Chapter 1 #3
“You may always come to me when you are hurt. Whatever has happened, you can tell me.”
I place the pear into my mouth and chew slowly, keeping my eyes lowered.
“I promise you I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe.”
My gaze drops to the black ring upon his finger. His thumb rests against its smooth surface.
“You said something else yesterday.”
Talarin waits.
“When I said you scared me, you said the things you think about me sometimes scare you too.”
His thumb begins moving across the ring.
“What did you mean?”
For several seconds, he says nothing.
“I have spent centuries killing slavers,” he says finally. “Aurelians who took women and made them their property. Men who found pleasure in breaking them into obedience.”
His hard face tightens, the sharp angles becoming even more severe.
“All that time, and all the lives I took, I never realized that I might be no better than them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to own you, Nell.”
The words settle heavily between us.
“I want to make you want things you do not want. I want you to crave things that make you burn with shame. The cage. The collar. My commands.”
His slate-gray eyes never leave mine.
“I want you to guard your freedom as fiercely as you do now and still place it in my hands. I want you to know that you can leave and beg me not to let you.”
The underground room flashes through my mind again. The restraints. The mirrors. Those enormous stone doors standing wide open.
The terrible realization that, if they Bonded me, the doors might never need to close.
“I want you so desperately that if you left me, I do not know what I would become.” His voice remains quiet, each word measured and precise. “I will never lie to you, Nell, but I cannot pretend that I am the man I want to be where you are concerned. All I think about is you. All I want is you.”
“Are you...” My mouth feels dry. “Did you think all of this would reassure me?”
“No. I think it will let you know the kind of man I am, and the kind of men my battle-brothers are. We all feel this just as fiercely.” He leans forward. “When we came here, we came to disappear. To retire. Now my life is burning up once again because of you.”
He shifts in his chair, and the folds of his robe pull apart. I draw a harsh breath as his cock comes into view, huge and thick, throbbing with every beat of his heart.
“Are you sure...” I force my eyes back to his face. “Are you sure it’s not just because you think I’m your Fated Mate?”
“That is the thing I want most in this world. But even if there is no Bond between us, I will never let you go.”
“No, you have to. When the hundred days are done, you have to.”
His eyes are too wide. His gaze too intense.
“I can taste your fear. Your anxiety. But when you submit to me completely, it all washes away. Then there is nothing but your lust and your devotion.” His gaze burns into mine. “I love that moment when you stop knowing how to think.”
“You’re scaring me.” I draw back into the chair.
He goes still. Then he blinks, once, twice, and his eyes refocus.
“Forgive me. You have this effect on me. I...”
His breath leaves him slowly. “I cannot imagine a world where I am without you after these hundred days, and I cannot imagine a world where I keep you here without you wanting it.”
“That’s...” I struggle to find the words. “Some part of me, some part I don’t understand, is going to want it. But that doesn’t mean... It doesn’t mean you get to?—”
The Reaver.
The Commissioner removed the seal last night. It can Orb-Shift again. He could take me far from this place, far from all the laws of the Aurelian Empire, far from anyone who can stop him from keeping me caged 24/7, never allowed to speak again, only allowed to beg and be fucked.
“You wouldn’t take me into the Rift, would you?” My heart begins beating faster. “Promise me that, please. I don’t want to die that way. I don’t want to die that way.”
Talarin’s expression changes. He rises abruptly.
“I am sorry. I’ve caused you great distress.” Horror moves through his slate-gray eyes. “I will never Shift with you, not unless this world were about to die and it was the only way out. I will never put you at risk, Nell. I would die before I let that happen.”
He gathers his robes around himself, hiding that huge, throbbing cock, so grotesque against his words—words that are supposed to be comforting but only betray the intensity of his obsession.
He’d die before he’d put me at risk, and I fear that, when these hundred days are over, he won’t be able to accept me leaving.
Even if it costs him his head.
I remain in the enormous chair, the half-eaten food in front of me, the mugs of coffee cooling upon the table.
Talarin gives me a long, considering look from the threshold, then leaves, closing the door behind him. I look up at the window as a shiver runs through me.
Just ninety-seven more days until I am free…
But in six more days, and Arrek is going to put me over his lap, and he isn’t going to be nice.
I know that beast.
And I know what he wants.