“Let’s see,” he whispers, bending close to my ear, “how long you’ll remain one.”
“If you’re willing to put the entire world on hold just for me to play with you,” Nathaniel says, voice low and ruinously calm, “I’m willing to oblige, my love. We can narrow it all down to just the two of us.”
He reaches into his kit.
Metal whispers against metal.
When he draws the needle out, he doesn’t rush. He brings it up into the light. Or… at least, I think it’s the light he wants. Otherwise I have to accept the other possibility: that he wantsmeto see it. To anticipate it. To imagine every filthy, inventive thing he could do with something that sharp, and to feel my body react before he’s even touched me with it.
It’s working.
A pulse kicks hard in my throat.
He’s never wanted me to hurt before.
But the strange truth is… I don’t dread it. Not now. Not from him. Not with the way he’s looking at me like I’m something precious he intends to ruin carefully.
I want him to take all of me.
And I want to take all of him right back, no parts kept in reserve.
Besides, I meant what I said.
Idotrust him.
So I force my muscles to soften even as my breathing goes quick and thin, the air catching on my ribs. I let the tension drain out of my hands. Out of my jaw. Out of the places I always hold myself too tightly.
I let go of the control.
Nathaniel lifts the needle a fraction higher, turning it slowly between his fingers. His other hand glides up my leg until his fingertips find the inside of my thigh.
He strokes there with just enough pressure to make my whole body seize again.
“Don’t you need to disinfect that?” I ask weakly.
He cocks a brow.
“Do I?” he asks softly. “Planning on having me pierce your skin, Skye?” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “I didn’t know your thoughts were so bold.”
A shiver climbs my spine so fast it steals the breath out of my lungs. His fingers tighten on my thigh, dragging upward until they hook under the waistband of my pants. The contact is nothing and everything at once, and my nipples tighten instantly under my shirt, hard enough to ache. It’s shameful how fast my body reacts to him.
God help me, he looks like a mad scientist carved out of sin. He has such an obsessive mind, and elegant hands, and he’s outright deranged. He’s the kind of man who could take my pulse apart molecule by molecule and savor the pieces.
His hand slips higher and tugs my pants down.
My breath stutters.
My nipples drag against my shirt as my chest lifts involuntarily.
“So, um… what do you want to do with it?” My voice isn’t steady. Of course it isn’t. My imagination is already sprinting somewhere filthy. I already see Nathaniel in a lab coat, hair a wreck, gloves snapped on, leaning over me with a needle filled with something designed only to make my cunt drip every time he walks into a room. A drug that would make my pussy throb for him like it’s wired to his heartbeat.
It’s filthy.I’mfilthy.
If he knew what that image does to me—
God, maybe he does.
“Lift your hips,” he murmurs, his hands sliding under me, and his thumbs brush the crease where my ass meets my thighs. “Help me take these off.”
