He helps me remove the garment, baring that magnificent chest. Then he reaches for me, and I shake my head.
“Lie down. No touching. Only I get to touch you now.”
“Cruel,” he remarks, but his grin says otherwise. “You promised to tie me up.”
“And I always keep my promises.”
He laughs softly when I push him further up against the mound of pillows. I pull each of his muscular arms and secure his wrists with the holdbacks on either side of the headboard. Test the knots.
“Do you like this?” he asks eventually when I don’t move, gazing at him. “Like having me at your mercy?”
“That’s why you hated it so much back home,” I whisper, figuring things out as Darian’s words settle inside me, slotting into the bigger picture of Valen’s life.
“What?” He looks like a dream, a sexual fantasy, tied up like that, his eyes gleaming, his upper body sculpted, his muscularthighs stretching the fabric of his loose pants… his knot and cock bulging between them.
“You hated being tied up and muzzled.”
A dry laugh leaves his lips. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Valen…” I lick my lips and wish I didn’t have to break this moment, but it’s perfect, with him being literally forced to hear me out. If he doesn’t just snap the bonds and leave the room, that is. “Darian told me a little story.”
A frown mars his brow. “Oh? What about?”
“About the years after your mother went missing.”
He goes very still. “Darian talks too much,” he says eventually, his normally bright eyes shadowed. His hands clench in the flimsy bonds. “My failures are none of his business.”
“Why failures?”
“I… lost myself. Enslaved myself so I wouldn’t have to think or feel. I wasted all the years I could have spent looking for my mother.”
Kneeling between his legs, I place a hand on his chest. “She was already dead, Valen. You didn’t know it then, but it wouldn’t have helped.”
“I chose to join that temple. Chose to stay. Pretended nothing had happened. That one day I’d return, and my mother would be here, waiting for me.”
“Gods, Valen.” Slowly, carefully, I slide my arms around his neck and rest my cheek on his chest. “I’m so sorry. You were only a child.”
“So were you,” he breathes, his heart beating an uneven, jagged rhythm. “When those wolves attacked you.”
“You suffered. You were tied up. Those scars on your back, Valen… You were whipped. Many times.”
“More times than I care to count,” he agrees.
“What else did they do to you?”
“Collected some blood once a month. Had me do heavy chores. It wasn’t that bad, Princess. Darian likes to make a bigger deal out of it than it was.”
I don’t buy it. “You were a slave. For years. Did they put a muzzle on you? Was that why you couldn’t stand it, why you hated having your hands tied? They hurt you. They abused you.”
“The God demands pain and sweat. Blood.” His voice is a low growl. “I knew that. I wanted information, and okay, maybe I also wanted pain. Physical pain to counter the pain of losing my mother. Their priests also taught me to fight, to meditate, to rest my mind. They didn’t coddle me or pity me. It helped me in ways staying here with my friends and family wouldn’t have.”
I nod. “I think I can understand that.”
“I didn’t mean to keep secrets from you,” he whispers.
“And I didn’t mean to pry into your past,” I whisper back.
“That’s okay. You should know who you’re tagging along with.”
