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With one hand, he pushed one of my knees to the side, spreading me out beneath him. Silas helped my trembling hands shove his trousers down until he sloughed them off. He sat back on his knees and had my pants off in a few rough tugs.

“Calista.” His dark eyes roved over my nakedness, head to foot. “You’re . . . I-I hardly know where I want to start. I want every bleeding piece of you.”

“Promises, promises,” I said. “I’d rather you prove it.”

“Careful what you ask for, Little Rose.” The silky darkness of his voice rumbled through my bones, my blood, to my very soul.

While I settled back on the rug, Silas kept me locked in his heated stare. The tip of his tongue slipped out, wetting his lips, as he watched me recline on my elbows and slowly let my knees drop to the sides.

If I did not feel his passion, his affection to the deepest threads of my heart, I might fear him by the way he looked at me, the way he prowled over me like I would not survive whatever he had planned.

Silas fitted his hips between my thighs. Unable to stop, my body snapped in an arch to feel him, to kill any distance between us.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered against my neck.

“I think it’s inevitable.” I bit my lip and slid my hand between us, curling my fingers around the fullness of his length and stroked once, twice, until the man panted into the crook of my neck.

“Tell me . . . you’ll tell me, right? If I hurt you?”

“Silas.” I hooked my ankles around his thighs. “I want this with you. No one touches you but me, and no one will ever touch me but you. You can’t hurt me, not really.”

When he propped onto his elbows, a furrow gathered between his brows. I rubbed it away and guided the crown of his length to the heat of my slit.

In a painfully sensual crawl, he nudged into my dripping center. All gods. My body stretched and adjusted to pull him in, but when he was met with resistance, he hesitated.

“Please.” I kissed him. I kissed him for all the turns I could’ve had with him. I kissed him for the pain he’d endured watching helplessly from the dark. I kissed him to prove how this choice was mine. Not fate’s, not a bond; he was mine because I chose him.

He rolled his hips in a quick thrust. Silas cupped my head and held me through the whimper of pain when a sharp burn shot through my center. A hot tear fell from the corner of my eye. He kissed it away.

“All right?” he rasped.

I nodded, digging my fingernails into his hips. I slowly arched against him, the movement soothing the burn.

Silas met my rhythm; slow to build, but it wasn’t long before our pace quickened to a frenzied rush, and the slap of skin against skin echoed through the music hall.

My body quaked in his hold. When he pressed his body down, I arched up. Like we were determined to melt into each other. His length filled me from root to tip, and every thrust sent bright shocks of tantalizing pleasure surging through my veins.

“You’re mine,” he gritted out. Silas bit down on my bottom lip, quickening his thrusts.

To form words seemed too great a task, but the haggard whisper slipped out with each thrust. “I’ve always . . . been . . . yours.”

The candlelight, the heat, the rush of our bodies, it all burned together until a tremble of delicious warmth flowed from my skull to my belly; like molten ore, it spilled between us until I shattered. I cried out his name. My claws left red scratches across his arms as I lost control.

“Silas,” I gasped. “Hells. Bleeding gods. There.” My body squirmed and writhed outside my control. “There, gods, deeper.”

His breaths were ragged pants. Silas straightened his arms and rolled his hips, in rough, furious thrusts. What little control he had left snapped. He pounded into me, wringing out every last drop of my release until his body shuddered. His breath caught and his face heated in a beautiful twist of pleasure.

I rattled the palace with my cries. He was beautifully silent but for the sharp, rough gasps against my cheek as the heat of his release spilled into me.

When his muscles began to quiver, Silas sank over me, both of us gasping and holding onto each other like the darkness might tear us apart all over again. With a sweet kiss, Silas rolled onto his shoulder.

He glanced down and cursed. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at my thighs. True enough, a small splatter of blood was there and on the rug. “I hear it’s normal.”

Silas frowned and hurried to his feet, abandoning the room through a side door.

“Where are you . . . wait, where are you going?”