She let out a broken, jagged breath. “You’re insane.”
“Rule number one,” I continue, ignoring her. I lean in, my lips grazing the tip of her nose. “You do not leave this estate without me or a four-man detail. You are themost valuable thing I own, and I don’t leave my treasures unguarded.”
“I’m not an object,” she whispers, a final, pathetic spark of defiance.
I squeeze the back of her neck, just enough to make her eyes widen. “Rule number two. You do not speak to Clara unless I am present. Her weakness is a contagion, and I won’t have her infecting my queen with her delusions of ‘rescue’.”
I take a handful of the eucalyptus soap and start to lather her breasts, my movements rough and possessive. The scent is sharp, clearing the air, stripping away the last remnants of her old world.
“And rule number three,” I whisper, my voice dropping to a viral, guttural growl that makes her tremble. “The most important one. You belong to my bed. When I want you, you are there. When I touch you, you respond. You can hate me, Wendy. You can pray for my death every night. But when I’m inside you, you will bemine.”
I slide my hand down between her legs underwater. She’s so sensitive she jumps, a choked moan escaping her lips as my fingers find the raw, over-stimulated centre of her.
“Do you understand the rules, Wendy?” I ask, my thumb circling her clit with a slow, devastating pressure.
“I… I can’t,” she sobs, her hands splashing in the water as she tries to find purchase on my shoulders. “I can’t live like this. It’s too much… you’re too much…”
“You can,” I growl, pulling her face down until our foreheads are touching. “Because the alternative is the void. Without me, you’re just a girl the North End wantsto use as a sacrificial lamb. With me, you’re the woman the entire city fears to touch.”
I increase the pressure, my fingers working her with a feral intensity. She’s crying harder now, but her hips are starting to move in that rhythmic, desperate way I’ve come to crave. She’s fighting the pleasure, fighting the surrender, but the water is hot and the scent is thick and I am everywhere.
“Say it,” I command, my teeth baring in a sharp, beautiful grin. “Say you understand.”
“I… I understand,” she gasps, her back arching, her breasts heaving. “I’m yours. God help me, I’m yours.”
I kiss her then—a deep, drowning kiss that tastes of salt and lavender and the end of the world. I’ve woven the chains into her very breath.
The door is locked, the water is rising, and the girl she used to be is officially a ghost.
The water sloshes over the marble lip of the tub, a rhythmic, wet applause for her undoing. I pull her closer, my skin sliding against hers with the friction of silk on silk, except she’s burning. Her fever is a physical thing, radiating off her in waves that turn the eucalyptus steam into a drug.
I don’t go for the kill. Not yet.
I keep my hand between her legs, my fingers merely ghosting over the outer folds of her pussy, tracing the swollen, weeping heat without actually touching the centre. She’s so tight, so primed from the bed, that even the movement of the water against her is making her gasp.
“Peter,” she whimpers, her head falling back into the crook of my arm. “Please… I need…”
“You need what, Wendy?” I murmur, my lips tracing the line of her throat, savouring the way her pulse jumps under my tongue. “Tell me exactly what you’re craving. Be descriptive. Use those beautiful, foul words you’ve been throwing at me all night.”
I slide a single finger inside her, just the tip, hooking it against her entrance and then pulling back. Just enough to tease the muscle, to remind her how hollow she feels without me.
She let out a sharp, fractured cry, her hips bucking upward, trying to impale herself on my hand. I pull back further.
“No,” I growl, my teeth nipping at the lobe of her ear. “You don’t get to rush this. You’re going to stay right here, on the edge of the cliff, until you forget there was ever a world without this ache.”
I start to circle her clit with the pad of my thumb, barely pressing, a light, maddening friction that has her nails digging into my forearms. She’s shaking, her breath coming in short, panicked hitches. Every time she reaches the precipice, every time her back starts to arch and her eyes roll back, I stop. I still my hand completely, letting the silence and the hot water settle over her like a shroud.
“You’re a demon,” she sobs, her voice a wrecked, beautiful mess. She’s grinding her hips against my thigh, desperate for the solid, hard weight of my cock, but I keep her pinned in place. “You’re fucking torturing me. Just… just do it. Give it to me.”
“Give you what?” I ask, my voice a viral, low-frequency hum.
I slide two fingers deep, hitting her cervix with ablunt force that makes her vision snap to white. She lets out a strangled scream, her internal walls convulsing around me in a starving, rhythmic sequence. I feel the first tremors of her climax—the precursor to the explosion—and I pull my fingers out completely.
She collapses against me, a broken, shivering heap of wet skin and lace. “Why… why would you do that?”
“Because I want you to beg for the ruin, Wendy,” I whisper, my hand fisting in her hair and pulling her head back so she has to look at the monster. “I want you so desperate for me that you’d crawl through the salt and the blood just to feel me inside you.”
I stand up in the tub, the water cascading off my chest. I’m thick, heavy, and throbbing, my cock a dark, veined iron rod that’s weeping with the same need she is. I grab her by the waist and haul her up, her legs wrapping around me, her pussy dripping and open, staring right at the head of my cock.
