“Eyes on me,” he reminds me.

I inhale shakily.

Watching my every movement, Memnon shifts his hips and begins to sink inside me.

I suck in a breath as the head of his cock stretches me. The sensation is intoxicating, but I’m still caught up in his face. That face I first saw in Rome all those years ago. It’s grown hardened and more rugged since then, but for the first time in this life, I realize it’s not just a handsome face, it’s a beloved one.

That makes my heart pound all the faster.

Once he’s fully seated in me, he goes still again, and the two of us remain locked in each other’s gaze.

“You can look away now,” I say softly. I don’t honestly know if my orders hold any power over him.

“I don’t want to,” he admits.

I don’t want to either.

“Please, est amage. Explore me,” he coaxes softly.

I’ll have to look away, I admit down our bond.

Memnon runs the tip of his nose down the bridge of my own.

“I don’t mind,” he breathes against my lips as his cock moves in and out of me. My eyes flutter a little at the sensation, but his thrusts are slow, measured.

My palms skim up his back, and I feel goose bumps rise along Memnon’s skin in their wake. I pause when I touch the seam of an old scar several inches from his armpit. A barbed arrow had embedded itself here, though it happened before we met. This was the day when Memnon’s voice first called out down our bond.

My hands continue up until my fingers graze the curling ends of his black hair. I play with a few strands of it. Then, because I cannot help myself, my touch migrates to his scar, tracing it up the side of his face and over to his eye, remembering when I first touched it⁠—

“This looks like it hurt.”

His eyes are closed. “It did, but I am grateful for it.”

“Why is that?” I ask. I cannot imagine being grateful for something so heinous.

“Because it made you stroke my skin.”

Down my hands move, to the column of his throat, where the inked image of my panther rests. Then lower, to the pectoral tattoo of a dragon—his family crest. His mother had the same tattoo, as did his sister.

As did I, once, long ago.

I feel his whole body shudder as I run my hands over it, and the sensation somehow heightens the drag of his cock inside me. I ache a little at the absence of my own tattoos and scars. They didn’t make the journey through time with me.

My hands move lower, over Memnon’s abdomen before they seem to drift of their own accord back to his face.

I hold that face, the two of us watching each other.

“I love you, my Roxi, my Selene,” Memnon murmurs.

Deeper he drives himself, though his speed is punishingly slow.

I want to beg him to go faster, but even that would be an order wrapped in a plea, and I’m afraid my order will work—and equally afraid it won’t.

The corner of his lip curls as he studies me, and his eyes blaze with intensity. “Your face says what your lips won’t.”

I jerk a little. Did he just hear my thoughts?

But then he follows with, “I will go faster—if you command it.”

My heart is now pounding hard for an entirely different reason. I tense, accidentally clenching around his cock.

Memnon hisses out a breath, then laughs, his thrusts still languishingly slow. “You grip me so well, little witch.” He bows his head to take one of my breasts in his mouth, teasing my nipple between his teeth. He releases it to lave the other. I never thought my breasts were particularly sensitive, but this man has me seeing the goddess with his tongue.

I moan, grinding myself a little harder against him.

“I love you,” he breathes against my skin. “I love you, I love you, I love you. A thousand lives wouldn’t be enough with you, but I have to content myself with just this one.”

He pulls away from my breasts to gaze down at me. And once again, we’re back to staring at each other.

“Command me, my queen. I am yours,” he says as he thrusts into me.

I stroke his cheek. “You are mine, est xsaya, but I won’t command you.” Not right now at least.

He smiles at me, the expression softening his entire face but most especially his eyes.

Fine, do not command me. I shall simply anticipate your desires.

He leans in and kisses me, his strokes quickening, the exquisite friction setting my whole body on fire.

I gasp, my fingers moving to his back, where they dig in.

He’s pumping into me, all his massive muscles rippling and bunching with the action.

I writhe beneath him, caught in his relentless pace. If before he was able to keep his strokes slow and shallow enough to tantalize me, now his pace is almost too much. He’s too much.

I am going to give you the world, Empress, he vows, his voice lethally soft in my mind. It’s already begun.

I don’t know if Memnon meant for me to hear those words, so I ignore them as my hips meet his, my body hurtling toward an orgasm.

My gaze drifts down to where I can see the lower part of his thick shaft sliding in and out⁠—

“Eyes on me.”

My gaze snaps to his.

There’s no magic in this moment save for the deeper, richer power that links the two of us together.

I stare at him. My past, my present.

My future.

His eyes blaze.

I think he heard that.

Rather than being mortified at the thought, it along with his rough, merciless thrusts send me right over the edge.

My lips part as my orgasm shatters through me.

Memnon’s pupils blow wide. “Gods, I feel you…” His fingers dig into my hair, then he’s spilling into me, his gaze pinned to mine.

His climax echoes down our bond, stretching out my own. And still, the two of us continue gazing at each other, as though we truly haven’t seen each other for two thousand years.

We only break eye contact once Memnon slips out of me and gathers me in his arms. Tonight, even this feels sacred. I don’t know what’s happening to my heart, but I’m not nearly as terrified as I should be.

Memnon’s hand drifts to my stomach, his fingers idly stroking the skin there. For some reason, this touch—his hand on my stomach—will forever harken back to the child we briefly had, then lost with everything else.

“I am sorry,” he begins.

“What?” I say, bewildered.

“I will never stop apologizing to you. My faith in you faltered when I woke in that tomb, and my faithlessness drove me to hurt you in ways I cannot take back. So I will apologize to you, my soul mate—my dearest and best friend. Again and again and again. Until you are sick of it. Because even once this bond between us breaks, my debt to you will not be paid. It won’t be until I draw my last breath and you and I meet the gods who made us.”

I place my hand on his cheek and lift my head to take him in. From the bond, I feel his yearning. I think I know what he wants.

“Are you wondering if the forged bond is still there?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he nods.

Only one way to find out.

“Tell me another secret you don’t want me to know.”

“I picked out a ring,” Memnon admits. He blinks, then— “Fuck, I really wasn’t planning on sharing that.”

He has an engagement ring. My heart is beating loudly. Memnon really is ready to marry me at the first opportunity.

I see a flash of dismay cross his features.

“You are mine,” I whisper, grasping his hand and threading my fingers through his.

He closes his eyes as a shiver courses through him. When he opens them again, they briefly glow with his magic.

“You are mine,” I repeat. “You are mine. My eternal mate.” It is not a declaration of love, but it doesn’t matter.

He smiles then, so big it threatens to split his face in two.

I grin back at him, feeling light, giddy. This damn giddiness.