“Three fingers this time.” His gaze is planted on the lewd act, surveying as I find a rhythm—in and out and swirling my clit. “That’s my girl. You’re radiant, taking what you want. Feels good, doesn’t it, darling?”
“So good.” My voice is a frail wisp of ardor, but I’m too dazed to care, more riled and shaken by my own hand than my brain or body can make sense of. All I know is that I can’t stop, that I need more, that even though he’s denying me and himself, it feels like his hand is guiding me over the edge.
“Don’t come until you ask me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I exhale, and his eyes flash with a blaze of fiery lust. I don’t think he’d demand that I respond that way, but he likes it, and I want to be everything he likes.
He elevates my strength, but allows me to let go. It’s almost as if submitting, letting him hold the reins, is a gift. He’s the solace of the globe in the midst of my torrential snowstorm.
“Axel, I’m so close … please …” Those are the only words I can muster, my eyelids growing heavy, my pace accelerating, my limbs spasming.
His hand curls around my wrist, and before I can register what’s happening, my fingers are in the warmth of his mouth, and his piercing blues are glued to my face. My orgasm is a begging, pleading, whimpering being, gagged and cuffed by the striking man before me. But a pattering twinge pulses vehemently throughout my entire body, singing a hopeful anthem of dizzying crescendo.
He devours every drop of my arousal, and through the agony of my abandoned rapture, I hold my breath that this means he’ll be sliding into me—or at the very least, lowering his mouth to the incessant ache between my legs.
He stops sucking and places my hand on the bed, outside my thigh. Then he grabs the other hand, which drifted toward my core, and he sets it beside my other thigh as his eyes sear mine with his impassioned demand. “If you want this, suffer for it.”
My chest is heaving. My heart is pounding. Blood flow whooshes against my eardrums at an alarming volume. And all of me is throbbing and vibrating with need. So, I can’t fully process the meaning behind his words. “What?”
He at least has the good sense to appear mildly regretful, butmildlyis the key descriptor. “Can you sacrifice? Leave yourself needy and swollen while denying the fulfillment of that desire until I grant you permission to take it or seize it myself?”
“You’re leaving me like this.” It flees from me as more of an indignant accusation than a question.
“Yes. And expecting you to stay that way until I say otherwise.” Whatever he finds in my face has him furnishinga reminder. “You have a safe word for a reason. If you want something else, use it.”
If I want something else?
Ignoring that, I issue my own challenge. “What does this prove?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.” He palms my head, kisses my temple, and saunters toward the door. “Decisions need to be made, but … next time you’re faced with an issue like Shep, you come to me first. For now, show me you can be a good girl for me, that you have enough faith in me to trust that even when something feels unbearable, I’ll give you everything you need. Then I’ll explain it all.”
He told me not to speak to him outside of work. The Shep issue probably would’ve trumped that demand though, so I don’t call him on it.
A question about whether this means he wants something real with me brims inside me, but my pride has something else flying out of my mouth. “Why help yourself to a taste then?”
He hears everything baked into that.Why torture yourself? Do you really want me?
Scratching his jaw, he releases a stifled chuckle, his sapphires sweeping over my naked and unsatiated body as he lingers at the threshold, still hard himself. “At the end of the day, I’m just a man, Zara. And you are irresistible.” His chest rises on a deep inhale, his focus still narrowed on me as he reiterates his earlier sentiment. “Someone to be cherished.”
ZARA
There are few conversations that bear fate-shaping weight. Most are crumbs of a much bigger feast—kernels of interactions that build fellowship or intimacy, frivolous afterthoughts, or task-oriented directives. But there are some so wickedly profound that you know beyond all reason there is a message from a greater realm lurking within them.
A warning. A prophecy. A verdict.
Like this one—riddled with fateful censure from the first syllable.
“What the hell did you do?” my father bellows through my burner.
He’s as irate as he was that day on the phone regarding my mother’s death, so it’s not a leap to assume this is regarding mine. But even though part of me wants to simply close my eyes and let destiny bang her judicious gavel, I’m a fighter at heart. And for the first time, I have a banquet of beauty to battle for.
Axel and I haven’t spoken about anything other than work for the past thirty-six hours. His gaze caresses my skin duringmeetings or as we pass one another in the executive hallway, but I pretend it doesn’t awaken me.
This morning, when I was standing at Stella’s desk, asking about her evening plans, he stalked by us—all suave and kinglike and playfully unaffected.
He casually noted that I’d been working hard and seemed tense with a haughty lift of his brow and a slight quirk to his rosy lips. Then he added, “Not to worry, Miss West. Suffering reaps phenomenal rewards.”
My skin ignited like I was clutching a live wire, all the nerve endings in my body firing with a voracious charge to feed the famished beast inside me—a malnourishment I’d never known until him. Until he left me sticky and starved.
