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My lower half was heated again, my body flaring with lust once more.

Damn him.

His eyes opened, his gaze dark. “You’ve told me little about your past, Diora, but from what I’ve gathered, you experienced much pain. I can offer you pleasure that won’t erase those memories—but will balance them out instead.”

My throat swelled, my lower bits throbbing.

I stabbed my fork back into my cake. “Keep talking like that and I’m going to withdraw your standing invitation to sleep in my room,Love.”

He barked out a laugh. “Stars, you’re lovely.”

My eyes rolled. “Shut up and enjoy the cake, bastard.”

He did as I commanded—though he was grinning the entire time.

We couldn’t finishthe cake, or the ice cream, so we snuck them into Namir’s kitchen and left them in his fridge and freezer before heading up to my room.

His hair had only just barely dried after his shower, but I felt dirty after playing with so many food ingredients, so I slipped into the bathroom to wash up. My body was tired, but pleasantly so—and my mind was worn out too, but in a way I loved.

I put my hair up so it wouldn’t get wet—it wasn’t dirty, and still felt incredibly soft—before slipping into the shower and turning the water on. My eyes closed and my mind wandered as the relaxing heat fell from above.

It felt good to have learned, and had new experiences that day. Never in my life had I done so many new things before, and I absolutely loved knowing that I had. I was learning to read—and eventually write. And I had learned to cook. I was nowhere near professional at it, but after I learned to read, I would be able to stumble my way through a recipe with relative ease.

Learning so many new things was a rush, but my mind kept returning to the words Namir had said to me at the table.

“I can offer you pleasure.”

Maybe it had been the taste of the chocolate cake lingering in my mouth at the time, or the thrill of learning new skills, or the way my mind kept going back to his hand on my thigh that morning, but his offer was tempting.

Very, very tempting.

He hadn’t asked me to fuck him, or stripped in front of me so I had no choice but to see his naked body—he’d asked to give me pleasure.

And damn, that was tempting.

I’d spent my entire life either in a cell with two other women or in a room being tortured—there had been no pleasure for me. I knew that theoretically, I could figure out how to give that to myself, but…

Well, Namir was my fated mate. And he was absolutely gorgeous. And he hadofferedto give me pleasure.

“Am I really considering this?” I whispered to myself. The noise of the falling water from the shower heads would prevent Namir from hearing me, I knew.

I didn’t have to answer the question out loud; I already knew the truth.

I was definitely, definitely considering it.

There were so many things I had never had the chance to try, or do. So many things I had missed out on. And the pleasure of sex was one of them.

My mind went back to the way he’d dragged his thumb over my lip—the way he’d taken it into his own mouth afterward, and groaned at the taste of me and chocolate on his tongue.

My body flushed.

He had offered me pleasure, and…

I wanted it.

My hands were shaking a bit as I turned the water off.

My stomach clenched pleasantly, my lower half hot and achy as I reached out for the towel and found the robe.