“It would seem you’re exceptionally good at that.” He licked my jaw, turning his head to whisper to the side of my mouth, “So very good at pretending you don’t know what this is, that you don’t feel it, too.” He withdrew, then slowly slid back in, his words groaned. “So good at believing you can survive without it when we both know you’ve tried and fucking failed.”

“I tried,” I started, stuttering a little. He couldn’t say it. He shouldn’t even be thinking about it. There was no point in making this worse. In all of my imaginings, I’d never once imagined this. That he would still want me like this. That he would dare behave like this. But he couldn’t. “I did try, but Scythe…”

He moved his mouth to my neck, teeth grazing, tongue lapping. All the while, he stayed planted deep in my body. “I tried, too. Tried to let you.” He circled his hips, ensuring he pressed and tortured everywhere I needed him to inside me, the fabric of his pants rubbing at my rear. “Turns out, I can’t let you, Aster,” he rasped. “I fucking can’t. I won’t.” His teeth pierced my skin, sinking deep, and I knew.

Some intuitive part of me knew he was both affirming and destroying everything.

He stole from me, forced my hand entirely into a promise of reckoning—and with nothing but a slew of pleading whimpers, all I could do was let him.

I began to drown, and with a cry so loud I feared I might scream.

The wolf’s hand covered my mouth, his fingers snug between my teeth. To my ear, he ordered, “Take me.” His hips reared back and forth. A calculated attack on every pleasure point. “Fucking choke on me.”

Grinding and thrusting and never slowing for a heartbeat, he left no room for me to pay attention to the multitude of feelings within me. He made it impossible to decide if I wanted him to stop when I needed him to continue to destroy me in ways I’d never known I’d so desperately want.

I whined, coming apart. My teeth sank into his fingers in warning.

He released a low, rumbling laugh. “That’s a good little flower. Just like that.” He groaned when I drew blood, his essence falling over my tongue and swimming down my throat. “More. Swallow every fucking drop, Aster.”

Wild, I twisted and shook beneath him while he watched with glowing satisfaction—a hunter enjoying the demise of his prey. Garbled, I pleaded, though I didn’t know what for as wave after wave of mind-bending pleasure consumed me.

My vision darkened. My heart ceased its dancing. My ears drowned in terrifying silence.

Then with a brightness so vivid it burned, all of it returned.