Page 20 of Sold to the Nalgar (Stolen From Earth #3)

S he moved like a creature forged from frost, elegant, composed, and utterly untouchable.

Zarokh watched her in silence, his massive frame sinking slightly into the mattress as she crawled to sit beside him.

Each movement was slow and deliberate. Not hesitant.

Not afraid, but calculated. Contained. The robe clung to her like armor, the deep violet folds gripped tightly in her fists, as though she believed fabric could shield her from him.

She sat with her limbs drawn inward, tension coiled beneath her skin like a wire wound too tight. Her chin tilted slightly, spine straight. Regal. Beautiful. Controlled.

Not his.

Not yet.

She obeyed, but not because she’d bent to him.

She obeyed because she’d assessed the gameboard and chosen the only move that left her with even a shred of power.

He could see it in her eyes, in those deep, fathomless eyes, which were almost depthless black.

Hers were eyes that hid nothing and everything at once.

This wasn’t submission, it was strategy.

Fascinating.

He hadn’t expected... this.

Not this clarity, this fire wrapped in ice, this quiet dignity that made her seem taller, older, and more formidable than her delicate body would suggest.

He had expected tears. Or begging. Or brokenness.

She gave him nothing except defiance hidden beneath cold composure. Strength wearing the mask of surrender.

And somehow, that was far more potent because it made her harder to break.

And far more desirable—almost unbearably so.

His jaw clenched. The scent of her—still lingering, still maddening—wrapped around him, soaking into his senses, igniting something deeper, darker, and more primal. It was everything he’d wanted when he’d demanded a human. Exotic. Fragile. Sweet.

But this ... this wasn't sweetness.

This was something else.

She was not what he had paid for.

She was more.

His fangs pressed lightly against the inside of his mouth. Not with hunger, but with restraint.

He could have taken what he wanted. Pinned her, tasted her, and torn past every barrier. She was small. He was big. He was a god on this planet, and she… an acquisition, a luxury. Mere chattel.

Or so he told himself.

She should have meant nothing.

So why was he holding himself still?

Why did he want her to look at him again with something other than loathing?

Zarokh exhaled slowly and steadily through his nose, his breath measured. A deep rumble stirred in his chest, like distant thunder over cold mountains.

This was not what he had planned.

And yet, he found himself wanting to see what would happen if he waited. If he let the frost melt just a little.

Just enough... to taste what lay beneath.

Zarokh’s gaze remained fixed on her.

She sat beside him as if sitting beside a blade: aware of its sharpness, its danger, yet refusing to show fear.

Her posture was still guarded, arms wrapped around her knees beneath the folds of purple silk.

The collar at her throat gleamed faintly under the low ambient lighting.

A reminder. A symbol. She belonged to him.

But not yet in spirit.

Her mind was still fortified, encased behind walls of fury and grief. Behind loss. Behind the shattering of her world. He saw it. Respected it, even. But it was inconvenient.

She would come to him. He would see to it.

There were ways. Techniques whispered in courtrooms, traded between powerful warlords, used by Dukkar traders with delicate cargo like her. Stories of humans, their reactions, their softness . How easily they yielded when handled correctly.

Their pleasure centres, it was said, were not so different from those of the Nalgar. Touch. Sensation. Stimulation. They responded to pleasure. Could be retrained by it.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She was still silent, pretending to be made of steel, not flesh.

But she was flesh.

Warm, pulsing, sensitive flesh. And that was his advantage.

He shifted slightly on the bed, slow enough not to startle her, but deliberately enough to draw her attention.

Her dark eyes flicked toward him—watchful, resentful…

But curious.

He let the silence stretch between them, allowing it to grow heavy and intimate.

Then finally, he spoke, his voice low and rich, curling through the translator like a caress.

"You are not ready to give me your mind," he said. "So perhaps... I will take your body first."

Her eyes narrowed. She shifted and recoiled slightly, but didn’t rise. He had expected resistance. He wanted it. Resistance made surrender sweeter.

He tilted his head thoughtfully, as if studying a puzzle. "Do you know, human," he said, "that many of your kind, when taken... eventually beg for what they once feared?"

Her jaw clenched. Her fingers dug into her knees.

He leaned in, just enough for his breath to brush her cheek. “Pleasure can be a leash, too.”

She flinched—barely—but he felt it.

It was beginning.

He drew back with a slow, deliberate smile, not one of cruelty, but of certainty. "I will not force you, Cecilia. But I will teach you. You will learn how it feels to be touched. Desired. Worshipped.”

He let his gaze travel over her, taking in her bare feet tucked beneath her, the tendrils of dark hair clinging to her neck, the curve of her shoulder bared slightly by the loose robe.

She swallowed.

He saw her pulse flutter. Sensed it.

Yes.

There it was.

The first crack in the wall.

“I wonder,” he murmured, more to himself than to her, “how long before you stop pretending you don’t want it too.”

He didn’t rise.

Instead, he shifted closer until their knees nearly touched on the bed. Her breath hitched.

He heard it.

Savored it.

It wasn’t fear.

Not entirely.

There was something else.

Anticipation.

He reached out—not to seize, not to dominate, not yet—but to show. To demonstrate the control he possessed… and the restraint he would choose to use.

His hand, bare now, powerful and elegant, brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. At first, she flinched, but she didn’t pull away.

That was all the permission he needed.

Zarokh’s palm cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing across the delicate slope of her cheekbone. She was warm beneath his touch. So warm. The contrast of her soft skin to the strength of his hand sent a thrill up his spine.

“You are… exquisite,” he said softly, letting the translator feed the words to her in perfect English—her human tongue. “Do you know what it does to me, to be so close to something so... alive?”

She didn’t answer. But her lips parted slightly, and her lashes fluttered. He watched her pulse flutter in her neck.

She was fighting him… but she was also listening.

Good.

He leaned in, closer still, so close he could scent her properly now, beneath the antiseptic tang of the cleansing chamber, beneath the faint minerals of the robe’s fabric.

There it was.

Her.

Sweet. Complex. Bright and dark at the same time.

It made his fangs ache.

He shifted behind her now, moving so swiftly and silently that she barely noticed until his breath was on her ear.

“I’m going to show you,” he said, “what your body can feel in my hands. What you were made for.”

She stiffened.

But when he placed his hand on her shoulder, she didn’t move to stop him.

Slowly, he drew his hand down the curve of her arm, along the velvet sleeve. Not forcing the robe open—no, that would come later, if she allowed it—but simply tracing her through it. Letting her feel the intent, the hunger held in check.

She was shivering.

Not from the cold, not from fear alone.

“Touch is the first lesson,” he murmured. “Before the blood. Before the bite. I want your body to know mine. To want mine.”

He pressed a kiss to the side of her throat: not biting, not even grazing with fang, just the heat of his mouth on her pulse point.

She gasped.

His tongue flicked out, just once. Just to taste the salt of her skin.

Then... he pulled back, just enough to meet her gaze.

“You see,” he said softly, “I can take nothing… and make you feel everything.”

Her eyes were wide, her lips parted.

She hated him, but he saw it now, unmistakable beneath the defiance.

Desire.

It was deeply buried and conflicted. But it was there.

Zarokh smiled and reached for the knot at her waist.

His fingers—unhurried, assured—slipped beneath the sash and began to loosen it slowly, reverently, as if he were unwrapping a long-awaited offering. The thick velvet belt slithered free, and the weight of the robe shifted against her small frame.

Still, she didn’t stop him. She didn’t move.

But when she turned her head, her eyes met his, and they were no longer wide with shock or fear.

They were cold.

As cold as the ice-crusted steppes of Rakharis, where the sun never touched the ground and the wind stripped flesh from bone.

Still… after all this.

It amused him.

She glared like a warrior defying her executioner, not a human slave sitting helpless on his bed.

The robe slipped from her shoulders in a silent cascade, pooling behind her like dark water. He traced the path of it with his eyes: her newly bared skin, the soft, glowing texture of it. The dips and swells of her waist, her hips, her thighs.

Exquisite.

She didn’t cover herself. She simply sat, her head held high, glaring at him with the fire of someone who knew she had already lost everything and had nothing left to protect.

And that— that —was more powerful than submission.

He dragged in a slow breath, nostrils flaring as her scent rose to meet him fully, unimpeded now. His fingers twitched.

She was the most stunning thing he had ever seen. Not because of her beauty—though that was undeniable—but because of the fury, the intelligence, the absolute refusal to break.

Not yet.

He crouched before her, a predator studying its equal—not its prey.

“You burn,” he said, eyes glowing faintly red in the dim light. “Even stripped bare and brought to your knees… you burn.”

She didn’t speak. She didn’t flinch.

She only watched him with that same icy fury in her gaze, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling with shallow breath.

And Zarokh thought…

Good.

Let her burn.

He would feel every flicker of her fire as he consumed her.