Blast it all. I’d meant to say, “As long as you want this.”

But I could not deny it. Not now. I could not flee from it the way I’d fled from her tears. I wanted her to want me, even if she detested the wanting, detested me.

I worked my finger faster until Torrance made desperate little sounds. Her hands rose to my shoulders, wide red silk sleeves sliding down past her elbows to pool around her upper arms. She clutched at me, holding tightly, as if she needed to tether herself to something and that something was me. My pleasure at that was instant and foolish. Satisfaction at being the one she sought instead of fought.

“When you wept in my arms, you turned towards me, not away,” I whispered. At some point, I’d stopped gripping her hair. I drew back slightly to gaze down at the flushed face I cradled. “Is it because there was no one else? Or because it was me who held you?”

Torrance’s eyes fluttered open, finding mine in a daze.

“Same... thing,” she panted.

“No,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

She stared at me, lips quivering. Her eyes focused with what looked like great effort, understanding my question but unwilling, or unable, to answer it.

“I... I...”

“Yes?” Tell me it was me you needed. Me and only me. I curled my finger inward, sliding it in quick, demanding strokes until a pulsing tremor began deep inside her.

“I...” Her eyes scrunched shut, severing the connection, cutting herself off from me and from my question. “I’m going to come.”

“Then come,” I commanded, bending once more to her slender throat, her ear. “Come for me, little bride. Come for me, right now, and don’t you dare forget that I’m the one who made you do it.”

Perhaps for the first time, she obeyed me without defiance or complaint. Her arms squeezed around my neck as she writhed wildly. Then, she arched, taut but thrumming. She cried out as her cunt clamped down.

I groaned along with her, not stopping the strokes of my finger, the press of my palm, wanting to urge more pleasure from her. She answered my movements with pulsing constriction, drawing me deeper, deeper, needing more from me. More of me.

Mind shattered, I pulled my hands away with a growl. I ripped my leather trousers down, releasing my hard length. Lust took on a shape and an instinct and a whole heartbeat of its own as I stared down at Torrance. She was slumped back against the pillows and the headboard. Her eyes were still closed but her legs were open, splayed on the red silk and the white fur. Sionnach preserve me, Sionnach save me, she was so wet. And I was so hard. So hard that every sensation in my body congregated in my groin until there was nothing left. No sense, no stone sky god. I was completely gone, my entire life, every thought and desire I’d ever had, replaced by the obliterating need to be inside her.

“Torrance... Torrance...” I did not know when I’d begun moaning her name in that unfamiliar, broken voice. I only knew that I could not stop saying it as I guided my head to her slick entrance. “Torrance...”

Wetness and glorious heat met my skin. Her slippery arousal coated my tip, thrilling me, making my testicles tingle and tighten. I was so close, already on that star-flung edge, one breathless thrust away from explosion.

But then, she said it. The one word I’d told her, begged her, to say before. The word that made me want to howl, made me want to hurl myself across the room. The word that made some twisted part of me want to – curse me, I knew I’d be sick with shame tomorrow, would not recognize the savagery inside myself – pretend I had not heard her.

But I had heard. And I would not be the monster she’d once told me that I was.

My bride said stop.

And just as I’d vowed I would, I stopped.

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OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Torrance

Wylfrael froze at my word, a living statue, unmoving except for the wild, unsteady tear of his breathing. My own breathing was just as laboured as I stared at him. I couldn’t see his face – he was looking down, down at where his body and mine were nearly joined, his hair falling forward and obscuring his expression. Every muscle in him was clenched – he barely even looked real. More like some illustration from an anatomy book, an example of perfect, honed musculature.

And I wanted him. Wanted him so badly even now my body screamed at me to grind myself upward, to take the tip of his cock, and more, inside me. I wanted him so much that I’d had to tell him to stop. Before I lost my mind. Lost myself.

An aftershock of the orgasm Wylfrael had stroked from my body pulsed in my core, and I let out a soft, unintentional moan. The sound broke the spell over Wylfrael. He moved, though that seemed unintentional, too. His muscles tightened further, jumping under his skin, as a violent shudder ran through his frame. At the same time, his cock jerked, as if trying to get inside me on its own since Wylfrael now refused to move his hips. With a rough, raw sound, Wylfrael ripped himself away from me.

He was out of the bed before I could even blink.

Is he going to disappear again?

My mind felt like it was being torn apart.

I wanted him to go. To leave me. I wanted to never see him again.

And I desperately wanted him to stay.

I scrambled into a seated position after having slumped down among the pillows during this whole ordeal. I tugged my robe closed in a shaky movement, cinching the belt tight, looking down at the fabric as I did it instead of at Wylfrael.

The sound of a door closing made my head whip upwards.

He’s gone. He left after all.

The disappointment came faster and harder than the relief, and that fucking terrified me. But when the sound of running water registered, I realized that he was in the adjoining bathroom, and it was the bathroom door he’d closed, not the main door.

My cheeks heated, my pussy giving a weak pulse, at the thought of him jerking off in there.

This is wrong. This is so fucked up. Wylfrael was not someone I was supposed to fantasize about making himself come, not someone I was supposed to almost let fuck me. He was my captor. My enemy turned reluctant ally. The man I hated and...

My husband.

Not yet! We’re not married yet!

My almost-husband didn’t take long in there. I pursed my lips and averted my gaze when he emerged, suddenly very interested in the little fluffy tufts of fur on the bedspread. I pinched and pulled at the soft fur with my fingers. The sound of running water started up again, and when I finally got the courage to look up at Wylfrael, I found him lounging in the bath as it filled. The bath in here was much larger and deeper than the one in my room had been, about the size of an inground pool, and it had benches built into it along the sides. Wylfrael was seated on one of those benches now, his arms flung out along the floor behind him, his head tipped back, expression brooding.

He’s pissed.

I could see it in the hard lines of his jaw. The cold fury of his gaze as he stared at the tile on the opposite side of the bath.

“You’re not allowed to be mad at me for this,” I said. My own voice in the air surprised me. The thought had become words before it had even fully formed in my head. “You’re not allowed to be angry with me for stopping things.”

Wylfrael didn’t look at me.

“I am not accustomed to being told what I am allowed or not allowed to do in my own castle.”

“Yeah, well, you’re about to get married, so you should probably get accustomed to that,” I snapped. My hands curled into fists around the fur bedspread.