Chapter 15
COLLETTA
The handcuffs bite just enough to remind me I can't escape.
Not that I want to.
Kruk looms over me, all muscle and control and focused intensity.
His eyes track every shiver, every breath, cataloging my reactions like he's memorizing the pattern of a lock he intends to pick.
Heat radiates off his skin where it presses against mine, furnace-hot, overwhelming in the best possible way.
"You look so perfect like this," he says, voice pitched low and rough. Gravel scraped across nerve endings. "Helpless. Trusting me to take care of you."
I am helpless. The cuffs ensure that. But the word doesn't carry the weight it should. Doesn't fill me with panic or the urge to flee. Instead, something unfurls in my chest, warm and liquid and dangerously close to contentment.
"Then take care of me," I manage, though my voice cracks halfway through. Wrecked already and we've barely started. The metal digs into my wrists when I test the restraints again, an automatic response, my body checking the boundaries even as my mind surrenders completely.
His grin goes sharp. Predatory. He shifts position, moving with that eerie fluid grace that should be impossible for someone his size. Slides down my body until his face hovers above my stomach, breath ghosting over sensitized skin and making my muscles jump involuntarily.
"I intend to."
Then his mouth is on me. Tongue tracing patterns across my ribs, teeth grazing the underside of my breast, hands spanning my waist and holding me pinned to the mattress when I try to arch into the contact.
He takes his time. Maps every inch of available skin with methodical precision, learning what makes me gasp, what makes me whimper, what makes me forget my own name and reduces me to nothing but sensation and need.
The mirror on the opposite wall catches fragments of the scene. My wrists bound above my head, metal glinting. Kruk's massive frame dwarfing mine, green skin stark against my paleness. The contrast is obscene. Beautiful. Terrifying in its intensity.
"Look," he commands, lifting his head just enough to meet my eyes in the reflection. "Watch what I do to you."
I can't look away. Can't do anything but obey as his mouth travels lower, as his shoulders force my thighs apart, as he settles between my legs with the focus he usually reserves for tactical planning.
"So fragile," he murmurs against my inner thigh, the words vibrating through skin and muscle straight into bone. His breath is hot, deliberate, ghosting over sensitive flesh and making me squirm against the restraints. "Soft. Delicate. Breakable."
The assessment should probably offend me. Instead, it sends heat pooling low in my belly, making my breath catch in my throat. There's something in his voice—reverence mixed with possession, wonder tinged with dark promise.
"I'm not going to break," I manage to protest, though the words emerge thready and unconvincing even to my own ears. My voice wavers, betraying exactly how close to shattering I already feel, and we've barely started.
"No." He presses a kiss to the crease where leg meets hip, surprisingly gentle despite the tusks that bracket his mouth, despite the hands that could snap me like kindling if he chose.
His gold-capped tusks graze my skin, a reminder of danger held carefully in check.
"Because I won't let you. I'll keep you safe.
Even from this. Even from me." Another kiss, this one slightly higher, and I can feel the smile against my skin. "Always."
The promise settles over me like a weighted blanket. Grounding. Intoxicating.
Then he puts that clever, wicked mouth to work in earnest, and all capacity for coherent thought becomes utterly, completely impossible.
I lose time. Seconds blur into minutes into small eternities measured in heartbeats and gasping breaths and the relentless, devastating pleasure he wrings from my body with tongue and fingers and the occasional careful scrape of teeth.
The handcuffs hold me in place when I thrash.
The weight of his hands on my hips keeps me from bucking away from stimulation that borders on too much.
He's vocal. Groans vibrate against oversensitized flesh, punctuated by snarled Orcish that I don't understand but recognize as praise by the reverent tone. He tells me I taste like heaven, like addiction, like something he could spend hours worshipping without ever growing bored.
I believe him with every fiber of my being. The conviction in his voice, the intensity burning in those pale eyes, the protective possessiveness radiating from every inch of him, it all combines into an undeniable truth that settles deep in my bones.
And then he proceeds to prove it by doing exactly that, with a dedication and focus that could probably solve world hunger if he applied the same level of tactical precision to anything other than completely dismantling my sanity.
When he finally lets me come, I'm sobbing. Not from pain. From the sheer overwhelming intensity of sensation layered upon sensation until I can't tell where I end and the pleasure begins. The orgasm rips through me like a storm, leaves me shaking and gasping and utterly destroyed in the aftermath.
Kruk crawls back up my body. Kisses me slow and deep, letting me taste myself on his tongue, sharing the evidence of what he just did to me. His weight presses me into the mattress, grounding, the solid reality of him anchoring me when I feel like I might float away entirely.
"Beautiful," he murmurs against my mouth, his breath warm and possessive, mingling with mine in the scant space between us.
His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing the tear tracks still wet on my cheek with surprising gentleness.
"You are so fucking beautiful when you surrender.
When you stop fighting and just let go. When you trust me enough to fall apart completely. "
I want to argue. Point out that I'm a disaster, that my hair is a rat's nest, that I probably look like I've been through a war. But the way he's looking at me suggests he sees something entirely different. Something worth keeping.
He reaches up. Unlock handcuffs with quick, efficient movements. Immediately begins massaging my wrists, checking for damage, making sure the metal didn't bite too deep or leave marks that will linger longer than intended.
"Okay?" he asks for what must be the hundredth time tonight.
"Perfect," I tell him honestly. "But we're not done."
His eyebrows climb. "You want more?"
"I want you." I push at his chest, knowing I can't actually move him unless he allows it. "Inside me. Now."
For a moment he just stares. Then something dark and possessive flickers across his features. He shifts, positioning himself between my thighs. The blunt pressure of him makes my breath catch all over again.
"The mirror," he says, angling us so I can see. "Watch. I want you to see how we look together. I want you to remember this every time you doubt you're mine."
I watch. Can't help it. The image burns itself into my brain, searing and indelible and completely obscene in the best possible way.
He enters me slowly. So slowly it borders on torture, every inch a deliberate claiming, a measured taking that leaves no room for doubt about who owns what here. I'm not small, but he makes me feel fragile anyway. Delicate. Precious in a way I've never experienced before.
"Breathe," he reminds me when I forget. When the stretch becomes almost too much and my body tenses automatically. "Relax. Let me in."
I will try. Force my muscles to unclench, my lungs to remember their function. He rewards the effort by sliding deeper, filling me completely, bottoming out with a groan that rumbles through his chest and into mine.
"There," he says, sounding wrecked. Undone. "Perfect. You feel perfect."
He starts to move. Long, slow strokes that light up every nerve ending, that build heat low in my belly all over again despite the orgasm that left me trembling only minutes ago.
His hands are everywhere. Gripping my hips, steadying my shoulder, threading through my hair and tilting my face so he can kiss me while he fucks me.
The mirror shows everything. His body moving over mine, muscles flexing with each thrust. My legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locked at the small of his back. The place where we're joined, slick and obscene and impossibly intimate.
"So soft," he murmurs against my throat. "So warm. Made for me. Only me."
"Only you," I agree, because it's true. Has been true since the moment he showed up on my doorstep with a battle axe and zero understanding of what a wedding actually entails.
He shifts the angle. Hits something inside me that makes stars explode behind my eyelids and a broken sound tears from my throat. Do it again. And again. Relentless precision applied to the singular goal of taking me apart piece by piece.
"Come for me," he commands, low and rough. "I want to feel you. I want to watch you fall apart while I'm inside you."
I don't have a choice. The orgasm crashes over me without warning, sudden and devastating and so intense I forget how to breathe.
My body locks up, muscles clamping down, and Kruk groans like I'm killing him.
Follows me over the edge with a snarled oath, burying himself deep and grinding against me like he's trying to fuse us into one entity.
We collapse together. A tangle of limbs and sweat and racing heartbeats. The air conditioning kicks on, cool air washing over overheated skin, and I shiver despite the warmth radiating from Kruk's body where he's draped half on top of me.
He rolls us carefully. Tucks me against his side, one massive arm wrapped around my shoulders. His other hand traces idle patterns on my hip, following the curve of bone beneath skin, mapping territory he now considers his.
"I love you," I say quietly. Simple. Direct. No room for misinterpretation.