Chapter 5 · The New Contract

I closed the last half inch myself. Didn't beg. Didn't say stop. Just grabbed a fistful of his torn collar and pulled him down the rest of the way, because if I was going to lose this fight I wasn't going to lose it slow.

He made a sound against my mouth that wasn't a word, more like something breaking off him he'd been holding onto for years. Cold vault steel bit into my spine. His hand hooked under my knee and dragged my leg up around his hip, and the drag of him against me knocked every smart thing I've ever said about self-control right out of my head.

"Say you don't want this." His breath scorched along my jaw, hot enough I felt it before his teeth grazed my ear.

"Say it, Rhea. I'll stop."

"Shut up and finish it." He drove into me on a groan that cost him something he didn't have to spare. My nails found his shoulder and dug in — I felt him hiss through his teeth like the pain was a reward he'd been chasing his whole miserable life. He started slow. Brutal, in how patient it was.