch.”
I do.
I can’t stop even if I wanted. I am transfixed by the sight of him paying the most detailed attention to the under curve of my breast. The weight with every palm. His thumb circles the pink ring before sweeping over the peak.
Just when I think I might lose my mind, his mouth joins the torture. It takes the ignored breast between teeth so sharp I cry out. He nips and pulls while his thumb continues to skim with loving strokes. The conflicting rush of pain and pleasure has my thighs pressing closed. Has them rubbing frantically together for relief.
