Page 18 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

The moonstone glowed beside the reading bench. The meal had gone untouched. I stood near the open windows, palms resting on the stone sill, watching the last glint of light fade beyond the cloistered rooftops. The bond was a vice around my chest. Each breath felt shallower than the last.

The door opened softly. Footsteps. Then that voice—gentle, uncertain.

“I’m sorry,” Callis said. “I didn’t mean to linger. The baths were full, and the path was…”

“Come here.”

It slipped from me before I could temper it. Not a command. Not exactly. But the words landed heavy in the air.

He froze just inside the threshold.

I turned to look at him .

His brow furrowed. “Did I… do something wrong?”

“No,” I said. My voice was low. Unsteady. “But I need you to come here.”

He hesitated, fingers tightening on the strap of his satchel. The air stretched taut between us.

Still, he came. Step by step, until he stood only an arm’s reach away. He didn’t meet my gaze.

“I—” he started. Then stopped.

I let the silence build a moment longer, then asked, “Do you feel it?”

He blinked. “Feel…?”

“The bond. The way it tightens.” My throat was dry. “Like ropes around your ribs. Like heat you can’t walk off. Like a hand always reaching.”

Callis’s eyes widened slightly. He nodded. “Yes. I feel it. But I thought—it was normal. Isn’t it supposed to fade?”

“It won’t fade,” I said, and took a breath sharp enough to burn. “Not like this. Not with it growing the way it is.”

He looked away. “Then it’ll get worse.”

“Yes.”

“How much worse?”

I studied him. “It will strangle us before the moon completes her cycle. That’s what it’s built to do. It’s a joining. A tether. And the longer we pretend we can live around it, the tighter it will pull.”

He closed his eyes briefly, chest rising. “I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t you learn of it at—” I didn’t know which god he had worshipped on his home isle. I knew so little of this creature I had bonded. “Your temple.”

“Learn of it? I heard this isle floated in the clouds. I heard the rituals are sealed in blood. I heard so many things I could not let myself believe…”

“You never knew?” I asked, quiet terror awakening in the pit of my stomach.

Callis’s long eyelashes fluttered. He looked ready to apologize. “I thought…” I hurried to say, then stepped closer. “I thought you didn’t want it. Didn’t want me.”

He looked up at that, startled. “No. I didn’t think I should… I didn’t want to assume. To reach for something that wasn’t…”

The silence between us frayed.

Not empty now, but heavy. Full. Charged.

I reached for him slowly, and this time, he didn’t flinch.

“I’m tired of silence,” I said.

Callis’s hand lifted—tentative, trembling—and brushed mine. The bond surged.

There was nothing left to say.

We found each other like dry grass finds flame.

And then we burned.

My fingers swept through his hair—thick, curling, still damp from the bathhouse—until they slid to the nape of his neck. I gripped him gently, then more firmly, the strands winding around my fingers like silk spun from stormclouds.

Our mouths met again, fiercer now. Lips parted not from shyness, but from craving. The kiss was all heat and hunger, the kind that unraveled restraint with every brush of skin.

Callis exhaled through his nose, the sound sharp and barely audible, but it landed in my ears like a match striking dry parchment. I stepped forward, the breath between us breaking as our bodies met.

He gave ground until his back struck the edge of the carved oak bedpost. A soft gasp spilled from him—surprise, yes, but want too.

The bond surged.

No longer the choking pull of something half-formed, half-denied. No longer a knot in my chest or a burn behind my ribs.

Now it felt like wind in sails. Like something alive rushing forward—eager, unbound. A desperate embrace that whispered: yes, yes, yes.

Callis arched forward, pressing against me, mouth finding mine with a hunger that stole my breath.

The taste of him was salted heat and whatever sweet herb lingered from the evening meal—rosemary, maybe, or fig.

His tongue met mine and the bond flared hot, flashing through my limbs like lightning licking the edges of a storm.

I groaned into the kiss, one hand sliding to his waist, gripping the soft folds of his robe, twisting it to bring him closer. My other hand stayed knotted in his hair. I pulled gently, just enough to tip his face upward, his throat bared.

His breath hitched .

I kissed him from above—slow at first, then deeper. My tongue slid along his, met hesitation, then a hungry reply. He tasted like heat. Like nervous surrender. Like promise.

The fold of his seret had loosened with our movements, slipping from his shoulder. My knuckles brushed against his skin—warm, smooth, alive—and he shivered. I chased the shiver with my mouth.

The bond pulsed again, louder than thought.

A weight behind my sternum. A throb behind my teeth. A demand.

His fingers found my sash. Trembled there.

“Do you feel it now?” I breathed, lips brushing his jaw, my voice rough with longing.

He nodded, too breathless to speak.

Then he opened his mouth—whether to answer or beg, I didn’t know—and I kissed him again before he could finish the thought.

Callis trembled beneath my hands, and the pulse of the bond echoed through him like a drumbeat I could feel in my palms, my mouth, the base of my spine. I kissed him until he tilted into me completely, no space left between us but the thinnest air. The air that tasted of him.

The bedpost dug into his back, but he didn’t flinch.

If anything, he leaned harder, needing the anchor.

My hand slipped from his seret to his bare shoulder, then lower, tracing the subtle path of his spine.

His skin was flushed, heated from within—no longer shy, no longer still.

His hands, hesitant moments ago, now moved with purpose.

One gripped my waist. The other flattened over my chest, right above my heart, as if trying to feel the bond through flesh and bone.

His head tipped back again, and I kissed the corner of his jaw, then lower—beneath his ear, along the column of his throat, down to the place where his pulse leapt like a secret begging to be found. I lingered there, lips pressed to skin, and breathed him in.

“Tell me you feel it,” I whispered.

“I do,” he said, breathless. “It’s… everything.”

I pulled back just enough to look into his face. His lips were kiss-bruised, his eyes wide and glinting with something like awe.

“I thought it was just the bond,” he admitted. “That it was supposed to ache.”

“It’s supposed to bind,” I said. “Not break.” Then, quieter: “You’re not breaking, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m burning.”

So was I.

The backs of my fingers brushed his cheek, down his throat, then slipped into the gap of his seret . His breath caught again. My lips found his collarbone, and he clutched at me—no longer patient, no longer hiding behind reverence.

The bond roared now.

Not a thread, not a hum, but a tidal pull so strong it bent the air around us. I wanted him with a need that had no name in our tongue.

“Come with me,” I murmured against his ear .

He didn’t ask where.

He just followed.

We circled the bed. I led him backwards, lips never parting long enough to let doubt creep in.

The hem of his seret trailed over the marble.

Mine slipped from my shoulders as we reached the bed, forgotten.

By the time we sank into the sheets, the world had narrowed to lust, breath, and the space between our hearts.

And then, no space at all.

Callis moaned softly into my mouth as I pressed him harder into the mattress, our bodies slotting together like hunger meeting heat.

His lips opened wider beneath mine, pliant now, hungry.

My hand slipped from his hair to the curve of his neck, fingers splayed over the pulse beating there, fast and wild like mine.

I pulled back just far enough to look at him. His eyes were glassy, mouth flushed, chest already rising in quick breaths beneath the folds of his seret .

The bond was building still. It wrapped around me like flame.

I didn’t wait for permission this time. My hands swept down his sides, drawing fabric with them.

His seret fell open, sliding down his arm, baring the length of his chest to the silver moonlight.

Smooth. Pale. Already marked with a sheen of warmth from the kiss.

I kissed down the line of his jaw, his throat, the hollow just above his collarbone, and felt him shiver.

“You’re shaking,” I murmured.

“I’m not cold.”

My lips curved against his skin .

He reached for me then, not tentative, not unsure. His hands clutched at my waist, tugging my sash loose, fingers brushing my lower back. I let the robe fall from my shoulder entirely. His breath caught again.

The bond flared, thick and golden, like honey poured straight into the hollow of my chest. It tethered us in pleasure and breath and scent.

I could taste him already on my tongue: warm, slightly salted, edged with the faint sweetness of fig and the spice of the temple incense we both walked through daily.

I kissed down his chest, each touch making my cock harder, my tongue flicking over the peak of one nipple, and his back arched with a gasp. My hands traced his hips. Every part of him was lean, fevered, strung tight with need.

He reached for me again.

I pressed harder into him, skin to skin at last.

The bond leapt like flames between us the moment our bare chests met. My cock stirred against his thigh, and I felt him pulse hot and hard against my hip. I ground into him once, slow and firm, and he whimpered—hands gripping my back, nails catching just enough to make me groan.

“You want this,” I said, voice low and rough.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Please.”