Stop!
“Pim. Pim!” Elder released my wrists, grabbing my chin to jerk my face to his. “Pim, open your eyes. Right now.”
It was a fight.
A struggle to climb from the quicksand of horror and remember there was another world out there. My eyelashes had glue on them, glue in the form of fear of finding out where I was, who I was with, and if everything that’d happened with a dragon-tattooed stranger called Elder Prest was a dream or real.
“Pim. Look at me.”
I came back to him, to the bed, to the hotel with a teeth-clattering lurch. My skin was coated in cold sweat, and whatever pleasure he’d conjured was muted beneath sick terror. I wanted to curl into a ball and vanish.
It had only been a few seconds, yet I cowered as if Alrik had reincarnated in the room with us.
Elder kept his fingers inside me, but he didn’t move. Brushing aside damp hair off my cheeks, he whispered, “Are you okay?”
My throat was a bullfrog croak. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“Didn’t mean to leave?”
“It wasn’t a choice this time. I-I couldn’t stop it.” I looked away. “I only closed my eyes for a second.”
He smiled sadly. “No, you didn’t. You disappeared for a few minutes.” His hand moved to disengage, to end his quest to make me come. “This was a bad fucking idea.” His hips moved, his erection harder than ever.
“Wait!” I grabbed his wrist, preventing his fingertips from leaving me. “I don’t want to stop.”
He gritted his jaw, his nostrils flaring. “I don’t think I can do this. I’m this fucking close to losing it, and I absolutely refuse to take you when you’re not ready.”
Tears sparkled in my eyes, prickly and hot. “I know I’m asking a lot but…please…”
He studied me. His gaze skating from my lips to my nose to my hairline and finally down to where his hand rested between my legs. “Goddammit.”
I wouldn’t beg again. I wouldn’t force him to do something he wasn’t capable of doing. Letting his wrist go, I lay back and commanded every limb, ligament, and sinew to relax. To heat because of connection. To throb because of attraction.
Staring at Elder helped. It grounded me. It kept me here and not there.
Hesitantly, I reached for his shirt buttons. He stiffened as I undid one, then two, then three.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“I-I need to see you.”
Needed to touch and stare and lock onto him.
He pursed his lips as if he’d refuse. His forearm tensed to stop touching me.
I undid the remaining buttons while he deliberated. With swift fingers, I loosened his tie, spread his shirt, and heaved a breath as his magnificent tattoo came into view.
His sculpted stomach etched with muscles. He barely breathed. “You like looking at me?”
I couldn’t stop my quick laugh. “Like? No.” I traced his dragon’s snout, adoring the way he shivered. “I love looking at you.” I let my fingertips explore his achingly hot skin, to press firm muscles, to introduce myself to his chest and ink. “I find you very…attractive.”
I swallowed, shyness overtaking my boldness. I’d never had to seduce someone before or convince another person they did wondrous things to me just by being them.
Elder swore beneath his breath, his head tipping forward as I pressed my entire palm over his heart. “You’re full of surprises, little mouse.” His fingers pressed back inside my pussy, swift and sure, wet and warm. “You want this?”
I nodded, feeling more centred and less at the mercy of the snapping jaws of my past. “Yes.”
He drove into me hard, activating everything he’d already built and layering another coil of pleasure. “Are you sure?”
I dug my fingernails into the horns of his dragon, feeling connected and safe. “Yes.”
His thumb circled my clit, making my legs clutch together and hips buck.
“Do you want to watch?” He added more pressure, his fingers disappearing entirely inside me. “I can get a mirror if you’d like? Show how fucking good you feel.”
I desperately wanted to shake my head in case he thought my silence was a request for such things. But he just chuckled at my discomfort and bent to kiss my neck. “Maybe another time, I’ll make you watch every little thing I do to you. Maybe next time, I’ll tell you how wet you feel on my hand, how hot your pussy is, how much I love the quiver of your legs as I do this—” He thrust up hard and fast.
Instead of making me shut down, it was the scissors to the ropes I was bound in. They fell away, harmless and unwanted as I went lax and loose in his touch.
This was what I needed to stand any chance at coming. It wasn’t myself who had the courage to fight for pleasure. It was him. He lent me his courage. He let me steal from him to be braver, stronger. Touching him. Listening to him. Feeling him. He was the charm that would set me free.
His fingers kept moving, dragging me from the darkness and into a random scattering of fireworks as my body gathered and strained.
“You like me talking to you, Pim? You like touching me while I finger you?”
His voice was my anchor. His body my staircase. His presence my shield.
Holding him allowed my body to climb and seek all while knowing he’d catch me if I fell the wrong way.
A gush of heat clutched his fingers as my womb gave up pretending it didn’t know pleasure and gave in.
Elder groaned as he felt my acquiescence. “There you are. Fuck, yes. Let go. Let me make you come.”
So I did.
I latched my hands on his chest and held on.
I locked my eyes on his handsomeness, let his dark beauty steal my breath, and fell into a fantasy where a raven-haired thief inked with dragon scales dragged me writhing and gasping from my awful history.
Sharp teeth punctured his perfectly formed lips as he followed my gaze to his tattoo and where our bodies kissed. His black gaze darkened even further, unable to hide his building lust.
The impenetrable mask he always wore slipped for a second as he studied me just as hard as I studied him.
This was more than a fight to make me climax. More than stolen slave and vengeful fighter. The way we stared braided us in something far deeper than sex. The way we found sanctuary in the other’s messy soul bound us far truer than any crude fucking.
My heart opened, drawbridge down, moat dry, banners fluttering for him to enter and claim it as his own. I no longer wanted to fight. I wanted to fall and fall and find something I never thought I’d find.
Something precious.
Something eternal.
Elder bent to kiss me, his thumb circling, fingers thrusting, my pussy tightening until I twitched with intensity. His lips barely grazed mine, then, as if remembering that this wasn’t supposed to be tender—that he was supposed to be proving a point and not falling in love, his mask refastened into place, and his touch turned harsh.
My breath caught as he forced my body higher. His fingers arched, gathering electricity, somehow managing to pinpoint and focus my heartbeat directly between my legs.
I tingled with a strange kind of heaviness.