Her eyes widened. "You're psychotic."
"For you? Absolutely."
"You can't just—you don't get to—" She thrashed beneath me, her bound wrists straining. "This is exactly what I'm talking about! You think you can control everything, decide everything?—"
"I can." I pressed in another inch, watching her breath stutter. "I do."
"Fuck you, Gideon."
"That's the plan." I pulled back, my cock sliding out of my pants completely, and she made a desperate sound that went straight to my balls. "Now answer the goddamn question."
"Why?" she demanded, glaring up at me with those defiant eyes I wanted to drown in. "So you can torture yourself? So you can rage about something that happened before I even knew you existed?"
"Yes."
"You're impossible."
"And you're stalling." I gripped her hip harder, my thumb stroking the soft skin there. "Which tells me everything I need to know."
"It tells you nothing." But her voice wavered.
I studied her face—the flush creeping down her neck, the way she couldn't quite hold my gaze. "Has anyone touched you the way I touch you?"
"Gideon—"
"Has anyone made you come the way I make you come?"
Her jaw clenched. "Stop."
"Has anyone," I whispered against her ear, my hand sliding between us to find her still wet and ready, "been inside this perfect cunt?"
Silence.
Then, barely audible, "No."
I went still.
Completely fucking still.
She was a virgin.
Mine.
The word detonated in my chest, primal and absolute. No one had touched her. No one had been inside her. No one had made her theirs.
Only me.
"Are you happy?" she asked, voice sharp with humiliation and fury.
"Shut up," I snapped, harder than I meant to.
Because I couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except process the fact that this woman—this infuriating, stubborn, perfect woman—had never given herself to anyone.
And she was about to give herself to me.
I lined my cock to her cunt, hands shaking with the effort to stay controlled. Pressed in slow. So damn slowly. Every instinct screamed at me to bury myself deep, to claim her hard and fast, to make her mine in one brutal stroke.
But I didn't.
