I found my voice then. “Wait—what are you doing?” Once secure, his thumb skimmed the inside of my wrist, but he didn’t answer me. I shivered. “Do you mean to interrogate me, wolf?” I glared up at him, disbelief hitching my voice. “For what purpose?”

A cruel smirk lit his eye when I placed my free hand underneath me to keep it from him. He leaned down and whispered to my mouth, “Give me your hand, Aster.”

Though the gleam in his eye and the wild energy radiating from him promised punishment, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. But I still tried to forestall whatever he had in mind. “We need to talk.”

“Give me your fucking hand, Aster.” When I refused, he flashed his teeth with a deadly grin.

Then he kissed me.

Just once. Hard and bruising, it rendered me limp and in need of more as the taste of him, the heat and scent of him infiltrated like a heady wine.

He groaned as he pulled away, my hand within his. He secured my wrist to the bed.

My teeth gnashed. “What in the stars do you intend to do with me?”

The beast ignored me. Sliding down my body, he dragged his nose between my breasts, over my stomach, and stopped between my thighs. He pushed them wide and dug his nose into my core.

His mouth followed. Warmth drenched me from within and without as he breathed me in with a shudder of his broad shoulders. “Fuck,” he rasped.

I reached for him, forgetting my hands were tied, and almost whined.

Then he flattened his tongue and licked me slowly, stopping at my clit. He flicked it, and I moaned. A claw unsheathed again, teasing as it tore through the flimsy fabric of my slip. He plucked it from my body, rough enough to jerk me upon the bed.

Scythe brought it to his nose and inhaled with his eye closing, then tossed the material to the floor. “Go ahead and warp home, but mark my words. This time I will follow.” He pressed his nose to mine, his lone eye aglow, and rumbled, “I’m in the mood to draw blood, and that husband of yours has been number one on my kill list for too damned long.”

My heart ceased beating at hearing that, then pounded painfully when cold swept in as he rose.

He pulled his tunic from his body and unbuckled his pants. The sight of him, the enormity of all of him, was nothing like I remembered.

It was so much more—he was so much more—than my imagination was capable of containing.

His cock was hard, engorged and bobbing as he shifted down the bed.