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“Stop!”

Instead of his fingers slowing, his tongue abandoning me, he chuckles into my folds. “Better…”

And with renewed strength he pushes my legs flat with those damn elbows, spreading me wider as he heals me with torture, inside and out. Too many fingers, too much tongue. Too intense. My toes curl. I cry for him to stop. But when he does, even for a breath, I push his head back down and demand more. I’m as rapt with the control he has over me as I am with the perfect amount of pain, but I give the man the fight we both want. And he fucking loves it. His hands and mouth attack with feverish passion. I pull his hair, his ears. I beg. I scratch. I curse. I hit. He comes up gasping for air, laughs and goes back for more.

My body shakes, contracting from the inside out. I reach for the moss at my sides, grasping at the mat of fine leaves—something to anchor me, to keep me from succumbing to the torment. All around us, the bed of green lights up. The surrounding trees whoosh back, hit by a tidal wave of air. The ground jolts beneath us. Magic shoots up my arms and spreads,winding and searching, vibrating energy steering through me and settling within.

Eli pops his head up, smirking hungrily. “I would have started with this if I’d known.”

I shove his head down, and he goes back to pumping those fingers and nibbling my lips as the white glow falls away into the ground and disappears. His elbows slip off me as he pushes my thighs farther back, his ravishment near frantic, and in a second I have them up and over his shoulders, trapping his head between them. Each savage stroke of his tongue undoes me, but I need more of him. I pull on his suspenders, stretching the black twists until he finally looks up at my pleading face.

“Get the fuck inside of me, now.”

He pulls away, fingers sliding out of me as he lowers my hips to the ground and kneels between my legs. The emptiness, the lack of his touch, rearranges my soul.

A smile breaks across his face. He licks his fingers one by one, then wipes my juices from his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Nothing there either. No darkness inside or out. You were wrong.” He slips the suspenders off his shoulders and pulls his shirt over his head.

My world spins, faster and faster, forcing me to the edges of space and time and right into Eli. I thought I was drawn to him before, but this? It’s unreal. The curves of his muscles. The soft brown skin. The scars. I want it all. I sit up to take it, but the knife is poised in his deft hand again. I freeze.

“You’re spotless, but that’s not the case for me.” He slashes the blade across his chest, drawing blood in a furious flash of silver. Black blood—thick, black, oozing blood.

“Do you still want me?” He holds out his arms, letting me take it all in.

My heart screeches to a halt—then beats again, for him. I scramble onto my knees and tear down his boxers and pantswith a violent shove, leaving the waistbands around the thick muscles of his thighs. His icy exterior is nowhere to be found when I wrap my hands around his cock and indulge in deep strokes. And the noise he makes—it’s the most beautiful groan straight from his chest.

He wraps his arms around me, holding me tight, my cheek mashed against his bloody chest. I suckle at his skin, working my way down, thinking if I didn’t already know better, I’d expect him to come in spurts of sticky blackness. My lips slip along, finding the perfect spot over a rib. And I bite him. My teeth break his skin, and a drop of blood finds my tongue, cold and…spicy.

He shoves my head away, chuckling.

“A taste for a taste.” I grin and collapse before him, opening my mouth. I want to makehimbeg me to stop. He won’t even know I’ve never done this.

“No, not after your stunt—this one or with the cuffs,” he scolds. “When I let you suck me, it’ll end in me fucking that hot little mouth and coming all over your pretty face. Then I’ll spread it around and let you lick my fingers clean.”

I look up into his eyes as he takes his cock from my hands and slides the dripping head in hot lines back and forth across my parted lips, mixing the black and white.

I kiss it.

“Fuck.” His hips pull away, and both hands move to fist my hair. “But right now, the only place I want to come is inside that sweet pussy, and I’m not sure I could hold back if my cock were down your throat.”

I swallow. It’s all I can do.

He pulls me up by my hair, then crushes the sides of my face in a cold embrace. “You’re fucking mine, Never.” He smashes a kiss onto my wet lips. “And so we’re clear, the only one who’s going to be in cuffs again is you.”

“Very funny.”

He grins and throws me on my back, my feet over his shoulders. “Not a joke.”

One hand lines up the scorching head of his cock at my entrance, and our eyes meet as he makes a slippery circle around it, then pops the tip inside and back out, leaving me crying out and punching any bit of him I can reach. “Hurry the fuck up.”

He does.

His full length rams into me, filling all the emptiness in every way. So deliciously complete. Nothing slow or careful or tender about it. Groaning, my breasts held tight in his harsh grasp, he gives himself to me—for the thousandth time, and for the very first time. All mine. No gentle roaming or kisses, just a primal beast tearing me apart. I ache with every slamming thrust, his touch filling my mind and body beyond my depths and stretching me into a new existence.

My thoughts fracture with the way he crashes into me. He pounds me back to life, luring my body to him from the green blades of grass.Live. Live. Live. Live.

I watch him—his movements, his features tightening, distorting, fierce and uncontrolled. He’s brutal. And gorgeous.

“You have to promise,” he says between strikes.