“No!” He recoiled with a violent curse, ripping himself from her to stand over her quivering body. He’d just reduced her to little more than a corpse, dying beautiful little deaths as each aftershock singed along her nerves.
Farah realized what she’d done too late, as she watched him yank off his tie.
“I’m sorry—”
She was suddenly in his clutches, dragged to the headboard by merciless fingers, her arms wrenched above her head.
“I told you not to reach for me.” Those eyes so alive and expressive only moments ago, returned to what she’d become accustomed to. Cold. Calculating. Lifeless. He secured one wrist to the intricate headboard with alarming swiftness before casting his gaze about the room.
When his eyes fell upon the plaid, Dougan’s plaid, he sneered, then reached for it, using it as a binding for her other wrist.
She’d been wrong. She wouldn’t have seen the face of God, because she’d been lying beneath the devil.
Panic surged beneath the satiation. He didn’t understand. She hadn’t meant to betray his fledgling trust. Her body had no longer been her own, but possessed by the pleasure he inflicted on her. “Dorian, I—”
He covered her mouth with his gloved fingers. “This is how it has to be.”
Dorian tried to suppress the blackness threatening to smother his desire. He’d passed some line of demarcation. A point of no return. No matter how much his skin crawled and his mind shrank from the grasping hands of another, the hard flesh between his legs still insisted he see this to fruition.
He tightened the final knot on her wrist, and then inspected it for weaknesses, not lifting his other hand from her tempting mouth. She could not touch him. She could not scream. She could not escape.
Dorian breathed deeply, able to gather a bit of his humanity back from the abyss.
A fragrant essence stole his attention from the guilt threatening to reach beneath his armor. It lingered on the tips of her elegant fingers, the ones that had tantalized him with the innocent discovery of her pleasure.
Dorian refused to look at her. If he saw fear, he might take mercy. If he saw submission, he might take advantage. If he saw pity … there was no telling what he would do.
He swallowed the excess of liquid in his mouth, the sides of his jaw aching with the force of it, and stared at the well-kept nails of his efficient clerk of a wife. Acting on pure instinct, his lips closed over her index and middle fingers, framed as they were by the Mackenzie plaid.
They were cold inside the heat of his mouth. After a twitch of surprise, they stilled.
And he savored.
She tasted of salt and musk and … woman. He slid her fingers deeper into his mouth, splitting them with his tongue.
To his utter shock, she whimpered and bit down on the leather of his glove, her hips clenching and lifting off the bed. He freed her fingers with a nibble at the tips. Once released, they curled into a tight fist.
He still didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, his entire being focused on the golden-covered folds of her body. He kept his hand secured over her mouth as he lowered his lips to her ear, watching the trembling of the flat plane of her belly.
“I tasted your cunt,” he warned her. “And I’m hungry for more.”
Her breaths became manic, heaving her breasts apart with each desperate expansion of her ribs. The nipples trembled like little pink confections atop the pale mounds. He was as shocked as she at his words, and yet, not surprised.
An hour ago, the very thought of any human contact repulsed him.
But this was Farah. And he’d made her a promise.
His body responded to her as it had to none other. The sight of her release nearly drove him over the edge.
If only she’d not touched him. If only his skin didn’t feel like it was on fire, and every wound he ever had ripped open again, the sensation of blood trickling down his gashed flesh warring with the intensity of his body’s need.
Someday he’d tell her that he wasn’t angry. That she was tied up for her own protection. In case, in her pleasure, she clutched at him again, and he couldn’t control his reaction.
The thought was enough to turn his veins to ice, but scent was a powerful sense, and hers now entrapped him as no other had.
In order to reach her sex, he had to release her mouth. “Don’t say a word, or I’ll gag you, as well.”
Christ, he was a monster. But Dorian knew that he couldn’t deny her if she pleaded for mercy. That he couldn’t face her if she rebuked or rejected him. And so he could allow her none of those options.
He’d warned her, hadn’t he? Before she demanded this night.
Her nod beneath his palm was enough. He let her go and she didn’t make a sound.
Thank God.
Heart pounding, mouth still watering, and cock pulsing with need, Dorian was glad she offered little resistance as he parted her knees.
She glistened. So. Fucking. Beautiful. He smoothed his wide hands down the insides of her thighs, pushing them open all the way, fingering the garters of her stockings and wondering if her skin was as soft as it looked.
His hunger was a ferocious thing as he lowered to his elbows and let the yearning clench deep in his belly. The slickness of her desire beckoned him. He split her cleft with his gloved finger, coating the tip with her nectar.
She trembled, but remained silent, as she’d agreed to do.
Curious, he rubbed his thumb and finger together, testing the glossy consistency. Soon his cock would be coated with this, slick and wet and—