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My typpid was hard as a rock between my legs.

I was leaving little wet trails on the sheets as he pushed and pulled me where he wanted, arranging me on the bed.

He was ripping off his clothes too, and throwing them down, and I tried to turn over to watch him, but he wouldn’t let me.

He tossed me back over again and climbed on top of me, intending to carefully prepare me with his fingers, because he’d never hurt me in any way.

But I wasn’t having it. I shoved my hips backward to impale myself on his large member and he gasped and cried out at the heat and the passion I was showing him.

I was thrusting up my hips as best I could, when he rammed himself in me, half-growling, half-groaning, like he was in real pain.

He kept trying to pull my hands down, trying to come back to himself, but I reached back to caress his hip and dug in my fingernails instead, urging him on, wanting to hurt him physically, like he’d hurt me emotionally.

He jerked my hand away and began to rock his body against mine, thrusting hard inside me and not holding back.

I moved with him and against him so that he couldn’t thrust the way he wanted to.

He was breathing hard and began holding me down and moving faster, losing any control he might have had.

I turned my head and licked his ear and bit down hard on his earlobe, urging him on.

If he’d been trying to teach me some lesson, then it was me who was teaching him now.

If I was his, then he was mine too, body and soul.

It was time he acknowledged it. He could no more do without me than I could do without him.

He hadn’t come, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. He was slick with pre-come and I knew he had to be close. He began to taste the skin on the back of my neck with little nibbles and licks and sucked up a mark. I encouraged everything he did with loud groans and sounds of passion.

He turned me over and I reached up and grabbed him around the neck, pulling him down to kiss me so hard neither of us could breathe.

I saw little flashes like shooting stars in my head as he positioned himself again and thrust hard into me.

I writhed under him, making those noises that I knew would embarrass me later when I remembered them.

He had such a beautiful typpid, long and hard, with a broad mushroom head and I urged him to bury it inside me.

I twisted onto my back and reached for his balls to squeeze them, but he pushed my hand away.

I laughed and began to hump him, wanting more friction, more touch, more everything.

I was leaving trails of come on his tight stomach and he reached for my typpid to hold me in his hand.

It felt wonderful to have all of his weight on top of me, while he sucked at my skin and bit my shoulder, and I bucked my hips under him again and again, wanting more. More pleasure, more passion, more feeling, more everything.

“Mine,” he murmured in my ear, and I knew he was saying it for both of us, to reassure both of us and re-establish his claim on me.

I was fully onboard with that as far as sex was concerned.

I tried again to surge up to embrace him and pull him back down, and though he allowed it, he made murmuring sounds to me to shush me and soothe me, like I was one of the dragons.

I strained against him and cried out so loudly I was afraid some of the servants might come in to investigate.

I began spurting hot ejaculate onto my stomach and chest, and I couldn’t seem to stop.

I wanted him to come inside me. I arched against him, as he thrust against me at the same time and then suddenly, he groaned loudly and collapsed over me, panting for breath.

I could feel his hot come shooting deep inside me.

He was heavy, but I never wanted him to move.

Not ever. I wanted to stay this way, with him buried deep inside me like this, because I needed this connection to him.

I was drowsy and half asleep, but I still wanted more.

I wanted him to stay and talk to me—fight with me if he had to, but figure this thing out between us, because I didn’t want him to leave and go back to the mountain camp with us so at odds.

But he lay beside me for only a few minutes, panting for breath, and then he sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands, like he was coming back to himself.

I put a hand on his back. “No, don’t get up. Stay and talk to me!”

“No,” he said, getting back to his feet. “I hate this. I can’t control my feelings for you, and you use it against me.” He turned to look down at me, still deadly cold. I could practically see him building his defensive walls against me.

“I don’t use it against you. What are you talking about? I thought we were making love.”

“No, you were deliberately baiting me to make love to you. Walking around naked like a-a…”

“Oh wait, I know this one. Like a whore, right? And what is it that you hate so much? Making love to me? Or are you embarrassed to be with someone like me? Someone foreign and strange.”

“No, and you know that’s not what I meant. I hate being so out of control and unable to resist you. I will conquer this. I have to.”

I wondered if he’d forgotten for a moment that he was talking out loud, and if he knew that each word he spoke was like a dagger to my heart. Conquer it? He wanted to conquer what? His love for me? His attraction to me? His need to be with me?

Pain surged inside me as surely as if he truly had just sunk a knife into my chest. He wanted to resist me, huh?

Well, maybe I could help him with that by putting some distance and space between us.

Quite literally. I made up my mind in that instant not to be there when he decided to return.

I stayed quiet, which for me, really wasn’t easy.

I turned away from him, hoping he’d think I’d gone back to sleep.

After a while, he began to get dressed. I heard him go to the door and hesitate.

“Rylan?” he called. His voice was soft, but I still thought it sounded unfriendly and cold.

I never moved or even glanced over my shoulder at him.

Then I heard the bedroom door shut behind him and he was gone.

I continued to lie there, too heartsick to move, like I knew I had to do eventually.

I had no choice but to find a way to go on.

I didn’t actually want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with me, no matter what my stupid heart was telling me.

I couldn’t think of anything that could possibly be any worse. I began to make plans to leave him.

Arguments are funny things, though. During one, people will almost say anything they can to hurt the other person and thereby win the fight.

Terrible things they don’t even mean or only mean at the time they say them.

Arguments and words can be destructive, because even if the words aren’t really true, they make the person they’re aimed at love you just a little less than they loved you before.

Blake had told me of an ancient torture called “death by a thousand cuts.” I knew exactly what that meant now.

Meanwhile, it left me feeling so hurt and angry that I wanted to strike back at him. To wound him even more than I was wounded—this person that I claimed to love.

As the minutes passed by, and I really thought things through, I knew I didn’t want to go away from him.

I still loved him more than I thought possible.

But that would change unless we did something to stop this.

I had so many big feelings inside me that I didn’t know what to do with them.

I had tried to stuff them away deep inside, but they didn’t fit anymore.

They were bursting out of me now and destroying me little by little.

Maybe I should just go home for a while and think things over.

I loved him, but I couldn’t stand the idea of one day hating him.

And if we kept on this way, I might. Maybe we could have some kind of long-distance relationship.

It wasn’t ideal, but if we could keep our connection, then I wouldn’t have to stay at home like some housewife and slowly go insane.

He might not even object. He wasn’t with me now, and I rarely saw him anyway.

Unable to keep going over and over it, I dressed in a hurry and took off outside, practically running to the enclosures to see Talon.

He was so easy to love and always so glad to see me, no matter what, and I needed that just then.

He stuck his head out through the bars of his gate inquiringly as he heard me running across the field.

He was still munching on his first meal, and had fresh sheep’s blood smeared around his mouth and chest.

“Rylie!” he called out to me, clearly happy to see me.

I knew from experience that later, he’d spend some time licking his paws and cleaning himself up just like an enormous cat, like the one Blake kept in the palace.

He’d had Nilanium traders bring it to him when it was a kitten, and it had been hanging around the palace ever since, perching in windows, or basking in the sun or even sitting in Blake’s lap just to annoy Davos.

My omak-ahn had that animal for a few years now and was talking about getting a boy cat to breed it, but I thought that was probably just talk.

“I was eating after seeing Sulamon and the general off a few minutes ago,” Talon told me. “Are you sad that they left? The general seemed sad too. And mad. He said they had to go back to their camp, but I wish we could go too, don’t you? I could try to cheer him up.”

I managed to nod and smile, because I didn’t want him to see how upset I was. Of course he did anyway, because he was telepathic. He cuddled right up to me.