“Yours,” she said.

Such a dare.

Leto tugged her wrists down and back, arching her spine. He fixed his mouth on her left breast and sucked. No warning. No soft kiss. Her gasp was a molten tide that spread through his body. She shook her shoulders from side to side—small attempts to break free of his binding hands. The movements only heightened his arousal. She wasn’t going anywhere, and better still, she didn’t want to.

Her flesh was firm and soft beneath his lips and under the flick of his tongue. He toyed with her beaded nipple. Soft strokes. Deep, pulsing licks. Each drew a different noise from her throat. He wanted to learn each one and how to re-create it. The trail he left between her breasts was warm and wet. She shivered when he scored his roughened cheek against another firm nipple.

Again she struggled against how he’d restrained her wrists. “I want to touch you.”

Leto trailed hot, openmouthed kisses up her neck, to her jaw, behind her ear. “Where would you touch first?”

“Down your sides. I want to scratch you until you flinch.”

“And when I flinch?”

“You’ll fuck me.” She surged forward to catch his mouth in a fierce kiss. Passion was a storm between them, with the crackle of her electricity and the ferocity of his senses. A collision. “Because I don’t want soft anymore. Soft is for later.”

He groaned against her throat. Later. That promise. There would be more time. More encounters such as these. She would learn his shivers and groans as surely as he’d taught her how to fight.

With one more hard sweep of his tongue between her lips, he let go of her arms.

She hadn’t played coy. Nynn ripped her nails down his sides and along his flanks. He hissed. He bucked his hips. Her answering moan was exactly what he’d needed to hear. She was primal, strong—the partner he’d never known he wanted.

Needed.

“Feel that?” He growled against her lips, then clenched her ass. Pulled her hips down. Ground against her. Closer, with the rhythm that fueled their bodies. “Feel how hard I am for you?”

She shoved her hands between them. Hot, slender fingers slid inside the waistband of his shorts. “This?” She encircled him, gripped him. “This is for me?”

“Teasing bitch,” he said with a smile that was half-pain, half-ecstasy. “Should I show you what’s mine?”

“Yes.”

Even in the haze of arousal, Leto knew he couldn’t flip Nynn over and drive into her the way he wanted. Her back was too scarred and tender. She might seem oblivious to what had taken place during the last few hours, the last few days, but he couldn’t forget her pain if he tried.

Instead, he used his strength—he loved being strong when it came to dominating this woman—to turn her onto her knees. He pulled down her shorts. With firm purpose, he fit his whole palm between her legs. She was wet. Wet for him. Every time he assumed he’d reached the height of his desire, he found another reason to blow past his limits.

Nynn arched her back like a cat, pressing more firmly against his hand. They both shared a hissed moan.

Leto tugged down his own shorts and positioned his prick at her slick entrance. She stilled. He didn’t breathe as he bowed over her body. He circled his free arm low across her hips. She could struggle and thrash from the waist up, but her hips, her pussy—they were his to control.

At the sight of her fresh tattoo, he fought those misgivings. He made them disappear, just as he had the ability to make even the most vocal crowds disappear when he fought. Single-minded.

“You wanted me to show you.” Against the hollow behind her ear, he growled his anticipation. “This is mine. And this is our reward.”

With one strong buck of his hips, Leto filled her. Nynn cried out, arched, surged back to take more. She couldn’t remember a man before him—that’s how deeply he stroked, how the pulsing cadence of his body overwhelmed thought. It was all she could do to brace her hands against the wall at the head of the bed. He held nothing back. She’d seen him fight and seen him hold his temper. Both required strength. Different kinds of strength.

Now he used that strength to drive into her. Every withdrawal made her want to weep. The loss of his hard length stole the air from her lungs. He didn’t leave her for long. A half heartbeat later, he was back where he belonged, where she needed him—flush, hip to hip, buried to the hilt. She ached. Slick. Greedy. Each thrust pushed her higher and closer to an animalistic release. She wanted to be that mindless. She wanted Leto to make her scream.

Bowed over her, he pulsed hot flashes of sensation across her back. His chest hair scraped a gentle tease over her skin. His breath was harsh, fast, matching the rhythm of his thrusts.

He pressed his mouth against her temple. “Say my name.”

“Leto.”

“Say that you love this.”

“Dragon dammit, Leto. I love this.”

“Say that you want more.”

“More,” she gasped.

“I broke you once.” His pace increased, bodies straining. “I’m going to break you again.”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” The chant felt right. Matched their desire. “My turn. Going to break you, sir.”

He shifted to kneel upright. One strong hand grabbed her damping collar and pulled. She had no choice but to arch her spine. That position left her more vulnerable. What little control she’d had to toss her head was taken. For Leto, to Leto, she was actually eager to give over that control.

Even that wasn’t enough for him. He released her collar with a harsh curse and clenched her hips with both hands.

She looked back over her shoulder to see his face twisted in a grimace of absolute rapture. He stared at a point on her lower back. The tense way his arms arrowed down to her pelvis bunched his pecs together. They gleamed with sweat. His mouth was open. Each drive of his thick, weighty shaft wrested an exhaled grunt from his wide chest.

“Look at me,” she said between bouts of sensation that gathered and built. She was a living embodiment of her gift—glowing, ready to explode. “Leto.”

Maybe she had learned some of his techniques, because her sharp command snapped his gaze toward hers. His pupils were dilated. He looked like a god bent on laying waste to cities. Their kind had done as much. That they could fuck with such intensity stole her mind.

He was beyond speech. She was nearly there. But she wasn’t going to let him make good on his boast.

“Break me. Try. It won’t happen. All you’ll do is come before I’m satisfied.” She moaned sharply when he reached around to circle two fingers over her clit. “You’re too proud for that. You won’t let yourself.”

“I can.”

“Then come first. You can—” Another gasp when he pressed his fingers deeper as he rubbed her clit. “You can think about it afterward. Shame, like losing. Or you can make me beg for you. I want to.”

“Beg. For me.”

She shook her head and dipped it down into his pillow. Smelled of him. The whole room smelled of him and of sex.

“Give me that,” he rasped.

Fuck, she wasn’t going to last much longer. His fingers were clever, strong, unyielding, even as his prick slammed home, stealing everything but need. But she needed this, too. To own him. “You want to hear me beg more than you want to come.”

His frustration became a bodily force. “Yes. Yes. Do it, Nynn.”

It wasn’t a game now. Wasn’t difficult. She gave herself over to the mass of sensations. Colors blended with sounds blended with the knowledge that he surrounded her. They couldn’t stop now if they wanted to. “Please—ah, bathatéi. Leto, please. Make me— I want to—”

Her voice was broken when she screamed. That shrieking release throttled down to a low, low moan as pleasure scorched her nerve endings and whirled thought into feeling.