Chapter 5
“If you’re willing to put the entire world on hold just for me to play with you,” Nathaniel says, voice low and ruinously calm, “I’m willing to oblige, my love. We can narrow it all down to just the two of us.”
He reaches into his kit.
Metal whispers against metal.
When he draws the needle out, he doesn’t rush.
He brings it up into the light. Or… at least, I think it’s the light he wants.
Otherwise I have to accept the other possibility: that he wants me to see it.
To anticipate it. To imagine every filthy, inventive thing he could do with something that sharp, and to feel my body react before he’s even touched me with it.
It’s working.
A pulse kicks hard in my throat.
He’s never wanted me to hurt before.
But the strange truth is… I don’t dread it. Not now. Not from him. Not with the way he’s looking at me like I’m something precious he intends to ruin carefully.
I want him to take all of me.
And I want to take all of him right back, no parts kept in reserve.
Besides, I meant what I said.
I do trust him.
So I force my muscles to soften even as my breathing goes quick and thin, the air catching on my ribs. I let the tension drain out of my hands. Out of my jaw. Out of the places I always hold myself too tightly.
I let go of the control.
Nathaniel lifts the needle a fraction higher, turning it slowly between his fingers. His other hand glides up my leg until his fingertips find the inside of my thigh.
He strokes there with just enough pressure to make my whole body seize again.
“Don’t you need to disinfect that?” I ask weakly.
He cocks a brow.
“Do I?” he asks softly. “Planning on having me pierce your skin, Skye?” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “I didn’t know your thoughts were so bold.”
A shiver climbs my spine so fast it steals the breath out of my lungs.
His fingers tighten on my thigh, dragging upward until they hook under the waistband of my pants.
The contact is nothing and everything at once, and my nipples tighten instantly under my shirt, hard enough to ache.
It’s shameful how fast my body reacts to him.
God help me, he looks like a mad scientist carved out of sin. He has such an obsessive mind, and elegant hands, and he’s outright deranged. He’s the kind of man who could take my pulse apart molecule by molecule and savor the pieces.
His hand slips higher and tugs my pants down.
My breath stutters.
My nipples drag against my shirt as my chest lifts involuntarily.
“So, um… what do you want to do with it?” My voice isn’t steady.
Of course it isn’t. My imagination is already sprinting somewhere filthy.
I already see Nathaniel in a lab coat, hair a wreck, gloves snapped on, leaning over me with a needle filled with something designed only to make my cunt drip every time he walks into a room.
A drug that would make my pussy throb for him like it’s wired to his heartbeat.
It’s filthy. I’m filthy.
If he knew what that image does to me—
God, maybe he does.
“Lift your hips,” he murmurs, his hands sliding under me, and his thumbs brush the crease where my ass meets my thighs. “Help me take these off.”
I swallow. My throat is dry.
My mouth feels like it wants something in it. His cock, his fingers, his orders, I don’t know. Either way, I obey.
I lift my hips, offering myself to him without hesitation.
He drags my pants down in one smooth, efficient motion, folding them neatly at the foot of the bed.
Then he comes back to me, looming over my hips, needle in hand, and he lets the blunt end trail down the side of my thigh, barely grazing skin. A bolt of sensation streaks to my core. My nipples pebble even tighter.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
He gives me a wicked, almost tender smile.
“I thought you trusted me,” he murmurs.
“I do.”
He tilts his head, hair falling into his eyes.
“Then why,” he asks softly, “all the questions, my love?”
His forearm settles across my hipbone, pinning me down with effortless strength. His thumb strokes small circles into the hollow of my hip. Each circle pulls another pang of want through me.
“Nathaniel…” My breath stutters. “What is that for?”
“Your nerves,” he says at last. His fingers slide slowly along my thigh as he talks. “You’re too wound up. You’ve been shaking since Rhea appeared. I felt it the entire time.”
His thumb skims closer to the heat between my thighs with each word.
“You want to sedate me?” I gasp.
“Oh, Skye…”
He laughs and leans down to kiss the inside of my knee. “If I wanted you sedated, you wouldn’t be conscious enough to question me.”
He’s probably right.
No, he definitely is.
“Then…?”
“There are many ways to stimulate your body,” he says.
Stimulate.
His fingers part my inner thighs with slow, unhurried authority. I swear my cunt clenches just from the way he spreads me. There’s something in the way his eyes hood over…
“Did you know the clitoris contains more than eight thousand nerve endings?”
His knuckles brush the outer edge of my panties, and my breath hitches violently.
“Twice as many as the male organ,” he continues, dragging his fingertips higher and cupping the underside of my pussy. “Your orgasms are something I could never… ever replicate in myself.”
And that’s when the needle glints.
I shiver. Hard.
Because in my head, the fantasy turns feral.
I see him holding me open, murmuring analytical observations while I writhe.
Cataloguing every reaction to every stimulus, never getting enough of this filthy torture.
Maybe in another world, one without wraiths, unwelcome exes, or injustices to solve, he’d spend every free waking moment like this, testing how far we can go before I explode from sensation.
I want that for us.
I want to feel like this forever. It’s a tiny place in my mind where it becomes okay to be vulnerable and powerless. Here, those states come with rewards, not punishments.
“You’re trembling,” he notes. His thumb strokes up and down the crease of my thigh. “Eight thousand nerve endings, and not one of them wants you to lie to me.”
“Lie?” My voice cracks. “I would never lie to you.”
“Is that so?” he murmurs, sliding two fingers under the soft edge of my underwear and brushing the damp heat beneath. “I suppose you’re right. If anything, you only withhold the truth. You’ve changed, my love.”
A helpless sound slips from me.
“Have you?” I ask.
He sets the needle beside my hip and drags his fingers along my slit through the fabric, slow enough to make me choke on air.
“I have,” he whispers, his breath brushing the dampness he just touched. “Before, I did bad things only when they served my agenda. Now I’ll do awful things if you so much as say the word.”
I’m soaked. Completely soaked.
“Nathaniel…”
“I’m at your beck and call, Skye.” A deep breath. A sigh. “What have you done to me?”
He presses two fingers more firmly into the heat between my legs, feeling how I pulse for him. “Sometimes, I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
He slides his hand beneath me and pulls my underwear aside completely.
His eyes drop to my pussy.
“And I couldn’t be happier.” His gaze lifts to my face. “You are sweeter than absolution.”
His fingers glide through my wetness. I moan—pathetic, needy—and he smiles as if it’s a gift just for him.
“I will not touch your clit to make you orgasm,” he says as his fingers spread me open. “Prepare yourself for it.”
His words tear through me, like cold fire in my veins. I don’t know whether to beg or to scream. He reaches for the scalpel and presses the flat of the blade to my shoulder.
My entire body goes rigid, except between my legs, where heat blooms uncontrollably. My skin tightens, my chest rises and falls in desperate little gasps.
“Wha—?”
“We don’t need the clothes now, do we?” he murmurs, dragging the blade lightly down my ribcage. The sensation of that sharp metal makes my body shiver violently, my nipples aching to be touched, my pussy throbbing with longing.
His fingers slide between my thighs again, spreading me wider—closer, closer, never quite touching where I burn the most.
I can’t breathe. Every inch of me feels like it’s burning alive, like I’m about to snap apart at any second.
By the time I’m naked beneath him, I feel like I’m unraveling.
“I will make you feel real good,” he murmurs. “All you need to do is open yourself up to it.”
“Nathaniel…” I gasp.
“Are you afraid?”
His thumb brushes my swollen entrance. My hips jerk.
“I’m trying not to be…” I whisper. “But you terrify me… sometimes.”
“That’s okay,” he says smoothly. As he says it, he presses two fingers inside me, careful not to brush the clit. “Fear and arousal share the same pathways. Your body can’t always tell them apart.”
He picks up the needle again.
My thighs tremble. My pussy clenches around nothing. I’m losing my mind.
“You can let the fear in,” he murmurs, sliding his free hand up until his palm cups the mound above my clit. “It’s okay.”
I open my mouth—
but he moves first.
He presses the blunt end of the needle to my nipple.
Pleasure detonates.
White-hot. Nasty. Immediate.
I arch violently, a broken gasp clawing out of my throat, and he pins my hips down with his forearm.
“Isn’t it exactly what turns you on?” he whispers, his lips brushing my ear. “The danger of me?”
He drags the metal around my breast, down my sternum, across my stomach. His other hand cups my pussy, spreading me, rubbing lightly along the outside, teasing everywhere except where I need it.
By the time he brings the needle to my inner thigh, I’m shaking.
“Don’t move,” he breathes.
I freeze instantly. My body obeys before my mind can catch up.
“Good girl.”
The praise punches straight into my core.
He traces the shape of my swollen lips with the blunt end. My whole pelvis pulses.
“Control,” he murmurs, “can be very erotic.”
My moan rips out of me before I can stop it, a desperate sound dragged from deep in my chest. I feel split open by sensation, flayed by anticipation. It takes every ounce of will not to move, not to grind into the metal, not to chase the touch he keeps withholding.
“Does it feel more intense?” he asks.
“Yes…” My voice fractures. “Yes.”
It’s incomparable to how it feels when I touch myself. Then it’s blunt, clumsy, and basic in comparison. This is something else. Something impossible. It’s like he fine-tuned my very nerves. Like my sensitivity belongs to him now. How is that possible?
“How about this?” he asks, and his fingers dip lower, rubbing the slickness up and down, spreading it, coating me until every inch of me feels raw and exposed and starving.
His mouth moves down, breath hot on my inner thigh. Electricity licks up my spine.
“Nathaniel—please—“
“Please what?” His voice is maddeningly gentle.
“Touch me—“
He drags the needle up my thigh again, and presses the blunt end into the tender skin beside my folds. I swear I feel it echo in my nipples, in my throat, in the center of my chest.
“Grab the bed,” he orders.
The command lands low in my spine. My fingers curl into the sheets so violently you’d think I’m bracing for impact. Maybe I am.
He drags the metal back down, pressing it flat against my labia.
“Can you feel that in your clit?” he asks.
“Yes—fuck—yes—“
“I can feel your pulse,” he murmurs, almost fascinated. “It’s jumping.”
“Nathaniel—“
“Hm?”
Soft, patient, coaxing.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He shifts the needle—
Lifts it—
rests the blunt end directly against my clitoral hood—
A shock goes off inside me.
I gasp.
Every muscle in my abdomen seizes.
My pussy clenches around nothing, desperate, pleading.
I’m on the verge.
I swear I’m right there.
Teetering.
I need so little.
Just one movement.
Just a tremble of his fingers.
Just anything.
I—
He taps me once.
Just once.
And it detonates me.
The orgasm rips through me like a fucking wave. My hips jerk helplessly, my thighs quiver, my breath shatters into a scream I can’t swallow back.
But he doesn’t stop.
He lowers his mouth and devours me, tongue licking up everything I spill, sucking hard, moaning into me like he’s starving, like he’s waited his whole life for this exact moment.
It’s too much—
It’s everything—
I come again, harder, messier, louder, my legs clamping around his head before falling limp and useless.
By the time I collapse, trembling and soaked, he lifts his head.
His mouth is wet.
His eyes are black with hunger, with victory, with something that makes my entire body tense and soften at once.
“Sweeter than absolution, love,” he murmurs. “You’re mine for eternity, you know that?”
“R-really?”
“I will never let you go.”
My whole body pulses.
“O-oh,” I whisper.
His smile is pure sin.
“How about we go again?”