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“I want it,” she gasps. “Please, please–”

“Wantwhat, sister?” My voice is a snarl now. I tease her entrance, the restraint it takes not to plunge in driving me insane. She clamps her thighs together, breath caught in her throat.

“This,” she whispers, dazed. “You. Anything.”

Any sense of control and restraint shatters and I warn, “Remember you said that.”

I reach for my quiver and slide out an arrow, the black shaft catching the faint light of the fading sun. She watches with wide, dazed eyes, lips parted, panting. I crouch low, the predator in me prowling now–careful, patient, hungry.

“Stay still,” I murmur, voice thick with gravel.

I trace the feathered fletching along the inside of her thigh, slow and deliberate. She trembles like a leaf in a storm. The feathers whisper against her skin, teasing up, closer, until they drag over the lace clinging to her soaked center.

She whimpers, knees buckling, breath catching.

I brush the fletching over her clit through the lace, again and again, light as smoke. She shudders, trying not to grind down on it. Trying to obey. Trying to please.

“You’re so good when you want to be,” I murmur, leaning in to bite her shoulder. “So desperate to prove you’re still that good little girl.”

She gasps, hips jerking. “I have to…”

“Not yet.”

I flip the arrow in my hand. The sharpened tip slides down the crotch of her panties. I pierce the lace and jerk down, shredding it into pieces.

“You really should just stop wearing these when I’m around.”

I drop the ruined lace on the forest floor. Pussy bared before me, I hover the sharp tip just above her slit. Not touching. Just threatening.

Her pupils blow wide.

I press it gently, just the edge of the tip, against her clit. Not enough to break skin, although, God, I want to. No, it’s just enough to feel dangerous. Electric. Her back arches like she’s been shocked. She lets out a strangled moan.

“Damon–”

“Shhh.” I tap it, stroke it. Just barely. Her belly trembles. “You’re so close. And I haven’t eventouchedyou.”

She’s panting, shaking now, every nerve lit and burning. Her hands grip the bark behind her, trying not to fall apart, trying not to come before I say she can.

But I want it. Ineedit.

I press the arrow down, feathering her clit in slow, deadly circles with the metal tip, until she’s writhing, every muscle coiled.

“I’m going to let you come this time,” I growl, needing this to be over before I do something stupid. Something so fucking stupid. “But do it now, before I change my mind.”

Mercifully, she does–with a cry that’s part sob, part scream, part prayer. Her body seizes and melts all at once, legs giving out. I catch her before she collapses.

The arrow drops to the ground.

“One day,” I tell her quietly, “I’m going to have you the way I want to, and you’re not going to be able to escape the sharp tip of my blade, but first the King gets your purity.” I breathe into her skin. “But the rest of you?This?” My palm presses between her legs, feeling the aftershocks of her orgasm, sticky and warm. “This ismine.”

“Thank you,” she says and I have no doubt she means it. I hold her against my chest, breathing hard, heart still pounding from the feel of her breaking open under me like that. Marked without a mark. Claimed without a claim.

For now.

26

Arianette