"Not yet," I growled. "Not until you admit why you're really here."
His chest heaved against mine. "I was following you. Making sure you weren't—"
"Lying," I finished, pressing my thigh between his legs, feeling his hardness against me. "You didn't follow me because you thought I was betraying the cause. You followed me because you can't stay away."
"That's not—"
I silenced him with a bruising kiss, biting his lower lip hard enough to draw a gasp. When I pulled back, his pupils were blown wide with desire.
"Your body doesn't lie as well as your mouth does, Septimus."
I reached down to cup him through his trousers, squeezing just on the edge of pain. His hips bucked forward involuntarily.
"You despise the Talfen, yet here you are, trembling for one."
He struggled against my hold, but it was a token resistance. We both knew he could fight harder if he truly wanted to escape.
"I hate you," he gasped as my free hand slid beneath his tunic, tracing the taut muscles of his abdomen. "By all the gods, I despise what you are. Not how you make me feel."
The admission stunned me, momentarily breaking through the haze of lust. It was perhaps the most honest thing he'd ever said to me. Before I could respond, he surged forward, claiming my mouth again, desperate to drown whatever dangerous truth had just emerged.
I dragged him to the bed, tearing his clothes away. He responded in kind, fingers clawing at my tunic, my belt, cursing when they caught on the buckle.
"Too slow," I muttered, shoving his hands aside to remove it myself as he laid down on the bed, watching me undress.
The moonlight painted silver streaks across his exposed skin. He was beautiful—all lean muscle and battle scars, the body of a soldier who'd survived things that would have killed lesser men. I leaned over and traced a particularly vicious scar that ran fromhis collarbone to his ribs—a wound that should have killed him. We both bore scars from the arena, though it felt like a lifetime ago now. He closed his eyes and shivered under my touch as my fingers stroked lower.
Septimus caught my wrist as my fingers traced lower, his grip tight enough to bruise. For a moment, I thought he would push me away—that whatever moment of honesty had just passed between us had frightened him back behind his walls.
Instead, he pulled me down roughly, his other hand tangling in my hair. "Don't be gentle," he whispered against my ear, his voice raw. "I need to hate this tomorrow."
Something inside me cracked open at those words—the admission of what this was to him, what I was to him. A sin. A transgression he could only permit himself if it was brutal enough to justify his self-loathing afterward.
"As you wish," I growled, wrapping my hand tightly around his cock.
His back arched off the bed, a strangled sound escaping his throat. I stroked him roughly, watching his face contort with pleasure and shame.
"Look at you," I said, voice low and cruel. "Just lying there, letting me do whatever I want to you. Writhing under my touch. You’re pathetic.”
His eyes flew open, dark with a mixture of arousal and anger. "Shut up."
"Make me," I challenged, tightening my grip.
He tried to flip our positions, to assert some control, but I was stronger—had always been stronger. I pinned him easily, one hand pressed against his chest while the other continued its torturous pace.
"That's not how this works," I reminded him. "You don't get to pretend this is anything but what it is. You surrendering to me."
"I hate you," he gasped, even as his hips bucked up into my touch.
"I know,” I said, as I leaned down, my lips sliding over the head of his cock, tasting the salty bead of moisture that had already gathered at the tip.
“Fuck!”
I took him deep into my mouth, savouring the way his entire body tensed beneath me. His hands fisted in the sheets, knuckles white with strain. I knew what he wanted—to grab my hair, to control the pace—but he wouldn't allow himself that intimacy. The power I held over him in these moments was intoxicating—this proud, hateful man reduced to incoherent gasps and pleas beneath my touch. I pulled back, denying him release, watching his face contort with frustrated need. I kept my eyes on his as I shifted position, straddling his chest, my hand running over my hard shaft. His gaze didn’t meet mine, instead he watched the movement of my hand, his tongue sliding over his lower lip.
“Now, I'm going to give you my cock and you’re going to take it like a good boy. If you please me, I’ll fuck you.”
A flash of defiance crossed his face, but it quickly melted into that familiar mixture of shame and desire.
