Page 176 of Nightshade

I’d never felt so helpless in my whole life, and as he ran his lips over my skin, the urge to cry watered my eyes, the way his energy snaked through me, burrowing deep inside my bones. A bubbly champagne sensation rippled over my flesh everywhere his mouth touched, and I let out a whoosh of breath through my nose when he sucked the edge of my throat. It felt incredible. A strange and wonderful commotion that left me weak in the knees. I was nothing more than a ragdoll in his arms, one he could manipulate any way he wanted.

My mind fought to latch onto sanity, but too many signals fired off inside my body at once. Chaos. I wondered if that was how it felt in the thick of a lightning bolt.

“You belong to me. You always have.”

“I’m not a toy.” Oh, God, what a pathetic retort. I’m not a toy, I mentally mocked myself. Way to be tough, Farryn.

Meanwhile, my panties practically shook trying to hold back the deluge of arousal I supposedly wasn’t feeling. This wasn’t just a traitorous body situation, but a whole lot of messed up psychology I’d never wrap my head around.

“I shouldn’t want you this much.” One arm still wrapped around me, he reached for my bottom, grinding me against the impressive bulge still trapped in his pants. “To take a human woman this way, one still so full of life, it is forbidden. And I will never be redeemed. But I can’t walk away from you. Not now. Not ever.”

“And if I don’t want this?”

“Tell me you don’t.” He circled his hips in taunting and lifted my thigh, and the tickle from before quickly heightened to an agonizing need. One so strong, I shuddered in his arms. “Tell me to walk away, Farryn,” he whispered. “Tell me you don’t want me to grab you by the throat and fuck you against this wall right now.”

God help me.

As if the plug to my brain had been yanked free, I blanked to nothing but the visual he’d planted in my head. As if he’d somehow crawled inside my brain, knew my darkest fantasy and had figured out how to weaponize it against me.

I wanted to be taken.

Roughly. Passionately.

I’d yearned for it long before I understood why.

I wanted to be the object of his lust. Ravaged. I wanted to know the excitement and fear of having my clothes impatiently torn from my body, my overthinking arguments silenced by a hungry mouth. I wanted to put the control in someone else’s hands.

To feel the breath-hitching, thigh-trembling exhilaration of being pressed against a wall with a hand at my throat, to hear the shaky whispers in my ear of being fucked like an animal.

And somehow Van Croix knew this.

Fingers digging into my flesh, he moved against me in the distinct motion of sex, the waves of a calm sea rocking into my hips. The vibration heightened, pulling at my stomach muscles, and I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders to keep upright.

“Tell me to stop,” he taunted.

I ground my hips into his crotch like a horny teenager desperate to finish. Needing release so badly, I clawed at his skin. “I can’t,” I whined pathetically. Ugh. So much for not giving in. “Please.” The wetness against my thigh marked the spot where my panties had rubbed across my skin, so damp I wondered if I’d peed myself, at first. Pulse after wickedly tormenting pulse curled inside my belly and shook the muscles in my legs. Had he brushed so much as the tip of his finger across my panties, I’d have probably combusted with all the pressure and heat building inside of me.

It was too much and not enough at the same time.

“What do you want. Tell me.” He licked my neck and bit the edge of my jaw. “I want to hear you say it.”

“You! I want you.”

“Only me.”

“Yes, only you.”

“I can’t tell you how much this pleases me.” Releasing my thigh, he reached up under my dress and peeled my panties down, allowing me to step out of them. To my horror, he pressed the damp fabric to his face, breathing it in, and groaned. His expression held something feral and wild. “I want all of you. Every drop,” he said, before gathering my arms together above my head.

Using my panties as a tie, he bound my wrists together, and dear God, it was the hottest, most indecent thing that’d ever happened to me. Over my head was a bracket, from which he removed the lantern hanging there, and in its place, he slung the knot of my binds. Balancing on tiptoes, I dared not to so much as breathe, for fear I’d lose my footing.

“Why the binds?” I managed to say, before the floor of the belfry slipped from beneath my toes.

“Because nothing thrills me more than seeing you strung up and at my mercy. And I’m surely not known to be merciful, my darling little supplicant.”

A rigid finger pushed up inside of me, and I sank against him. Another digit joined the first, pumping in and out on a wet sound. My body clenched around his fingers, giving him exactly what he wanted, as seen when he removed them and his smile lit with smug satisfaction at the sticky fluid glistening over his skin.

He licked away my arousal from his fingers, then carefully loosened the laces of my gown and pulled the fabric just enough to expose my breasts to him. A sound of satisfaction escaped him, his unpatched eye glimmering with appreciation as he reached out and took hold of the swollen, neglected flesh, massaging it in his big palms.