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“You’re walking funny, Violence.”
Groaning internally, I curse Tairn and all his works. Leave it to Xaden to notice the bow-legged slant to my stride instantly, as I do my best to walk down the corridor without ever letting my thighs touch. “Not for the reason you think. And stop staring at my ass.”
“With the way those delicious hips of yours sway? Not a chance.”
Ducking my head to hide a grin, I dart through the door to his room, Xaden’s heat already at my back, his hand on my hip before we’ve even got the door shut. “And what reason would that be, exactly?” he breathes against my ear, every hair along my neck rising in anticipation.
Trying to ignore the heat flaring in my cheeks, I bite my lip. How is it after all these months, even mere thoughts of this man still reduce me to a quivering mess? “It’s not…you know. Your fault,” I stress. Wouldn’t want his ego to get too big, after all. There’s more than enough about Xaden that’s big enough as it is, and now that we’re alone, one part of him in particular occupies my thoughts. “Just Tairn being his usual delightful self again, putting me through flight maneuvers three times as difficult as anyone else’s dragon. The straps on my saddle dig in sometimes, chafe the shit out of my thighs.” Rhiannon already helped me adjust my flight leathers earlier this year, adding reinforced patches on the outsides and padding inside, but on rough days it’s still not enough to save the more delicate bits of my skin from the force of that much rolling black dragon.
“Ah. We should get you out of those leathers, then. Did the healers give you a cream for it? I’m happy to help.”
His hands are already working the buttons on my pants, and I arch an eyebrow at him. “Looking for an excuse to get your hands on me, Riorson?”
“I wasn’t aware I needed one.” Capturing my mouth, he nips at my lip, and I laugh against him, the simple joy of us together feeling so right and good I can’t contain it.
“Never,” I admit. “You could touch me however you wanted, whenever you wanted. There’s nothing I wouldn’t let you do to me.”
His eyes darken, and my pulse races. What the fuck did I just say?
“Be careful, Violence,” he says. “Giving me that kind of permission is a dangerous thing.”
“I meant it,” I whisper, forcing it past my suddenly dry throat. Because gods help me, I do. Maybe I don’t trust him to tell me the full truth, to not keep secrets – maybe I never will – but this? My body, my love, my very fucking life? He owns all of that, no question, even if I can’t bring myself to tell him so with words.
My leathers hit the floor along with my boots, stripped off so quickly my reddened skin doesn’t even have time to feel the pull, and he picks me up and sets me down on his desk, naked from the waist down.
“I wonder – do you like being strapped down in that saddle of yours?” he asks, heavy hands splayed across my thighs, squeezing right where the straps do. The heat of his palms burns like fire over the abraded lines on my skin, and I draw in a sharp breath, all too aware of that heat racing up my thighs, the stinging pain tugging out a chord of sick pleasure at my core. A whimper escapes me, and I grind my teeth together against it, against the overwhelming tide of pleasure-pain, the fire racing through my veins. Woah. This is new.
Xaden smiles slowly, watching me, missing nothing. “I think you do. I think there’s something in you that likes feeling controlled, Violet. Restrained.” A velvet touch curls just above my knee, bands of shadow crossing my skin like ropes, pulling my legs further apart. “Something in you that longs to be held down. Opened up. Freed to just…feel.”
My breath comes faster, stuttering in its rhythm as his words hit me with the force of a lightning bolt straight to my throbbing clit. Bondage isn’t something I’ve ever taken an interest in before, but looking down at Xaden’s hands holding my thighs apart, the way his hands span the width of my fragile bones so easily, the tide of lust crests in me so fast I almost feel sick with it. I nod, helpless to speak, and the bands of shadow tighten, pulling me apart by increments.
“Say it, Violet.” His lips hover over mine, not quite kissing, just like his fingers brush the seam of my cunt, the slightest teasing touch, nothing like what I need. “I want to hear you surrender.”
Surrender? Oh, fuck that. “Bad choice of words,” I manage to get out. “Riders don’t surrender.”
“No?” One side of that damnable mouth lifts. He parts my folds with a single fingertip, and I swallow hard as the cool air of the room hits me, making it obvious just how wet I am already. “Then why are you dripping all over the furniture at the thought of it?”
Narrowing my eyes, I toss my head back, pushing my hips forward against his hand as much as his shadows will allow. Sadly for me, it isn’t anywhere near enough, the lack of friction driving me mad. “Fuck you.”
“That’s the goal, yes. Though not until you tell me what you want.”
“You,” I try, bracing all my weight on my left hand, reaching up with my right to take down my braid, to let down that hair he can never resist. Only before my fingers can touch it, they’re caught, my wrist tugged gently but inexorably back to the wood of the desk by more skeins of shadow.
“No cheating,” he says, his voice soft with all kinds of dark promise. “Say it.”
And suddenly I can’t think anymore, because I’m held immobile on top of his desk, unable to move a single limb, and it is so fucking hot. I’m completely at his mercy, half naked and exposed and dying to be touched, my chest rising and falling too fast to be missed. It’s humiliating and incredibly arousing all at once, two halves of my mind at war with one another.
It doesn’t help when delicate tendrils of shadow flick open the buttons on my flight jacket one after another until it hangs open at my sides; when they undo the laces of my armor and yank it away to fall to the floor. When they rip open the shirt beneath it, baring my chest to the cool air and Xaden’s heated gaze, my nipples instantly puckering.
Fuck. Forget the fact that he just stripped me, my remaining clothing hanging off my body in tatters – the fact that he’s got that much control over his power is incredible, not to mention phenomenally attractive.
Control. The word echoes through my mind, and I shiver with it. I’ve never had it. Not over my life, not over my signet. Not even over my own body, as my empty cunt contracts against my will, from nothing more than the heat of his gaze trained on it. And Xaden’s got so much control, all of it so tightly coiled under his skin, a mountain leashed and straining, every second.
So let this be the one thing I do have control over, then. This choice, right here and now, to give myself to him.
“I surrender,” I admit through our bond, praying it’s enough, that he doesn’t make me–
“Out loud, please, Violence.”
Bastard. “I surrender.” It’s so quiet I barely hear myself, my voice a breathy, uncertain thing, and I swallow and try again, forcing it past the teeth of my pride. “Please, Xaden. Do whatever you want with me.”
For an instant, he closes his eyes, and his hands flex on my thighs, his fingers digging in until I hiss, the sweat of his palms stinging my raw skin. “You won’t regret it,” he promises, nipping at my earlobe, shadows tightening around my wrists.
Of course my cockblocking body ruins it immediately. As the bands around my knees pull further, I gasp, the wrong kind of pain shooting white-hot through my weakened hip joints. “Stop, please stop, I can’t.”
Before I can think any further, the shadows nudge my legs back to where they’d been, back to where I can breathe along the edge of too much of a stretch without being pushed over into pain, before they recede, leaving my legs bare.
“You okay?” His forehead presses to mine, and I breathe, nodding against him.
“Yeah. Just too much time in the saddle. Felt like they were about to pop out of joint if you kept going.” And as much as I love Xaden and…whatever the fuck it is that we’re doing right now, I can’t afford a dislocated hip.
“That’s fine,” Xaden says out loud, trailing a single finger down my neck, probably noting every shiver I can’t repress. “There’s more than one way to do this.” His lips claim mine, and I moan into his mouth, it’s so good; the slide of his tongue between my teeth, the feel of his body pressed to mine, the bulge of his cock rubbing for one blissful second against my clit. Mindless, I chase after him as he pulls back, before he sets a single finger against my mouth. Something in me longs to suck it into my mouth, to wrap my tongue around it the way I wish I could suck his cock, to watch his pupils widen at the sight and hear his breath stutter, for once.
He smirks like he can read my thoughts, and something else in me wants to set my teeth to his skin and see how he’d react then. “Do you think you can be obedient?”
I huff out a breath. Anything in me that had ever wanted to be obedient had taken a dive right off the parapet on my conscription day, and I haven’t missed it since. “Hardly ever. You know that.”
Something in the way he looks at me makes every muscle in my body tense up. “I know you can’t obey anyone else, no. Not your officers, or your squad leader.” Leaning in, he presses his mouth to my ear. “You won’t even obey Tairn.” My whole body trembles. My shields had better hold, because this is the last thing I need Tairn – or even worse, Sgaeyl – to overhear. “But me? Oh, I think you can be very obedient for me.”
“Yes,” I breathe, my hips twitching into empty air, my fingers flexing under their shadow bonds. Anything to get his hands on me, to relieve the maddening ache in my empty core.
“Don’t move your legs unless I say you can,” he says. “They stay right where they are, no matter what I do, no matter where I touch you.”
“Or what?” I ask, because that’s always been who I am, and at this point, I don’t think I can change, not even to get the fucking I’m dying for.
I get my answer in the form of a stinging slap to my cunt, the sharp jolt of pain to my clit leaving me open-mouthed with shock, only managing at the last second to keep my legs from slamming together by sheer force of will.
“Or you’ll regret it,” he says mildly as I stare up at him, my cheeks heating with shame and anger.
But mostly with arousal, because my whole body tingles with the after effects, my heartbeat throbbing in my cunt. And I’m so, so fucked, because there’s no way Xaden can’t read it on my face; no way he doesn’t know how much I’m loving this, the push and pull, the little bits of pain he’s dealing out. Pain and I are the oldest of friends, but we’ve never been this kind of close before.
“I didn’t know it could be like this.” To say it out loud would be to spoil the game we’re playing, the one where he could make me do anything I don’t want to, the one where there’s any chance he might actually hurt me.
Briefly, his control flickers, and I see myself through his eyes, glazed and splayed out, breasts rising and falling with each panting breath, cunt slick and shiny in the light. For a second I’m caught between wanting to die and wanting to come.
“Trust me?” he asks, and I nod, not trusting myself to speak, even without words. “Good.”
One of his hands leaves my thighs, skimming over my ribcage, pausing only to tweak a nipple, and I twitch, trying to keep my lower body still, immoveable. Even as his hand rises to my throat, stroking with a soft, velvet touch before it tightens, just a little. Just enough that it’s harder to breathe, the way it is at altitude, my lungs never quite filling all the way up, my breath an audible rasp over the blood surging in my ears. Just enough to leave no doubt who’s in control of me right now, as his other hand moves to my cunt, two fingers pressing up into me.
It’s not enough, and he knows it; he might be a master of keeping his face impassive, but I can feel it through the bond, the force of his desire and how much he’s holding back. I can see it when I cast my eyes down, the outline of his hard cock perfectly visible through his leathers. That has got to be painful.
But he’s committed to making me suffer, his thumb brushing over my clit with the lightest of touches, my hips making aborted, infinitesimal circles in my desire for more, more, gods, please just touch me, already. Fucking tease. Even the sound of it is obscene, the wet sucking of a slow, even rhythm, because Xaden refuses to be hurried. Every time I move my hips a fraction, his thumb lifts away; every time I shift my ass on the desk, his other hand presses down harder against my throat, forcing my head back just so I can breathe.
I’m audibly whimpering by the time he pulls his hand from between my legs, tears of frustration that I refuse to let fall forming at the corners of my eyes. The hand at my throat moves to the back of my head, tangling in my hair to push my head forward as he brings his shining fingers to my lips.
“Open your mouth, Violet.”
I want to refuse, and see what he’d do; I want to obey, and prove I can.
I part my lips, and he pushes his fingers inside, just like I’d wanted him to earlier, my greedy tongue sucking the taste of myself from his skin. My eyes close, savoring it, and I think I hear him groan, just on the edge of hearing.
“Do you know how beautiful you look like this?” I shake my head, scraping over his skin with my teeth, just enough to make him remember I’m not tame. “I love seeing you dressed in nothing but shadow. Mine.” The bonds on my wrists snake up my arms as he speaks, pulling my jacket and the remnants of my shirt from my shoulders, leaving me totally bare, while he’s still fully dressed, all buttoned up in leather. The contrast twists inside me, somehow so much filthier than both of us being naked at once, and I’m officially so turned on it hurts.
“Please,” I beg down our bond; my mouth is still too full of his fingers, my cheeks hollowing around them as he pulls free. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take before I just explode in a white-hot flash, entirely unfucked.
“Gods, Violet, if you knew the things I want to do to you.” He steps between my open legs, and it takes every bit of willpower I have not to wrap my legs around him and grind my clit against his perfect cock until I fall apart. “Would you like it if I blindfolded you? If I tied you to the bedposts and fucked you until you begged me to stop?” Smiling, he tucks a loose tendril of hair behind my ear and leans in, and I don’t dare move, even though I can hardly hear him over the frantic beat of my heart. “Would you like it if I didn’t give you a choice?”
Holy. Shit. That’s hotter than it has any right to be, and honestly, I’d blast anyone else across the room for even suggesting it. But Xaden? Yeah. Something in the deepest parts of me does trust him, completely and absolutely – to never hurt me, to catch me when I fall, and, just maybe, to push me right over the edge when I need it most.
“Yes,” I admit, and it’s a measure of just how far gone I am that I don’t even flinch at the pleading tone it comes out in, the desperation in my voice. “But next time, please, because if you don’t fuck me in the next two minutes I swear I’m going to set this room on fire.”
“As much as I’m enjoying this, agreed,” he says, backing away to rid himself of his clothing with shocking speed. Somehow, I manage to stay still, just like I’ve been told, even though everything in me screams to follow him, to get my hands on the expanse of his bronzed skin, to wrap my fingers around the hard length of him and guide it to exactly where I need him.
“You can move now,” he says, a fraction of a second before he picks me up from the desk, his arms sliding under my hips, mine coming up around his neck as he lifts me and reseats me on his cock, practically in the same fluid motion.
Any other time and I’d be impressed with his strength, the way he holds on to me like I weigh nothing at all, but just now I’m finding the lack of leverage too frustrating, my heels pushing against his ass in a fruitless attempt to get him deeper, further, more.
Clearly he agrees, because two seconds later I’m on my back in his bed and he’s driving into me, and I’m finally, incandescently, perfectly full of his cock. Slipping a hand between our bodies, he presses against the flat plane of my stomach, and the feel of it, the pressure from outside my body pushing down against his cock inside me, tips me over the line.
Outside, lightning strikes over and over, my power cresting in waves through me as Xaden holds my rigid body, my ankles locked tight around him. “Good girl,” he says, and I surrender myself once more to the blinding haze of pleasure.
After, as I try to catch my breath, glancing around the room to make sure nothing’s actively in flames, the phrase catches in my mind, and I can’t help laughing.
Xaden barely moves, pushing sweaty hair off his face and looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “What?”
“I was just thinking,” I say, helpless against the giggles. “Do you ever call Sgaeyl that?”
He laughs too, a snort that only makes me laugh harder, helpless and aching and warm with joy. Free. “No, because I value my life.”
Inside my head, Tairn’s voice speaks, sounding utterly bored. “I do.”
Oh, shit. Eyes widening, I turn to Xaden, only to see the look on his face mirroring mine. Inside both our heads, then.
Well, so much for my shields. Guess I’ll have to try harder next time.
Because there will absolutely be a next time.