Page 90 of Antiletum

I want to run my tongue across it. Tug on his lip rings with my own teeth again. See what kind of noises he would make if I did.

Val leans down his breath brushing against my ear, intimate and soft. Not at all what I’m asking for. “That’d be a good way to ease some of this tension, wouldn’t it? It is painful. How much we want each other. Maybe I could put you on your hands and knees, that way you wouldn’t even have to look at me.”

“Yes,” I sigh, eyes fluttering closed.

“Maybe I should slap your ass and tell you howbadyou’ve been. Maybe I should bite you until you bleed. Would that feel good? If I made it dirty and rough? Made you feel like you’re worthless?” As always, he reads me like an open book, knowing exactly what’s on my mind.

I tug my wrists against the spidersilk again, loving the ache, loving the captivity. The lack of control. “Yes. I need it.”

“Say it.”

“I want you to fuck me, Val.”

“Slow and sweet?”

I shake my head vigorously. “No!” Slow and sweet is the last thing I need.

“Say it.”

“Not slow and sweet. I need you hard. Harsh. Don’t talk to me nice. Fuck me rough. Bruise me and treat me mean and like this isn’t something more than it is!”

Val gives me an all too knowing smile. “You want me to quit trying to make you feel wanted.Loved.Because no one else has, right?”

Breast heaving, I snarl, “And you don’t either.”

He clicks his tongue in frustration, shaking his head. Points an accusing finger at me. “See, Delaney. Idolove you. And I’d make my choices all over again, if they brought you here. You should know that. Rest assured, we will take every single filthy fucking walk together, and it is going to be everything you are dreaming of andmore,but it won’t be today. Because here’s the thing, you arenotworthless. You arenotmy whore and nor am I yours. I am your husband, and you are my wife, and you don’t get to try and fuck me out of your system.”

My breathing increases for all the wrong reasons, anger mounting higher as his point starts to become clear. He has no intentions on following through with any of the lusty promises he just made.

“What are you trying to say, Valledyn?” I grit through my teeth, tied up, tressed up, and making a wet, filthy mess beneath me on my bed.

“What I’m saying it that this pretty little pussy isn’t getting fucked until you like me,” he announces, that maniacal gleam living proud in his eye.

I screech, wriggling like mad anew. Trying to find friction. Trying to dislodge him from where he sits. I don’t rightly know which is truly fueling me.

“You bastard!”

Val makes for the bedside table, unbothered by my thrashing. “Yes, I am a bastard. In every single sense of the word. But as we have already established”—he pauses his mission, looking down at me seriously—“I am a romantic. And you don’t get all of me until I get all of you.”

He reaches for a tray with a needle and three glittering, silver objects, glaring proof of why he’s here, to rectify my actions in removing my earrings. What occupied him in my rooms before barging in on my bath.

He comes away from the table with a needle and a little silver barbell in hand. I narrow my eyes at it.

That doesn’t look like the small studs dotted with diamonds that I was expecting.

Val’s stare tracks mine. “Ah. Yes. You didn’t want my mark on you for the world to see, despite having agreed to it,” he says shrugging a shoulder, and my heart patters faster, seeing clearly where this will end. Why Val thought it was perfect that I was naked in the bath. “I thought we might try something a little different.”

Val slides down my body, slow and careful, stare locked on mine. Still waiting for me to demand that he stop now that I’ve realized what he’s about to do, and that this jewelry is not about to go through my ears at all. Nor will this end in the satisfaction of this ache that’s eating me alive.

Despite my increased breathing, the sweat gathering at my hairline, the way I feel like my heart might race right out of my chest, I cannot tell him to stop. I don’twantto tell him to stop.

With a clean white cloth smelling of alcohol, he gently rubs down my breast, concentrating on my nipple. Cleaning it off before he pinches it between his fingers softly, like it wasn’t already painfullyhard. I cry out, pulling at the tie on my wrists, wetness dripping between my thighs unabashedly.

Val poises the needle at my waiting flesh, smiling softly. Giving me one last chance to back out.

“Do it,” I challenge.

And he slides the needle right through my nipple.