17. Willow
WILLOW
W illow walked the stairs slowly, her fingers trailing along the smooth banister.
Every step echoed, feet dragging just enough to show her reluctance.
The house was beautiful, achingly so. Not in the garish way that new money bragged.
No, this was generational elegance. Quiet wealth, the type that whispered.
She took her time, letting her gaze linger on the oil paintings that lined the walls and on the antique rugs, woven with intricately detailed stories. Everything here had been chosen with intention, every detail laid out like a visual seduction.
As she walked, she began to see the patterns.
It all involved wolves.
Willow turned sharply, her breath catching as her eyes darted back to the artwork that lined the hall.
At first glance, they were just portraits, stoic figures posed with regal posture.
But now? Now, she saw it. Every single one featured a wolf.
Not center stage, but always present. At a knee.
Peeking out from behind trees. Perched just behind a shoulder. All of them, watching.
She looked down, eyes sweeping the length of the runner beneath her feet. Woven vines, floral borders, and wolves. It was subtle but unmistakable. This wasn’t just a house. It was a monument, a shrine to a bloodline steeped in the supernatural.
She felt like laughing. Instead, she turned on her heel and walked into the room that Milo had put together for her.
Sleep pulled at her again, thick and relentless. With a sigh, she peeled off her clothing piece by piece, casting each item into the growing pile by the bed until she was down to nothing but her bra and panties.
Even those, she shed, letting the fabric flutter to the floor.
At this point, she didn’t care. If Milo had darker intentions, a few scraps of cotton weren’t going to stop him. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep in something uncomfortable.
Her body still belonged to her .
***
She woke with a jolt, mind still fogged from sleep, but heart pounding like a war drum. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Her wrists tugged against something… fabric? Rope? No, leather. She blinked, disoriented, only to realize she was bound to the bedpost. Panic like fire cr awled beneath her skin as she tested the limits of her movement.
She felt someone between her legs.
The man looked up.
Golden, glowing eyes.
A predator’s grin.
Willow thrashed—wild, primal, desperate. Her wrists strained against the binds, body slick with sweat and twitching with adrenaline. Then, just as suddenly, she went still. She could hear her own heartbeat, thudding hard in her ears.
“I told you I wouldn’t touch you unless you begged for it,” Milo growled, voice like gravel, grin sharp as a sword. “So beg, Willow.”
She met his gaze, unflinching, her teeth bared in open defiance.
“Fuck you.”
But her body, the traitorous thing, answered differently.
Heat bloomed low in her belly; it was an unmistakable sign of her need.
Shame made acrid, burning bile rise in her throat.
Even now, trembling with fury, she could feel it: the subtle, damning ache of desperation burning its way through her resolve.
She hated him .
But she wanted him, and that truth made her want to scream.
His breath ghosted over the sensitive curve of her mound, slow and deliberate, and then his grip tightened possessively around her thighs, fingers digging in just enough to remind her who was in control.
Her mouth was parted, breath coming in shallow pulls, eyes fluttering half-shut as her resolve unraveled thread by thread.
“Beg for it, Willow,” he rumbled, the glint in his eyes suspended in molten gold—a predator at the edge of the kill.
She screamed in frustration, throwing her head back, shaking it as if the motion alone could loosen the craving taking over her. She didn’t want him to keep talking—she wanted his mouth there.
Devouring her.
Her back arched.
Her breath hitched.
Her sanity frayed.
She broke.
“Oh, God. Fuck, fine,” she whimpered, voice thick and needy. “Milo, please. Just fucking do it.”
She watched the predation in his eyes shift, softening into something far more dangerous.
Desire gave way to hunger, to desperation, like a condemned woman about to savor her final meal before meeting the finality of a blade.
For a split second, Willow almost regretted the words she’d whispered—until his tongue dragged up her slick seam, and her head snapped back, mouth falling open in a soundless cry.
With gentle fingers, he spread her open, and she felt his tongue flicking along her entrance. A low groan escaped his mouth, and she felt a shudder make its way down her back. He was moaning into her pussy .
Milo slid his hands along her thighs with commanding precision, holding her in place like he was claiming territory. Willow’s breathing hitched, her body taut with the tension of fear and want colliding inside her.
His gaze flicked to hers—unyielding, waiting.
“Willow,” he murmured, his voice low and steady, “you have to tell me that you want this.”
Her pride clawed its way to the surface, threatening to choke off the words rising in her throat.
But so did the frustration, her desperate, throbbing body pushed too close to the edge.
She twisted against his grip, but he didn’t budge.
Not even a little. The restraint in his hold was infuriating. And thrilling.
“Beg me for it,” he growled. “This time, I want you to mean it.”
Willow’s lip trembled. Not from fear, but from the suffocating vulnerability of knowing he had her. He knew it. She knew it. She could lie to herself, but her silence was already starting to scream.
When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse, ragged, almost broken.
“Don’t you dare leave me like this.”
His lips quirked at the corner, and she hated how much it turned her on. “That’s not begging.”
She snapped. “You’re such an ass.”
His hand slid up her stomach, anchoring her with his weight. “Say it, and I’ll give you everything you want and more.”
She hesitated for one more moment, then whispered the words like a curse slipping past her clenched teeth:
“Please, Milo. I want it. I want you to eat my pussy. I need it.”
The atmosphere cracked like lightning, splitting open a quiet sky. He leaned in, slowly, a predator savoring the moment before the kill, and whispered against her skin:
“Good girl.”
And then he leaned back in and claimed her.
Milo’s mouth moved over her as though he were tasting something sacred. Every pass of his tongue was calculated, slow, like he was committing the shape of her to memory. Willow’s body bowed off the bed, her hands jerking against the restraints as his lips closed around her aching center.
He sucked—hard. Deliberate. Dominant.
She screamed.
A string of broken moans spilled from her lips, each one more ragged than the last. His fingers curled inside her with military precision, stroking that one devastating spot over and over until she was writhing beneath him, her breath hitching, her voice gone hoarse.
“Milo, I can’t,” she gasped. Then again, louder. “Milo, it’s too much.”
He didn’t stop.
She didn’t want him to.
Her body chased the edge, trembling, unraveling—all under the command of his expert hands and mouth.
But then, he stopped.
Milo pulled away from her, face shining with her wetness, and stared intensely into her eyes. Willow gaped back at him, fully flushed and wild-eyed.
“It could be so good, you know,” he purred, rubbing a thumb against the heated skin of her thigh.
“What are you doing?” she whimpered, pulling desperately against her restraints.
“Giving you a taste of what’s to come.”
***
Willow jolted awake, sheets twisted around her body, damp with sweat and something more shameful. Her hair clung to her neck and shoulders in sticky strands, skin hot to the touch. Between her thighs, there was a throbbing ache that made her stomach flutter.
No. No fucking way.
Had she just had a wet dream?
Disgusted—mostly with herself—she flung the covers off and staggered to the bathroom. She turned the water to ice-cold and stepped straight into the stream. The shock of it slammed into her chest, forcing a gasp from her lips as her whole body clenched.
She deserved it .
It was absurd. Pathetic, even. That she was having filthy, depraved dreams about the man who had stolen her away. Her captor…
With those hands. That mouth. That voice.
Delicious. Decadent. Dirty .
She groaned, low in her throat, as the water heated and steam curled around her trembling body. Willow’s hand moved almost without thought, fingers slipping between tense thighs to find that aching bundle of nerves. One slow circle, then another. A sigh escaped her lips.
But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
She needed more. Harder. Deeper. She needed the kind of touch only he had given her—the kind that destroyed her common sense, the kind she hated herself for craving.
Willow scrubbed her skin raw, like she could slough away the sins of the previous night.
Like she could peel away the heat, the ache, the way his mouth had ruined her for anyone else.
By the time she stepped out, her body was flushed red beneath the fluorescent light, steam billowing in towering pillars.
Still, the pulse between her thighs hadn’t quieted. It throbbed, steady and maddening .
She didn’t bother drying off. Dripping and flushed, she stalked straight to the bedside drawer, yanking it open with the kind of desperation that made her feel empty.
She groaned aloud. Of course. The man who abducted her, watched her, and obsessed over her hadn’t thought to grab her vibrator when he ransacked her room.
Honestly, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted the damn thing to be here. The thought of him touching it—handling it—made her skin prickle. That was hers, a secret part of herself. And yet…
Her breath hitched.
He’d already been there.
Willow flushed, trying to shake the memory loose, trying to reframe it as nothing more than a filthy dream conjured by captivity and stress. But her body told another story, one written in slick heat and trembling thighs.
It wasn’t real, she told herself. Just a nightmare.
But the worst part?
She knew—deep inside her bones, deep where denial couldn’t reach—that it hadn’t been a nightmare at all.