67. Kat #3
“Yet you don’t hold me down. You haven’t dominated me. You’ve been perfectly sweet. But I don’t want perfectly sweet, Bastian. I want you .”
His throat bobbed as he slid his fingers down my hair and pulled from me. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”
Of course not—not after how I’d reacted to lying beneath him. But that hadn’t been about him, just the past. “You could never frighten me.” Yet my heart hammered. “What I feel for you—that scares me sometimes, yes, but… not you.” I released his hair and cupped his cheeks. “Never you.”
He bit his lip, eyebrows tight together. “I thought after your experience before, this would be better.”
And I loved him all the more for it.
So I pressed a kiss to his lips and nodded. “You have eased me in beautifully, love. But now I’m ready for my bastard.”
He sucked in a breath, gaze skipping to my lips, dick twitching against me. “Say that again. Call me your bastard.”
Like in the training yard, but now I understood.
He’d been called bastard like it was the worst thing—the marker of a man who’d never known the one who sired him and who’d killed one of the only fathers he had known. Not a name he deserved, but one he’d been given anyway, and if the way I said it reframed it for him…
“You’re my bastard, Bastian. My beautiful fucking bastard. Mine . And now I want you to show me everything that means.”
He smiled slowly and caught my wrists. “Are you saying you’ll obey me?”
A thrill chased through me. “I will.”
“What is off the table?”
I swallowed. “Nothing. I said to give me everything .”
Grip tightening, he made a low sound that rumbled into me. “I’m not sure you understand all the possibilities, love. There are more than I could fit into this one night. But we can make a start. What will be your code word if you want me to stop?”
It was an easy answer. “Orrery.”
He huffed, eyes glinting. “Perfect.” Then there was no more amusement, just a glint of a different kind—dangerous and predatory, like when I’d stolen from him.
But I knew him now, and that predation was thrilling rather than frightening.
“Very well. You asked for it.” He scooped me over his shoulder and teased between my legs as he carried me to the bed.
My heart hammered in anticipation, and I took advantage of my position to pat his backside.
“You won’t touch me without my permission.” The warning rumbled through me, another thrill that sent my nerves fluttering.
“But what if I want to touch you?”
He sat me on the bed and stood over me. “Are you going to be disobedient, Katherine?”
With his silver gaze boring into me, insolence suddenly felt a lot less appealing. I wanted to earn his praise… for now, at least. Perhaps I’d push the boundaries another day.
Swallowing, I shook my head.
“ Good . Now, on your knees, back to me.”
I obeyed, pulse kicking up once he was out of sight. The uncertainty of what he would do sent my body into high alert, hairs raised, skin humming in the cool air of our room. I tried to breathe slowly so I could hear his approach, but it was pointless with his fae silence.
At last, the bed dipped behind me, and my breath caught. Then came the heat of his body upon mine and his hard length against my backside. I couldn’t help sighing and reaching back for him as he gathered my hair.
“Ah-ah.” Shadows slipped around my wrists and bound them before me.
Perhaps it was the long seconds of absence as I’d knelt and waited, but now I was hyper aware of every sensation, his skin upon mine and the way this pose pressed my tits together.
“What did I say?”
“I’m sorry,” I breathed as he wrapped my hair around his hand, pulling my head back. “I forgot.”
He angled me so he could meet my gaze. “It’s all right. I know you want to be good. I’ll help you.” He kissed me then, deeper and more possessive than anything before.
I trembled in his hold, body throbbing with want despite the number of times he’d already pulled me apart. When he cupped my breast and squeezed, I couldn’t help moaning, and he consumed every drop of sound like a man dying of thirst.
By the time he pulled away, his breaths heaved, fanning my lips, pressing his chest into my back, and I absorbed it all. The purple stain of my magic covered my fingers entirely now.
Watching, he pinched my nipple, and smiled at the way I arched and whimpered.
“See? You are good— so good .”
The words blazed through me, and he touched my cheek as though he could see how much I burned for him.
“Show me how good you can be, my sweet flame.” He released my hair and took hold of my hips.
I gasped and arched as his cock slid between my legs.
With a low sound, he tightened his grip and held me exactly as he wanted. “Patience.” He laughed softly against my shoulder. “I can see your pulse pounding in your throat. Your whole body is practically vibrating with it. And you’re even wetter than before.”
“Please, Bastian.”
He made a low sound of pleasure. “ There it is .” He nipped my throat and pressed a palm between my shoulder blades. “Bend over, and I’ll give you what you want.”
In that moment, I would’ve done anything. Months ago, I might’ve been embarrassed to admit just how needy I was, but that was a different life—a different me.
His shadows pulled my wrists apart and guided them down, snaking up my forearms so I was forced to rest my chest and cheek on the bed. Between his shadows on my arms and his hands on my hips, I could barely move as his cock slid along me and nudged my aching bundle of nerves.
“Lift your hips for me, love.” Then, when I obeyed, “That’s it.”
Only once he had me exactly where he wanted did he finally take me.
Moaning as the ridge of his piercing slid into my entrance, I managed to arch my back and chase more, but that was the only movement he allowed.
Control. That was his version of safety.
Just like he maintained control of himself and his work because otherwise he thought something bad would happen, he needed control here.
So I let go.
Of control. Of who I’d been taught to be. Of everything .
I trusted it all into his hands and shadows.
And, Stars above, was I rewarded.
As he filled me, his cock pressed against my front walls, the same spot he’d crooked his finger into before. I cried out, body taut, pulling on his grip as pleasure lanced through me.
Out the corner of my eye, I could see him tower over me, and the flash of his canines as he grinned wickedly. “I promised I’d show you one of those positions, didn’t I?”
His piercing. That was what I could feel dragging over the spot as he pulled out.
I didn’t know how much more I could take of it without breaking.
Like that wasn’t enough, his shadows slid between my legs and throbbed over my clit, pushing me closer.
He stretched and filled me, focusing each thrust over that point inside me until I didn’t just let go of control, I lost even the concept of it.
I screamed into the bed, sweat slicking my chest and back as I gripped the sheets with poison-stained hands.
I didn’t come, I fractured. With his pounding rhythm, shards became splinters became dust until I was nothing, just motes of awareness as bright and drifting as fae lights.
The world was dark and light and fucking beautiful, but it had no form beyond that.
Time was meaningless.
I had no name.
There was only a relentless pounding and thunderous pleasure.
Dimly, slowly, I came back to what might’ve been reality, arching into Bastian as much as I could. His movements had shifted—harsher, faster, something feral in the bite of his fingers into my hips. Each breath tore from him on the edge of a moan.
A moment later, he let out a harsh cry and twitched inside me. That twitch and the sudden fullness threw me over the edge once more, and we sank into the mattress together.
I could barely catch my breath as he lay beside me and his shadows released my arms. Huffing, he kissed my shoulder and stroked the hair from my face.
“That… that was…”
How it always should have been.
I trembled as the truth crept over me—not thoughts or words, but something that rooted far deeper.
I believed .
Sex wasn’t something for shame. It wasn’t something horrible where one party used the other. It wasn’t something to be done for duty.
It was beautiful. It was pleasure beyond reckoning—beyond containment in a single body.
It was something shared.
“Kat? Love?”
When I touched my face I found it wet. “Why am I crying? That was incredible. I’m sorry… I don’t…” I shook my head, staring at the tears glistening on my fingertips.
“Don’t you dare apologise,” he said, a rawness in his voice as he gathered me close. He nuzzled away my tears. “It can be intense, especially after… everything.”
After all I’d known before. I nodded.
This was overwhelm. Utter overwhelm. Of my senses, my body, and perhaps most of all, my heart.
“I’m not sad.” I splayed my hand over his chest, fingertip edging his pierced nipple. “Not at all. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy.”
He kissed the edge of my smile. “Good. Because you did so well.”
I exhaled, no energy left to laugh. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, you did.” He carried me from bed towards the bathroom. “You were exactly what I needed—more than I’d imagined, in fact. Now”—he kissed the tip of my nose—“no more arguing. Let me look after you.”
Every part of me was heavy, so I sank into his hold as his shadows raced ahead and started the bath running.
I must’ve nodded off, because the next thing I knew, we were lowering into the water together.
Its heat and the lavender scent dragged me deeper into drowsiness and softened my aching muscles, turning me into something blissful and liquid while Bastian gently washed me.
Time became a distant concept, and I had no idea how long passed with me lounging against his chest before he helped me out.
“Thank you,” I managed to mutter as he wrapped towels around us both.
“There’s no need to thank me.” His face had gone soft, less cutting than usual, but his eyebrows scrunched together as he carried me back into our room.
“But there is.” I blinked up at him, eyelids so heavy I could drift off at any moment. “You showed me. I asked and you did. And it was perfect, Bastian.” I barely managed to lift my head and skim a kiss over his jaw. “ You are perfect.”
I more felt than heard the sound he made as he lifted his chin. Proud. Happy. I didn’t even have the energy to doubt that they were the things I read in him.
He sat in one of the armchairs with me in his lap and called the fire higher as he held me close. The last thing I remembered was his smile lined with orange-pink light and perhaps the words “Sleep, my dear flame, and know how much I love you.”