I wanted to respond, but I made incoherent moaning sounds as he continued with his exceptional tortures.
"Look at me."
I forced my eyes open. His face was inches from mine, green eyes nearly black with want, jaw tight with restraint. Sweat beaded at his temple. The hand on my lower back had fisted in my dress, knuckles white with the effort of not taking more than I'd offered.
He was barely holding himself together. This beautiful, dangerous man who could have anyone he wanted was shaking with the effort of not throwing me down and claiming me completely.
Because I'd asked him to wait. And he would. Even if it killed him.
"You're going to come for me," he said, voice rough as gravel and my blood was pounding in my ears. "And you're going to say my name when you do. Understand?"
I nodded, beyond words.
"Good girl."
He increased the pressure, the pace, his thumb pressing hard against that sensitive bundle while his fingers curved inside me. Then his shadows enveloped me, spreading under the material of my dress, teasing my hardened nipples. I shattered secondslater. His name tore from my throat—too loud, dangerously loud—and he swallowed the sound with his mouth, kissing me through the aftershocks while his fingers gentled but didn't stop, drawing out every last tremor of pleasure until I was limp and gasping in his arms.
When I finally stilled, boneless and trembling, he withdrew his hand slowly. Raised his glistening fingers to his lips. Held my gaze while he licked them clean, his tongue tracing every drop of my arousal from his skin.
"Best thing I've ever tasted," he said, and his voice was wrecked, raw with want. "Could live on this. Could die on this."
I watched him, dazed, my heart still racing. I thought of that night in the tower—his blood on his fingers instead of my arousal, the way he'd tasted both of us mixed together with the same reverent hunger. How we'd gone from that desperate, blood-soaked collision to this—still hungry, still raw, but with a tenderness threaded through it that hadn't been there before. He touched me like I was precious now, even when he was being filthy. He looked at me like I was the sun and the moon and every star ever burned into existence.
Once, this man had been my friend. Then my enemy. Then something far more complicated—a rival, a tormentor, a source of pain so acute I'd thought I'd never recover from it.
Now he was this. Now he made me feel things I hadn't known I was capable of feeling.
I grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a kiss, tasting myself on his tongue, feeling his groan vibrate through both of us. He was still hard beneath me—desperately, painfully hard—and whenI rolled my hips against him, the sound he made was almost pained.
"You're going to gut me alive, my starlight," he muttered against my lips.
"You started it."
"I always start it." His hands gripped my hips, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, rocking me against the thick length of him still trapped in his trousers. "Can't help myself. See you walking through the palace in your pretty gowns, smiling at people who don't deserve to breathe the same air as you, and all I can think about is dragging you into the nearest dark corner and making you beg for my shadows."
I rolled my hips deliberately, grinding down against him, watching his eyes flutter closed and his head fall back. The column of his throat was right there, exposed and vulnerable, and I leaned forward to press my mouth against his pulse. Felt it hammering beneath my lips.
"Should I return the favor?" I whispered against his skin.
His hand caught my wrist before I could reach for his laces. "Not here." The words came out strained, like he was fighting himself, and his shadows stilled. "Not yet. When you finally get your hands on me, I want to be somewhere I can properly appreciate it." He opened his eyes, and the heat in them made my breath catch. "Somewhere I can show you exactly what I'm going to do to you after. Somewhere I can spread you out on silk sheets and worship every inch of you before I make you mine completely.”
My core clenched at the promise in his voice. At the certainty. Not if — when. He had somewhere in mind. I could hear it — the way he said "somewhere" like he'd already chosen it, alreadyplanned it, already imagined me there. And the fact that he'd been thinking about this, building toward it, holding himself back until it was right — that undid me more than any touch could have.
"You're a tease."
"I'm selective." He kissed me again—softer this time, almost tender, a stark contrast to the filthy things he'd been saying moments before. "There's a difference."
Both versions of him were real. The demanding, possessive man who said crude things in my ear while his fingers made me fall apart. And this one—the one who kissed me like I was something precious, who waited because I'd asked him to, who looked at me sometimes with such naked vulnerability that it made my chest ache.
I'd hated him once. Part of me still hadn't forgiven him for what he'd done.
But gods help me, I loved him too. I loved him so fiercely it terrified me. I loved him in a way that felt bigger than either of us, like something ancient and inevitable had taken root in my chest and refused to be denied.
We stayed tangled together on the piano bench for a while longer, my head on his shoulder, his fingers tracing idle patterns on my thigh. The afternoon light slanted through the grimy windows, catching dust motes in golden columns. In moments like this, the rest of the world felt very far away.
"Sarp cornered me yesterday," I said eventually.
Hakan's hand stilled. "Did he?"
