“You will enjoy it.”
Her heart leapt even as her stomach dropped what felt like miles deep within her.
“You know nothing of what I will enjoy,” she whispered, her voice thinner than she wished. “We are strangers. Practically.”
“Perhaps for you that is true. But I have been watching you for many nights now. Your innocence may be able to trick that fool of a Mayor, but your body cannot hide these things from me.”
Her throat worked soundlessly, but he pressed on.
“I hear the way your heart races for me, Lamb. There is no hiding that.”
His hands slid, deliberate, to the small of her waist, and with cruel ease he guided her back until she was pressed flush against the door. The wood bit cold through her gown. Heat bloomed low in her belly as a wetness began to form between her legs.
Then Elias lowered himself, slow, deliberate, like a man lost in prayer—though there was no piety in it. Only hunger. Only desire.
His hands dragged down her sides with such measured pressure her breath stuttered, her chest straining against her stays. He stopped only when he had claimed the tops of herthighs in his grasp, his fingers curling, reminding her that he could hold her captive should he wish.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, lifting his face but not rising, his mouth perilously close to the hem of her skirts, “I should show you. Then you would believe me.” His smile cut deeper. “Believe me when you are crying from my touch.”
Penelope’s breath hitched as his lips pressed against the top of her thigh, a breath away from where her skirt covered her sex. He held her gaze as his lips pressed against her, never wavering as ifdaringher to look away.
Her hands shot to the door at her back, gripping for anchor, as though the wood might save her from his bite.
“Elias—” Her voice cracked on his name. She should have shouted, should have struck him—but the words slipped out soft, tremulous. A plea that even she could not deny.
“Shh,” he whispered, pressing the shape of a kiss against the fabric. “I hear what you do not speak, Lamb. I know when you are scorned”—another kiss on the apex of her inner thigh—“When you are scared.” This time his fangs pierced her skirt, grazing her skin, causing her to gasp. “And when you are yearning.”
Before she could push him away, before she could summon sense or fury, his teeth caressed her harder—high, at the curve of her thigh. A searing jolt of terror lanced through her, chased instantly by something far more treacherous.
Need.
She gasped, her knees threatening to give way, as his fangs pierced her thigh through the dress. Not deep, not yet. Just enough. Just enough for fire to course through her veins, for her body to betray her in the most wretched fashion. Just enough for him to play with her.
Penelope’s hands found his shoulders, a whimper falling from her lips as his teeth pushed deeper.
It was as though the entirety of her nerves were lit on fire—as though she had truly felt what it meant to submit for the first time.
The sound he made—half growl, half moan—vibrated against her skin as he finally closed his eyes. His grip tightened, possessive, pulling her closer devouring her whole. She felt the pull, the terrible rhythm of it, and the world narrowed to that singular point of violation—of intimacy. Elias moaned as he pulled her closer, taking more from her as she bit her lip, fighting to not give him the satisfaction of her pleasure.
As his teeth pushed deeper, something pulsed from his fangs. And with each pulse, her body fought to turn against her. Paralyzing her in her own fraught pleasure.
It was too much.
It scared her, how willing her body was to play the part of prey, caught in the teeth of a monster yearning for nothing more than complete surrender.
“Elias,wait—” she cried, a desperation building in her sex as she felt something wet running down her legs and—no. No. It was all too much.
Her hand shot to his hair, not to caress but to shove him away. Yet her palm faltered, fingers tangling in the ghostly white strands as though her body were at war with itself. She hated herself for it.
She wanted him to ignore her pleads. To keep taking from her.
“Stop,” she whispered, but the word came out weak, quivering. Her chest rose and fell with frantic strain as if her very breath fought to escape.
He opened his eyes to look at her as she came undone.
With another growl, Elias pulled back.
The feeling of his fangs being removed from her thigh made her stomach tighten.
