“Lift your arms,” I tell her. As she does, I slip the gown over her head. It falls slowly, touching every curve and cascading like water down her body.
My groin swells with need, and I release a shaky breath. Offering her my hand, I allow my gaze to travel over every inch of her. She takes it and I help her stand. Her breasts are beautiful against the barely there fabric, her waist and hips a tantalizing tease. My heart bangs against my rib cage painfully.
Kal’s not ashamed; I’ve seen her naked before. I’ve seen the glass plate that mars her chest and the cybernetic clamp just beneath. I’ve always thought her beautiful because of, not in spite of, her self-perceived defect. But now, she modestly places an arm around her stomach. A reaction, I’m sure, from a lifetime of trying to hide the mercury. “Why?” she asks.
It’s such a direct question, and one deserving of an answer. Why? “Because I have to.” It’s the only answer I can offer. My will is not my own. Not with Bale, not with Kal. Finding some semblance of control over my infatuated need for her requires a measure of dominance.
I dig out the collar in my pocket and move closer to her. Then I sweep her layers of dark hair from her shoulders and clasp the choker around her neck. Her hair still held aloft and warm against my hand from her body heat, I admire my beautiful possession.
A sense of calm settles over me. It won’t last, but it’s enough to prolong the torment I normally suffer.
Kal licks her lips, exciting me further. Backing up a step, her hair falling away from my hold, she says, “You don’t have to do this, Caben. I’m here by my own will. You can’t—”
“Can’t I?” I step into her and hook my finger into the metal ring of the collar. I envisioned a fantasy just like this not long ago, but the reality is so much sweeter. Pulling her face close to mine, I whisper, “Your rules, your queendom’s rules, don’t apply here, Protector. Hell, every rule that has ever existed no longer applies. The world is spiraling into chaos. But here. Now?” I lower my head and rest my lips near hers, just feeling the tremble of them against my mouth. “Our rules are the only ones that matter.”
She yanks back and the collar slips from my finger. “You can’t let her win. You think you’re shutting her out…that you’re controlling this…but Bale wants to kill me. Do you understand that? She’s still using you even now. I can’t trust that she won’t succeed, Caben. Because this”—she motions between us—“isn’t real. It’s not us—not the us that we found together.”
“How are you so sure?”
Her eyes narrow and her head jolts back. I can see her mind tussling with the question, evident by her pursed lips.
“How do you know what we would’ve been together?” I move closer to her, forcing her gaze to travel up to mine. “We were given all of what…days together? What kind of relationship would we have had, had it been allowed to progress? You a dominant female from Cavan, me a dominant male from Perinya?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”
I chuckle. “Think about it.” I tap my temple. “There cannot be two heads in any relationship. Someone has to be subservient. Did you truly think it would’ve been me? Because why, you’re the Nactue leader? I’m a king!” I shout.
She flinches.
Grabbing her again by the nape, I look into her face. So precious and all that strength… “You are a leader, Kal. And leaders carry a heavy burden, I know. Maybe you’d have appreciated a man offering you the freedom of not having to be in control every waking second. Maybe that’s why you gravitated toward me. So you could relinquish that burden and responsibility, if only privately. Trusting me to guide you into something new, unknown yet exciting. Just give in to it.” I lower my voice. “This was always inevitable.”
A shimmer of tears coats her eyes, and it causes an ache to build in my chest. I grit my teeth against the annoyance. I can feel her giving over…just a little more…
“I’ll be gone soon. Bale will spring up in my place, and everything that we could have been will vanish.” Her tears spill over. I run my thumb over her cheek, wiping their trail away. “But doesn’t death come for us all? What difference does it make now or later?” Lowering a hand to the weightless material, I rub it between my fingers. Savor the press of her breasts against the shifting gown. “Forget the world. It’s damned. Trust me…belong to me. The way you were bound to.”
She inhales deeply, causing her chest to press against the gown more. My need for her is becoming intolerable; painfully straining against my pants. “Does this help you?” she asks.
I hike my eyebrows. “This?” I try to hold her gaze—the one faltering between tears and acceptance—but her body is begging for my attention.
Grasping the hand toying with the gown, she pulls me flush against her. “This,” she says, and links my arms around her, pressing herself so forcefully against me so that if she moves the slightest, I could release right into my pants.
“Does owning my body rid you of the parasite infecting yours?” Her warm breath skims my neck, and I close my eyes. Feel her. Inhale her. If I don’t taste her soon, the fissures in my skull will crack clean through, and the madness will take me.
But a haunting voice bleeds into my conscience. It lashes at the walls of my mind, trying to be heard over the roaring, infecting chaos: Heart.
Kal is my heart—but I’m not able to discern which is stronger. The heart or the mind. Love or power.
That faint voice grows into a bold whisper, insisting to be heard. Asserting that I don’t want Kal in this way. Regardless of how I’ve poked fun at her queendom, of how I was raised—the right and only way any of this works is through equal
ity. But if I don’t possess her soon, Bale will shred through any sanity I have left, obliterating it and me.
I’m weaker and weaker by the second. I can feel my life draining. Bale will kill me, and then Kal will be in danger of being possessed by her. So rationally, the only choice I have is to take Kal. With or without her permission.
Better she be dominated by me than the dark goddess.
Yes. That settles it. My arms lock closed around her waist. My erection throbs against her body. “Yes, love. It helps. It’s the only way.”
She swallows. “Then I submit.”