Four
DOREN
I watched the struggle play out across her face every time I touched her, every time our eyes met, every time she woke with her lips parted and her skin flushed. She was stubborn, my Lillet. Determined to resist what her body already knew.
But resistance has a half-life. And I was patient.
On the seventh night, she came to me.
I was reading in my bedroom when the door opened. She stood in the threshold, wearing the silk pajamas I’d left for her—deep green, the color of forest shadows. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, still damp from the bath.
“I hate you.” Her voice was steady, but her hands were trembling. “I want you to know that. Whatever happens next—I hate you for doing this to me.”
“Noted.” I set down my book. Didn’t move from the bed. “Why are you here, Lillet?”
“You know why.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Her jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought she’d retreat—back to her room, back to her resistance, back to the war she’d been waging against her own desires.
Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” The admission cost her. “Every time I close my eyes, I see your face. Every time you touch me, I want more. I don’t understand it. I don’t want to understand it. But I can’t—” Her voice cracked. “I can’t fight it anymore.”
I rose from the bed slowly, giving her time to run if she wanted to. She didn’t.
“What do you want?” I stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough to see the rapid pulse in her throat.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” I reached out, let my fingers trail down her cheek. She shivered. “Tell me.”
“I want—” She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, I saw the resistance was still there, but underneath it, finally, was surrender. “I want you to touch me.”
“Why?”
“I need to know.” She stepped closer, eliminating the distance between us.
“Doren,” I said.
She blinked. “What?”
“My name is Doren.” I cupped her face in my hands. “If you’re going to be in my bed, you should know what to call me.”
“Doren,” she repeated.
I kissed her. Not gently. There was nothing gentle about what had been building between us—the tension, the hunger, the dark obsession that had driven me to take her in the first place.
I kissed her like I’d wanted to since the moment I first saw her, like a man who’d been starving and had finally been offered a feast.
She responded with equal desperation. Her body pressed against mine and her fingers fisted in my shirt. When I lifted her, she wrapped her legs around my waist without hesitation, and the sound she made when I pressed her against the wall went straight to my core.
“Tell me to stop.” I leaned away far enough to meet her eyes. “Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll walk away.”
“Don’t you dare stop now.”
I carried her to the bed and laid her down, following her onto the mattress, and covering her body with mine. She arched into me, and I pinned her wrists above her head with one hand.
“I’ve thought about this,” I said against her throat. “Every night since I brought you here. About how you’d taste.” I dragged my mouth down to her collarbone. “How you’d whimper the first time my tongue swirled your clit.”
“Doren—”
“That’s it.” I bit down on the curve of her neck and she gasped. “That’s what you’ll scream when I make you come harder than you knew was possible.”
I took my time undressing her, peeling away each layer while she writhed beneath me, impatient, desperate. When I finally had her bare, I leaned away to look at her—flushed skin, heaving chest, turquoise eyes dark with want.
“You’re beautiful.” I traced a finger down her sternum, between her breasts, over her stomach. Lower. “And you’re mine.”
She was slick and hot and ready when my tongue slid through her folds. I worked her with it slowly, watching her face, learning what made her gasp and what made her moan and what made her dig her nails into my shoulders and beg.
“Please,” she panted. “Please, I need—”
“I know what you need.” I grabbed a condom from the bedside table where I’d let it lay, knowing my need for it was coming soon.
When I finally pushed inside her, she cried out and I had to hold still, jaw clenched, fighting for control. She was tight and wet and perfect, and I’d wanted this for so long that being inside her nearly undid me.
“More,” she demanded. “Doren, please—”
I fucked her slow at first, savoring the sounds she made, how she quivered and clenched. Then harder when she begged for it. Then harder still when begging turned to screaming.
I made her come twice before I let myself follow. And when I finally came with her name on my lips, I knew I’d never be able to let her go.
I’d burn the world down first.
—Lillet—
I’d told myself it was just once.
Just one night, to exorcise whatever madness had taken root in my brain. In the morning, I’d go back to hating him. Continue plotting my escape, demanding my freedom, refusing to accept the insane reality he’d constructed around us.
That had been three days ago.
Three days of barely leaving his bed. Three days of discovering that the darkness inside him had a matching shadow in me—something I’d never known existed until he dragged it into the light.
Three days of pleasure so intense it terrified me, of surrender so complete it should have felt like defeat but instead felt like freedom.
I was in trouble.
On day ten of my captivity, I woke to find him studying me. Again. But what was behind his attention had changed. Where before it had been predatory, now it was possessive. And underneath it all, was a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“I have to tell you something.” His voice was rougher than usual.
Dread settled in my stomach. “What?”
“You’re not the first woman I’ve watched.” The sheets pooled around his hips when he sat up. “Not the first I’ve wanted. But you’re the first I’ve taken.”
“I’m supposed to be relieved by that?”
“No.” He held my gaze. “You’re supposed to understand what it means.”
I did. That was the problem.