Page 116 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Tattoos were my way to mark the inevitable—me. Getting inked meant handing your life over. Your sole solution to freedom was to flay your skin to rid yourself of it.

“Who says I want to go back? I chose this for a reason. I need your compound to take down Ilasall.”

She could pretend as long as it took her fascinating mind to come to the conclusion she wanted us. I more than took pleasure in having her crumble on my fingers and tongue, seeing her tense up right before an orgasm burned through her, but she always fought me. Not that I did not like that. I did. But I wanted her to fully give in, to claim all of her.

I wanted to dissect the corridors of her memory, etch my name into every crevice, so whenever she opened her eyes, my name occupied her vision.

I needed her to bemine.

I had prohibited Zion from taking it further with her since that first dinner and the way it drove him bat-shit crazy was incredibly entertaining. And stirred something up in me.

And her… Each time Kali stood up to me, her chin held high in a challenge and a mischievous tilt of her lips, it tested the limits of my patience holding me back from bending her over, tanning her ass until she dripped down her thighs, and fucking her into oblivion.

She suspected that I liked to control and to hurt, in a different way than Zion, but I knew that if I had shown her a glimpse before she had the tattoo, she would have run away.

She had to choose it consciously. And she had done so mere minutes ago, riding Zion while Dorrian painted her skin, linking her to me irreversibly.

Though she struggled to admit she liked pain and to fight, now she was going to take it and anything else I chose to give.

“You belong to me now. Your pleasure, your nightmares, your dreams—they are all mine.” I grabbed her throat through the collar, the leather supple but firm—like her. A reed plant swaying in the wind, bending with its strong gusts and yet always springing back up. “I want to simultaneously strangle you for not succumbing to me and worship you on my knees. I cannot get you out of my head. I hate how I can’t stop thinking about you, yet I want nothing more than to have you.”

She gulped, and her hands glided to rest on my chest. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because I want you to keep it in your mind while I completely ruin you in front of our friends.” I hauled her to the edge of the desk, her ass nearly hanging off it.

She threw her arms around my neck to keep her balance. “I asked you to do your worst that time in the bathtub. I’m not afraid of you, Gedeon. Nor you, nor Zion. Nothing can ruin me.”

I fisted her hair, and she angled her head. “I have already begun, whether you realize it or not. You did not come until Iallowedyou, youbeggedme to give you permission, and just nowadmittedyou crave me to kiss you.” My tongue skimmed the seam of her mouth. “I am not a good man, Kali. I am one who takes what I want. I do not ask.” I settled my eyes on hers, as green as the forest. “I will hurt you. And I will make you scream loud enough for everyone to hear you call out my name.”

“Not go?—”

I smothered her protest by capturing her lips, adjusting my hold on her back to give me the perfect angle to devour her.

The taste of her was excruciating. Her tongue twining with mine sucked any semblance of coherence from my thoughts. I groaned into her mouth, and she melted in response, pressing up as close as possible, scrunching up my shirt, erasing any inch of space between us. Legs wrapping around me, she ground against my obvious bulge, eroding my self-restraint.

Little sounds coming out of her grew wilder, her hips searching for friction more frantic, and I released my grip on her hair, instead sliding between her legs, gathering her wetness, hers and Zion’s leaking cum, and pushed two fingers inside her. “Your body is demanding to be claimed,” I growled into her mouth, consuming her gasp.

“Oh, gods.” A moan danced on her breath.

“What did I say? No gods here.” I withdrew to rub circles around her clit. “You pray to me.”

She wriggled, but the position I had her in did not give her much freedom to move. I ripped my jeans open and, without a single warning, plunged inside her drenched pussy.

Wet, hot, and sotight. I groaned into her neck. As if that would help me to hunt down the dissolving pieces called self-control.

“Gedeon,” she cried out, the muscles in her legs straining and, fuck, her saying my name did things to me.

I uncoiled the leather strip connected to her collar and draped it over her bare back. “Lean back.”

“Why?” She clenched around me deliberately.

I hit my palm on the wooden surface. “I want everyone to see you fall apart,” I ground out, and nodded to Zion waiting on the other side of the desk.

He yanked on the leash. She shrieked as she fell backward onto the smooth wooden surface, and he caught her head.

“What the—” She clawed at her collar. Zion had coiled the leather strip around his fist to keep her in place without a chance of getting up.

“I want to see you crumble.” I thrust into her, my thumb digging deep above her hips—she was going to carry my bruises for weeks; not a day without my marks on her body—and another teasing her clit in a bit too rough circles that made her squirm. The more aggressive I was, the harder she came. “I want to ravage you like a savage.”