Chapter Five
Kris
The first thing she noticed was the cold, soothing air. Kris sensed it lapping at her exposed skin, the temperature quite in contrast to the warmth of the rest of her body. She mewled when it interrupted her sleep, partly pleased for the cooler clime and partly perturbed at its disturbance.
Rolling onto her back, she fought the wave of consciousness, keen to delve back into the depths of her slumber.
Sleep had swept her away quickly the night before, its comforting blanket cascading over her like a welcome friend, and while she couldn’t remember the details of how she’d come to be under those covers, she sensed sleep’s solace had been badly needed.
There was frustration, then, when its tender grasp slipped from her, a feeling that something she longed for was irrefutably lost, but the loss was dispersed as soon as her eyelids fluttered open.
Black.
She blinked at the revelation. Black had not been what she was expecting. After waking previously in the peculiar white room, the darkness was a superficial relief, but the contrast jarred, disturbing her waking senses. Searching the shadows for any signs of life, she tried to decide why that was.
She was obviously somewhere she hadn’t been before, but even given that realization, there should have been nothing disconcerting about waking up in the dark.
The cover around her was cozy and comfortable, and its consolation suggested nothing nefarious.
There were no omens of jeopardy in the swirling chill beyond her blanket, and the shadows promised to lull her back to the boundless realm of dreams if she’d only just give in and quell her galloping heart.
She could do that, couldn’t she? She could calm her nervous system and enjoy the rest while she could.
Pulling in a deep breath, she considered the query. Her body was weary, so why was her mind racing?
“Nothing’s wrong.” She mouthed the words into the black, although no sound left her lips. “Calm down.”
But no matter how hard she attempted to reason with her senses, she couldn’t seem to find serenity.
Something about the place was too different to allow her to just slip back into sleep.
Something was—
A body beside her shifted, and she stilled instantly in acknowledgment, gripping at the cover enveloping her while she held her breath.
Kronos.
The explanation for who had moved flooded her mind—the debris of a thousand thoughts, words, and deeds that had passed between the two of them scattering in her consciousness—but scanning the space at her side, there was no visible evidence of him.
Only the huge expanse of his body pressing onto the mattress at her side had drawn her attention to the fact that he was there at all.
Closing her eyes briefly, she tried to recall the final moments before sleep had taken her to ascertain how they’d ended up together in the dark place.
Fleeting images flitted through her brain like leaves on the autumn breeze, and in her mind, she saw the brown-haired woman, Shelley, and then the vast windows she’d explored, and then…
She gasped at the next recollection, the sound deafening in the silence. The memory forming in her mind was of the way his face had looked after he’d breathed the life back into her. Her head throbbed at the recognition of what had happened.
She’d almost died.
Hell, she had died, and without him, she’d have stayed that way.
“Kristina.”
His voice resonated through the gloom, the muscles between her legs all simultaneously contracting at the sound. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, that was the voice of her master.
“Master.” Her voice was ridiculously tiny in the dark, and she cringed at the pathetic noise.
After saying the word out loud so many times, she hadn’t known she’d still harbored any embarrassment about recognizing his authority.
This was his domain, after all, a world where he seemed to have elusive and impossible powers.
The man she honored with the title had saved her life more than once, brought her unimaginable pleasure, and while he had hurt her in the name of so-called lessons she apparently needed to learn, he’d never done so in haste or in anger.
Rather, his temperament had often been kind and gentle.
Even more telling than his choices was the fact that she herself had accepted how insufferably tantalizing his power was. He might have lorded his authority, but in turn, she’d come to crave it.
As the recollections engulfed her, she remembered how he’d refused to deliver any penance until she was first adequately rested.
The memory curled her lips, reminding her that the Goliath who’d captured her was increasingly loving and tender.
That was why he’d insisted on feeding her by the fire in his parlor before he’d brought her to the new dark place.
Her eyes widened as she suddenly understood where it was he’d brought her to and why it was in such variance to the cell where she’d previously been held.
His bedroom. The thought thundered in her mind, accelerating her pulse even faster. I’m in his bed.
There was an excited succor to the verdict; a sign that he had comprehended her plea and not made her return to the tiny white room that had caused her so much terror, but there was something else, too.
Something far more unexpected.
An intimacy that only two lovers sharing a bed could understand, a sharing of personal space that spoke of vulnerability and care.
There was goodness only knew how many other rooms in the gigantic place Kronos called home, with countless beds that he seemed to be able to conjure from thin air.
Yet, he had decided to bring her there, to sleep by his side.
She bit down on her lip at the development. Beyond her obvious accessibility, what did that mean? Was the facade of intimacy all in her head, or was there genuine sentiment blooming between them in the darkness?
“Your heart is hammering faster than usual.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but the nonchalance was belied by the way he rolled in her direction, the crown of his already swollen erection nudging at her thigh. “Are you feeling unwell?”
“No, Master.”
She whispered the reply, still trying to put the final pieces of the puzzle of the prior day into place in her mind.
Those hours had been a giddying mixture of emotions.
She’d felt the suffocating terror of being stuck in the white room, the panic somehow still lingering at the back of her throat.
She’d known the dizzying pleasure of his caresses and the orgasms he’d bestowed, and on top of all of that, she might have only been seconds away from some serious neurological side effects of oxygen deprivation.
No wonder sleep had been such a blessing.
“You’re sure?”
One of his huge hands reached for her, skimming over her hip and reinforcing what should have already been evident. She was just as naked as he was, the dress he’d enrobed her with for Shelley’s farewell no longer covering her.
“Yes.”
She gulped back the word, unsure how she felt about being naked in bed with the muscular giant who’d stolen not only her liberty, but to all intents and purposes, her free will.
His size and strange powers meant he could keep her there with ease, but more worrying was the ever-growing idea that she might not want to leave.
She couldn’t shake the idea that something potentially special was blossoming between them, an intimate connection that warmed her from the inside, and the nagging feeling that if she somehow walked away, she might never experience the likes of it again.
Her focus fell to his roaming hand, considering the touch of his fingers over her needy flesh. Even the most fleeting of his caresses stirred something in her, an electricity that had been suppressed for too many years.
He’d told her that she could continue to resist him, could break his rules and face the no doubt painfully compelling consequences, but he’d also suggested another way; an option where she capitulated and fast-tracked the pleasure she was really looking for.
As his hand grazed over her eager sex and her hips rose in response, it was that choice that forced a whimper from her lips.
“So, why have you woken?” He edged closer, his fingers brushing over the soft hair at the apex of her thighs. “I assumed you would need longer to recuperate.”
“I woke up and didn’t know where I was, Master.” Her lips twitched in spite of herself. It wasn’t the first time she’d experienced that disorientation in the last few days, but it was the only time she’d roused to find him there in the bed with her.
“Hmmm.” He didn’t sound convinced by her explanation. “You were exhausted when I brought you here.”
“To your bed?”
“Mmmm.”
She heard the smile on his lips that time, his fingertips running an intoxicating line along her inner thigh.
No doubt he’d intentionally avoided the sensitive nub that most sought his focus, preferring to tease her.
She also hadn’t forgotten that he’d promised her some sort of consequence for attempting to escape, and based on how he’d found her when he’d returned, she could only imagine what he might have had in mind.
Perhaps heightening her arousal and then denying her was only the appetizer of what would turn out to be an extraordinarily elongated meal.
“I…” She frowned, conscious of the way her legs splayed wider, her pussy seeking his touch.
It was as though the energy between them had a life of its own, its will goading her despite every logical reason to resist his allure.
She was still his captive, held there against her will and seemingly completely unable to leave.
There was no rational explanation for craving his touch, but no matter how she wrestled with the conundrum, she always came back to the same silly conclusion.
She wanted him and couldn’t conceive of a future without his undeniable magnetism.
She writhed under his hand. “Should I go back to sleep?”
Not that there was any chance of that. Between the thickening sexual tension in the room and her wired mind, which was remembering more of their interactions in pockets of intense memories, sleep was the last thing on her mind.
“Do you want to sleep?”
His face was still masked by the darkness, but based on the heat emanating from him, his pulsing prick at her hip, and the way his arm had draped over her to tug her even closer, he couldn’t have been more than a few inches from where she was strewn.
As though his fingers sensed her quandary, they shifted to her labia, his fingertips trailing an invisible line over her needy lips.
“Or is there something else my little one needs?”
Oh, God.
She bit down on the groan that threatened to rise as his fingers slipped between her lips. Knowing how much she wanted him was no immunity to his power. She longed to give in to the sensual insistence of his fingertips, already sensing that he understood that.
That was why his hand was there. That was why he hadn’t let her drift back to sleep. After saving her life, he was going to remind her why it was so good to be alive.
“Master.”
Her tone was breathier than before, no doubt conveying everything he needed to know.
His free arm snaked around her back in reply, scooping her up in his embrace and compelling her backward against his hard body.
Shifting behind her so that he was cocooning her body, his hot breath murmured into her right ear.
“There.” His hand slid back into place between her legs. “That’s better.”
A distant part of her wished she could have come out with some witty retort designed to vocalize her indifference to his attention, but that facet of Kristina was already well-subdued and perilously easy to dismiss.
Instead of countering him, she reached behind her, brushing her hand over his obliques and pushing back on his waiting erection.
That was what she craved, and there was no point in denying it.
Only he had the ability to make her feel so fucking wanton with only a few strokes of his hand.
Only he ignited something so primal in her body that she wondered whether she’d actually implode without the benefit of his touch.
A few hours in his enthralling company had been all it had taken to remind her why it was so damn wonderful to be a woman.
When he held her and controlled her, she was more than she’d ever been before; a woman who merited being held, filled, and loved.
If she had to be so completely captured in his custody in the clouds, then let there be pleasure. Let there be so much fucking pleasure that she couldn’t conceive it.
“It seems you have made your choice, little one.” His dark chuckle danced over her skin, but rather than rile, the sound, just like the rest of him, only riveted her. “Neither of us will be sleeping.”