"Shut up," he hissed, but there was no force behind it. Just desperation.
I withdrew my fingers, positioning myself at his entrance. I leaned over him, one hand gripping his hip, the other tangled in his hair, pulling his head back.
"Say it," I demanded, the head of my cock pressing against him. "Say what you are."
He struggled against my grip, a token resistance we both knew was meaningless. "I'm nothing," he finally gasped.
"No," I said, pushing in just slightly, enough to make him feel the stretch. "You're mine. Say it."
The word hung between us, dangerous in its implications. This wasn't just about domination anymore—it was about possession. About connection.
For a moment, I thought I'd pushed too far. That the thin thread connecting us would snap under the weight of that demand.
Then, so quietly I almost missed it: "Yours."
I thrust into him in one fluid motion, burying myself to the hilt. He cried out, his body clenching around me as I establisheda punishing rhythm. Each thrust drove him further into the mattress, the cheap wooden frame creaking in protest.
"That's right," I growled. "Mine to use. To take." My words were punctuated with each thrust, each one driving deeper than the last.
His only response was a series of broken moans, his body responding to me even as his mind fought against it. I could feel him trembling beneath me, caught between pleasure and self-loathing.
"You hate this," I taunted, voice rough with exertion. "You hate how much you love being taken by a Talfen. By a monster."
"Yes," he gasped, but his body told a different story, pushing back to meet each thrust. I angled my hips, finding that spot inside him that made him see stars. When I hit it, he let out a broken sound that was nearly a sob.
"There," I growled, hitting it again and again. "Right there. The spot that makes you forget all your hatred. That makes you nothing but a whore for my cock."
I grabbed his hips, jerking him up so I could wrap my hand around his throat and pull him back against me. He whimpered as my other hand reached for his hard length, stroking in time with my thrusts, feeling him harden further in my hand.
"Don't hold back," I commanded, sliding my hand slick with oil over his flesh. "I want to hear exactly how much you hate this."
I could read his body now as easily as a familiar text—knew exactly how to touch him, how to move inside him to bring him to the brink and hold him there, desperate and pleading.
"Not yet," I commanded, slowing my pace, my hand squeezing the base of his cock to deny him. "Not until I say."
He let out a strangled sound, half-frustration, half-plea. "Tarshi—"
The sound of my name on his lips sent a shock through me. He rarely used it, as though naming me would make this too real. Would acknowledge me as a person rather than just a body, a means to an end.
"Again," I demanded, angling my hips to hit that spot inside him that made him whimper. "Say my name again."
"Tarshi," he gasped, no longer able to maintain even the pretence of resistance. "Please, Tarshi, I need—I need— Please let me…"
I cut him off with a particularly deep thrust, feeling his entire body shake with need. "Let you what, Septimus? Say it clearly."
"Let me come," he finally managed, voice breaking on the last word. "Please."
The plea undid something in me. For all our hatred, all our violence, there was something achingly vulnerable in that desperate request. I increased my pace, hand working his cock in rhythm with my thrusts.
"Then come for me," I growled in his ear.
His body tensed beneath mine, a tremor running through him as he spilled over my hand with a broken cry that might have been my name. The sound of my name on his lips as he came triggered my own release, and I buried myself deep inside him with a final brutal thrust, marking him in the most primal way possible.
For a moment, we stayed frozen like that, connected, panting, the boundaries between us momentarily dissolved. These fleeting seconds after climax were always the most dangerous—when the masks slipped, when the pretence of pure hatred couldn't be maintained.
I pulled out carefully, watching as he collapsed onto the bed, his breathing ragged. I should have left immediately. Should have maintained the distance between us. But something kept me there, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the vulnerabilityin his posture that he would never show me when fully conscious. I moved to the washstand, dampening a cloth with water from the pitcher. When I returned to the bed, he flinched slightly as I cleaned him but didn't pull away.
"You don't have to do that," he muttered, his voice muffled against the pillow.
