But he doesn’t say a word. Just turns and stalks toward the tower.

Fine.

I follow. He reaches his room first, shedding his trousers. Flawless skin and muscle and golden feathers gleam in the aetherlight slanting through the window.

“Well?” He spreads his arms. “Get on with it. I assume you didn’t drag me here to gawk.”

“On the bed.” I remove my chemise, baring myself completely. “On your back, arms above your head. Spread your wings.”

For a moment, I’m sure he’ll refuse. That he’ll lunge and tear me apart for the audacity.

But then he goes to the bed and settles against the sheets. His wings fan out wide until the tips brush the floor, and I forget how to breathe. He’s a decadent expanse of golden skin, his glowing eyes tracking my every move. Laid out like a sacrifice.

Only there’s nothing submissive in the way he watches me.

Come unravel me, that sinful sprawl sneers. Conquer me if you think you can weather the cost.

Slow and deliberate, I set one knee on the mattress. His fingers flex, digging into the sheets, and a breath hisses through his teeth. As if it’s taking everything in him not to lunge up and drag me under him.

I’ve never felt control like this. Towering over a god, bending him to my whims. It’s a rush I never want to come down from.

I crawl up his body in a slow slide of skin against skin. He shudders, his throat working around a swallow. I take my time touching him, tracing my fingers over his chest, brushing my lips over his stomach. I want to memorize this. Hoard it like an ill-gotten treasure before he rips it away.

This is power—the flutter of his pulse beneath my palms, the strain of his muscles as he fights to remain motionless, compliant. The way his breath hitches when I finally settle on top of him.

This god is mine. Mine to ruin. Mine to defile.

He’s a liar, but there’s no truth more honest than his heartbeat, and it just sped up for me.

“So what’ll it be, nemesis?” Evander sneers. “How will you make me sorry?”

I slap a palm over his mouth and settle my weight more firmly across his hips. “Shut the fuck up and be still. It’s my turn to use you. And the only words I want to hear out of that filthy mouth are my name and please.” I breathe the last word into the infinitesimal space between us. “Please is the only prayer I’ll accept from you, Wolf. It’s the price you pay to touch me again.”

I grind my pussy along the rigid length of his cock. Evander makes a choked sound, almost pained.

Then I reach between us, position him, and sink down. The stretch burns, but I don’t stop until I’ve taken all of him. Evander’s eyes slam shut as a low groan claws out of his throat. His hands grip the headboard, muscles straining as he fights to keep still, to let me set the pace.

“Eyes open,” I say, scratching my nails down his stomach. “Watch who’s fucking you.”

Those gold eyes snap to mine, and there’s fury there. Hunger. Something else I don’t want to name. I roll my hips, testing, taking him deeper.

“That’s it,” I gasp, working myself on the thick glide of his cock. “No more games, no more pretending. Tonight, I want you fully present. I want this burned into your memory. So when you finally put that blade in me, you’ll remember that once—just once—you were mine.”

Something crosses his face that I’ve never seen before, like I’ve shoved a knife between his ribs and twisted.

Good. I hope it hurts. I hope he carries this for eternity.

“Who’s fucking you?” I whisper.

“Bryony,” he gasps.

Good, I think. Shatter for me.

He meets me with hitches of his hips—half-thrusts quickly leashed, as if he can’t stop himself. As if he’s physically holding himself back from seizing me, from flipping me over and pounding into me until I scream.

“Say my name again.”

“Bryony.” It’s raw. Reverent and furious.

I rise on my knees before slamming back down, palms braced on his chest for leverage. His hands tighten on the headboard. The scent of scorched wood fills the room as his magic lashes out.

“Now say the word I want to hear,” I whisper. “One word, and I’m all yours.”

Darkness pools in Evander’s eyes, drowning amber in depthless black. Still, he doesn’t reach for me.

I lean down until I can feel the uneven gusts of his breathing. Until we share the same air, the same agonized heartbeat. “You want me under you again? Screaming your name until my voice gives out? Fucking say it.”

And he does. His undoing, shaped into a single word.

“Please.”

A snarl. The Wolf snapping his jaws and admitting defeat.

I cradle his face between my palms and press a chaste, almost tender kiss to his lips. “Don’t you ever forget this. Don’t forget that I’m the only one who’s ever made you beg.”

With a growl, Evander surges up and flips us over, slamming me back into the mattress.

His weight settles over me—and then he’s on me, in me, fucking me. His mouth crashes over mine, swallowing my gasp as he notches my legs high around his waist and thrusts hard. He’s seizing control. Laying his claim just as thoroughly as I laid mine.

“Do you still hate me?” I pant, the words hitching on a brutal thrust.

“With every fucking breath,” he says.

Snarling, I reach up and sink my fingers into his hair. Wrench his head back until the cords of his neck strain. “Then fuck me like you hate me.”

He bares his teeth, and then his fingers wrap around my neck, squeezing. My pulse flutters against his palm, my lungs straining.

“Now it’s your turn to beg.” He slams hard into me. “Beg me for mercy. Go on, beg me real pretty.”

Dark spots dance at the edges of my vision, the air turning thin. I stare up at him through the asphyxiating haze—at the savage twist of his mouth. The depthless hunger in his eyes.

“Are you going to tap out?” he breathes into my ear.

No. Break me.

“I could make you pray to me.” He punctuates the filthy promise with a hard thrust, until I feel the stretch and burn with every breath. “I could make you pray every fucking night you have left.”

“I don’t pray,” I gasp. Constellations burst across my darkening vision.

Not to gods or kings or monsters.

The hand at my throat tightens. The air thins further, my head swimming, heat licking through my veins. Bright and cold and utterly ruthless.

Evander draws me into a brutal kiss, forcing my head back into the pillows. His teeth sink into my bottom lip.

“By the time I’m done with you, the only prayers you’ll remember will be the ones you scream for me.”

And I believe him.

I believe this beautiful, vicious creature will tear me apart and reshape me in his image, shatter me into a million pieces, and make me beg him to put me back together. And he’ll do it again and again, until nothing is left between us but worship and teeth, tongue and claws, ashes and blood and stardust.

There’s something severely wrong with me. Because the pressure around my throat and the brutal thrust of him inside me, stretching me past what I think I can take, is sending me careening toward a precipice I’m suddenly desperate to fling myself over.

I meet Evander’s feral, ravenous gaze through the smoldering black, and I am infinite. Incandescent.

I take everything he gives. All the hurt and hunger pouring out of us. Fucking like we’ll destroy each other. Like we already have. If he plans to be my end, then I’ll burrow into the darkest parts of him, scatter myself through his veins like broken glass. So that every time he draws breath after I’m gone, he’ll bleed. He will hurt.

Pleasure all but blacks my vision, violent and seemingly endless—the racking shudders of orgasm, the bliss. The wings at his back flare wide as he slams into me one final time, grinding against my center as he finds his release.