I’m wet. So wet for him. It helps. The tightness inside me melts around his thorough penetration, the pain transforming into beautiful agony that I don’t want to end.
He feels like pain and desire.
Like danger and grace.
Tears rush down my temples.
He rears up and possesses my throat, pinning me, pumping in and out, my entire body gyrating beneath him. Pain shoots through my abdomen again, too deep, too thick.
Desperate, I reach up, needing my hands on him to feel safe, but he’s out of reach.
He catches my swinging wrists and presses my palms to his warm abdomen, where the muscles tighten with each thrust. “I’m here.”
My head is spinning, and I think I might blackout when he grabs my thigh and angles my backside, taking me down a path of pleasure.
Then there is no gravity.
No room. No bed. No up. No down.
Just him and me and his length rubbing every nerve that lines my channel.
“Fuck.” He groans, his hips moving, methodical and powerful. “That’s my good girl. Squeeze my cock. Let me feel you fall apart for your king.”
My pleasure blooms, then it quickly erupts, warmth rushing down the inside of my legs and curling my toes. I never want him to stop.
Even with the pain.
A deep, dark groan rumbles from him, and he tense as if he may shed his skin, his abdominals bulking beneath my fingers.
He pumps into me with a rough growl and comes, filling me between the legs until it’s pouring out of me, down my thighs. It’s violent and intense.
He stills, breathing loud and fierce.
I wish I could see him.
He drops down to his elbows, his body completely covering mine, his lips finding their place against my wet forehead. “My sweet Aster.” His breath is heavy. “My little creature. Tell me you’re not hurt.”
Coming down from that place of intensity, I feel my body. Feel him still inside me, hard and softly pulsing. Feel a tightness in my chest as I inhale a deep breath, perhaps the first since he started. Feel my pussy—that’s what he calls it—sore, swollen around him. Feel my thighs ache.
“Aster?”
“I’m okay, my king,” I say, my words a butterfly on the breeze, fragile but determined.
Lifting my trembling arms, I cup the back of his thick neck. Stroke him. Subtle. And immediately, his tension lessens, his inner beast shuddering.
A rough sigh cascades across me. “Is this what you wanted, little creature? Are you happy?”
Blinking, my lashes tickling the silk, I smile despite my lethargy. It strikes me—this is why we spent hours in ballet. To keep us nimble, loose and flexible, and to train the body to recover after intensity. It was always sold as a means for grace and posture, but as a familiar muscle fatigue squeezes me, I realise this is the main reason. “To be your Silk Girl, my king. Yes. I’ve been training to be one, and to be yours, to carry a lord. What more could a girl want?”
“More,” he utters, but it’s hardly audible.
He moves down to my lips, his length drags from inside me, and I gasp at being emptied, but he swallows my sounds, kissing me hard and confusing my senses.
“Don’t move,” he orders against my soft, nervous lips. As his mouth moves on mine, he slides a pillow under my backside, hoisting my hips.
My spine pangs with shock as he moves me, trails kisses down my naked body and leaves me panting to the dark, air cooling my sweaty flesh.
I can’t see, but I can feel his gaze between my legs. Warm fingertips touch my aching core.
“Is there a lot of blood?” I ask.
“Yes,” he hisses, a tight jaw dulling the word.
Something warm and wet laps along the outside of my swollen lips, the stimulation so subtle and so profound.
I blush. “What are you doing?”
“I want to taste your virgin blood.”
“Master Cairo will be glad,” I offer in response to having a heavy bleed. My seal was strong; it’s a sign of purity.
Blood is good.
And I’m fine.
Still unsure how I feel, I try to focus on one emotion, but I feel so many. I almost want to cry, overwhelmed. And I wonder whether Iris felt anything or whether she was a perfect vessel without useless emotions, only focused on her Purpose.
I hear his growl against my pussy. “Don’t say his name while we are together, especially while I am licking your blood from your swollen pussy lips. This is what he made me do to you. Break you. Hurt you.”
His words tear into me.
It’s what I wanted.
I’m so confused.
Didn’t I do this right?
My vows: I'll thrill and quiver in being the vessel that brings him peace. I'll massage him inside my heat, clearing his mind and mine to all but Meaningful Purpose.
He is meant to be peaceful. I’m meant to have taken his darkness and frustrations. I failed—my throat tightens with tears. “You don’t want an heir, my king?”
“It’s not that simple.”
Yes, it is.
Still blind, I squint as the dark shadows dance around the room. “It is. Didn’t I bring you peace? Was I not good?”
“Your life may be simple and peaceful,” he states, his voice growing rougher, bearing a dark hatred. “Bat your eyelashes, spread your pretty thighs, and let a lord fuck you bloody, but I’m not so easily conditioned to my so-called-Purpose.”
He makes it sound awful.
His cruel utterance delivers a crushing hit, bursting the cracked dam of my resolve. Overcome, overstimulated, I give in—tears spring from my eyes, a sob wrenches from me.
He curses, prowls up the bed, and pulls the veil from my face, demanding I look at him.
“No!” I try to keep it on, to hide from him.
He doesn’t let me, his fist holding the silk in the curve of my neck. “I’m sorry.” He kisses my eyes as they weep. “Aster. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you ruining this for us?” I sob.
“I’m not a kind man! I warned you.”
“Yes, you warned me. You warned me well.” Glaring up at him through the dim, I see his perfectly virile features through a sheet of tears. “You’re not a kind man! You’re not a man, not human at all!”
I want to hurt him. Like he just hurt me. Though I doubt he cares. He’s probably pleased to be without humanity, without Common romanticisms. Just like Iris is, all my emotions are disorders to their kind.
“Aster.” He kisses me once. “Only for you.”
“Only for me what?”
He drops his forehead to mine, exhaling hard. “Humanity only clings to me for you, little creature. Don’t cry.”
“I was meant to bring you peace,” I admit.
“Peace.” He lifts his head, his dark gaze softening on my face, following the roll of my tears. “Is that what this feeling is?”
I sniffle. “You feel peaceful?”
A small smile wars with his lips. “I feel something… I want to stare at you and your pretty human tears, don’t want to move from this moment, and will kill the man who interrupts this— This still. This… contentment. Is that peace, little creature?”
“Almost,” I answer. “I think you’re fighting it.”
“I was built to fight.”
My chest squeezes for him. “You can stop when you’re with me, my king. You can be gentle because I like it. You can be kind because your words matter to me. They hurt me. I won’t tell anyone what you look like under the thick skin they made you wear in this life.”
“Fuck.” Groaning, he drops to my side, keeping his body close and his hands on me.