Jethro
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TYING HER DOWN was one of the hardest fucking things I’ve done.
Not because my family were watching and I had no way of fucking up the debt.
And not because my heart dripped with icicles and frost.
And not even because I was so fucking close to snapping and showing everything that I was.
But because I’d promised myself the next time I restrained her, I would be granting her pleasure not pain.
I’d wanted her to writhe beneath my tongue while she was bound. I wanted to taste her as she came apart while suspended. And I wanted her delicious moans to fill my ears while she was trapped.
I wanted her to give in to me. To trust me. To give me every single pleasure she could feel.
When I’d fucked her in her quarters that second time, I’d made a vow to take her completely. To take her my way...all the way.
That meant getting inside her head, her heart, her mind. I wasn’t satisfied with owning her body. It didn’t give me what I craved. Only her complete submission and immeasurable love could do that.
I would’ve taken days. Days to extract everything she had to give me. The word ‘torture’ came from the origins to twist. I would’ve twisted Nila’s emotions so she’d carry me forever in her heart. I would’ve made a home inside her so I could be finally fucking free.
She could give me a cure no one else could grant. She could switch every pain I had into something...more.
I wanted more.
I wanted everything.
And now, I would have nothing.
Now, she would forever associate being tied up as something to be avoided, especially by me.
Her rapid breath fluttered over my face as I bent over her and pressed her forearm against the armrest.
The white shift didn’t hide the ghost of her lingerie, nor the peaking of her nipples. Her skin was cold, her lips growing bluer by the minute.
She hadn’t even been in the lake and already she looked hypothermic.
She’s as cold as me.
The leather slipped a few times from my grip as I fumbled to feed the buckle. Luckily, my back blocked my motions from my father—otherwise he would see my frost was thawing. He would see the haunting in my eyes of being so close to this woman while she hated me.
Nila was the culprit—my undoing.
She melted me.
She was the fucking sun. And I was about to splash out her heat.
Once her wrists were shackled, I ducked to attend to her ankles. Her legs jostled as her shaking grew worse. Her teeth chittered and chattered, her hair sticking to the cold sweat dotting her brow.
I hesitated a moment too long. Reaching out, I wrapped my fingers around her leg, preparing to fasten the cuff.
She gasped, dragging my eyes to her.
Fuck.
It was a terrible mistake to look at her.
She looked so small. So easily broken. Her eyes were too wide for her face; her skin stretched over bones that might shatter if she became any colder.
I tried to look away.
I tried.
But I couldn’t.
Our gazes locked; I groaned under my breath as the connection between us only strengthened. The diamond collar around her neck sparkled even as the clouds above us blotted out the sunshine and gathered dark grey.
Nila stopped shivering, almost as if she found sanctuary in my gaze.
I stopped fighting, almost as if she tamed the insanity inside me.
What was this...this tether? How had she captured me so completely, and how the fuck did I sever it?
The deeper I fell into her, the worse it got.
Her panic siphoned into my soul, twisting my gut until I wanted to vomit. Her flesh turned white as the moon and just as ethereal.
In the starkness of what was about to happen, she’d never been so beautiful, so bewitching, so intense.
My knees wobbled, itching to kneel before her and place my head in her lap. To just rest...and pretend none of this existed. To have her comfort me.
Cut growled under his breath, smashing through our moment, rendering it dead.
Nila sniffed, tears glossing her eyes.
The link between us had been so bright, but now it was back to darkness.
You’re running out of time.
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to work faster. My fingers moved swiftly, securing the buckle around her left ankle.
I looked up one last time. Needing her to know that I’d come to her full of nothing, but now she’d filled me with everything.
She looked into my eyes, then glanced away.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted her to see in my gaze what I could never say aloud.
Forgive me.
With a soft moan, she closed her eyes, cutting me off completely.
Her dismissal butchered my heart, dug it out with a dirty blade, and sent it splashing into the pond. The hole left behind filled with algae, water, and bracken. I was a fucking bastard. I should stop this.
But I won’t.
I wanted what I’d inherit on my thirtieth birthday. I was selfish, greedy, and vain. I wanted Nila, too. I believed I could have both.
If only I had more time.
You don’t have more time. Not today.
Securing her other ankle, I stood.
I waited for her to look at me—to give me some sign she understood that we were in this together. That despite what I did, the tattoos overrode my loyalty to my family and bound me to her.
My Weaver.
Her Hawk.
I waited another second, and another.
But she never opened her eyes. Her forehead furrowed harder, her fists curled tighter, and she withdrew from me until there was no emotion left—just a tiny dying star that once had shone so bright.
Leaving me heartless and bleeding, she gave me nothing else to do.
I slipped into my role as torturer and began.