“Ahh!”

Zeth hums his approval into me as he carries on, working his tongue over my center. I gasp when he gently flicks the clamp again, but this time it’s changed. There’s no real pain now, or there is but it’s so delicious and intoxicating when combined with his mouth that it heightens the feeling to something I’ve never experienced before. I feel drunk from it.

I lift my hands from the bed where I’ve been clutching hold of the sheets, but it’s not to try and stop him. It’s to dig my fingers into the back of his neck and urge him closer. Zeth responds in kind by nipping at my clit with his teeth.

“Fair turnaround,” he growls, and then sets back to work. My back arches up off the bed, my mouth gasping open as I try to fight past the intensity of the feeling. I can’t. It’s so hard to decide if I’m bowed in pleasure or agony—they feel like the same thing right now. But when Zeth slides his fingers into my pussy, pumping them slowly in an out, it becomes very clear. Pleasure. This is what true pleasure feels like. It’s not just the softness of a kiss. It’s not just the delicate touch of hands on breasts and tongues on skin. It’s the bite of pain, the threat of danger, the risk taken in dancing with the devil. I come hard against Zeth’s mouth. He leans into it, growling and sucking and licking as I scream out my release, hands locked on my hips, pulling me into his face.

“Fuck, Zeth! Stop! Please stop!”

His back hitches as he laughs, still teasing me with his tongue. My legs scrabble against the bed, desperately trying to escape the intense post-orgasm rushes. He gets up after that, raising one eyebrow at me.

“I’m gonna take it off and then I’m gonna fuck you. Are you going to be polite?”

Polite? I’m half fucking dead. I can barely move at all as he undoes the clamp, planting a single kiss between my legs. “And yes,” he tells me. “Your lips are only allowed on my dick. But mine are allowed on these lips, at least.”

My body feels like a lead weight as he sits back a moment to inspect my languid state. He seems pretty pleased with himself. With his cock in his hand again, he shifts up the bed and gently brushes himself against my lips. I can’t help it—I want to taste him. To feel him fill me in every way possible, even in my mouth. I let my tongue play over the firm hardness of him, groaning a little at the clean taste of him. He doesn’t touch me.

We’re back to where we started, except this time I don’t bite. I lick and suck and stroke and just when I feel him about to come, I stop.

“That’s not polite,” Zeth breathlessly informs me.

I give him a half-smile. “I thought you said you were gonna fuck me?” It’s a challenge laid down by me now. Make me come again. Make me scream.

Zeth’s full lips curve upward. “You asked for it,” he says. He throws me back down onto the bed and roughly pushes my legs apart, growling again in the same animalistic way he did before when he took me back in Seattle. He delivers on his promise to make me scream. He buries himself into me over and over again, pushing as far inside me as he can, as though being hip deep just isn’t enough. I press my fingernails into his butt as he thrusts, drawing him closer, not sure how I can get any more connected with him either but still frantic to do it all the same.

We come together. His body locks up—muscles straining, eyes on fire, hands digging into my hips as he slams me to him one final time. “Fuck!” He roars this as though it’s his dying word and he wants the world to hear it, and then he slumps forward over my body.

We lie, panting, trying to catch our breath for a few moments. It feels very strange; with him on top of me, my arms still around his body, it almost feels like I’m cradling him. I think I’m imagining it at first but I break out in goose bumps when I realize that the slow up and down draw of Zeth’s index finger over my hipbone isn’t just a careless, involuntary reaction. He’s actually stroking my skin, so softly it feels like a whisper. My heart begins to pound inside my chest all over again. What the hell? What the hell is this? I slowly, hesitantly lift my arm from his back to gently trace my fingertips across the nape of his neck. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t even breathe. His own hand goes still, but I carry on, seeing how far this can go. I venture upward, teasing my fingers through his cropped hair and then downward again, tracing the lines of his muscular back, across his shoulder blades.

His hot breath skims across my naked breasts. “You’re confusing me.” He whispers so softly that I wonder for a second if I imagined it. I doubt very much that I was supposed to hear those words. What was it he said to me the day he dropped Lacey off? You can trust me. You gave yourself to me back at my apartment; I’ve never done it before, but I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a choice. That means we belong to each other now. I’ve tried endlessly not to overthink those words, but now…

Is he just as confused by us as I am?

This is supposed to be just sex. Really hardcore, dominating sex. Right? That’s all I am to him. And yet, with him lying here on my chest, it—

Thud, thud, thud!

The door practically bows off its hinges with the explosive force of the hammering from the other side. Zeth vaults off the bed, running his hands back through his hair, clearing his throat. The moment evaporates instantly, vanishes in the blink of an eye. He doesn’t look at me.

“What?” he yells. He paces, leonine, naked and incredible, still scrubbing his hands over his face and head, like he’s frantically trying to wake himself up.