Page 58 of The Cruel Heir

But I didn’t.

Because I was tired. Because the world had already taken everything. Because he’d broken me before, and still managed to offer something more than anyone else ever had: permanence.

When he came to me, his body warm and hard, and towering over mine, I didn’t resist. He untied the sash of my robe, and it slipped down my arms like surrender. My skin prickled from the cool air, my full breasts heavy and bare beneath the dim lamplight, nipples a deep brown that had never been touched without consequence.

He looked.

He worshiped.

He bent and took one into his mouth, slow and deliberate, lips sealing around my nipple, like it was something sacred. His tongue circled once, then again. My hands clenched the sheets, nails biting fabric, breath shuddering.

"You were always going to be mine," he said against my skin.

His hands were rough, but reverent. Trailing down my stomach, cupping the curve where life grew inside me. His mouth followed, lower and lower, kissing a path from navel to thigh.

He parted my legs, with a gentleness that betrayed everything he’d done to get me here.

And when he finally touched me, tongue slow, hands firm, his voice low and thick with hunger, I hated that my body didn’t fight.

It rose for him.

It wept for him.

Because even when I hated him, my body remembered him.

And tonight? It remembered everything.

He didn’t rush.

He slid two fingers between my thighs, testing my readiness, my limits. His breath stuttered against my shoulder, when he found me already soaked, already swollen from his mouth.

“This is what they’ll never understand,” he muttered. “That I didn’t have to break you. I just had to wait.”

I hated him for saying it. Hated that it wasn’t entirely wrong.

Because when he pushed inside me, slow and possessive, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream. I took him like I’d done it before. Like he fit. Like he belonged.

His hips rolled deeper, dragging against my walls, until the breath left my lungs in ragged pulses.

Sterling held my hands above my head, our fingers laced against the headboard. His chain dangled between us, brushing my chin. He fucked me like I was a vow. Like every thrust was a promise, dirty, blasphemous, eternal.

“You want something rough?” he growled, when I bit his shoulder. “Then fucking take it.”

He flipped me without warning, face down, ass raised. Spanked me once, hard enough to sting, soft enough to tease. I cried out, hips jerking, and he laughed low in his throat.

My hands slipped against the silk sheets, but he grabbed my wrists, pinned them behind my back, and drove into me again, harder now, hips smacking flesh with every punishing thrust.

“You’re so fucking wet,” he groaned. “You like this. Say it.”

“No.”

He slammed into me harder.

“Say it.”

“I hate you,” I spat, even as my body shook, with the orgasm curling in my spine.

He bent over me, lips brushing my ear.