“You can’t break me.”
God help her, she hoped she was right. It was a promise she didn’t know if she could keep. It was a vow Lydia didn’t know if she had the strength to back up. She didn’t honestly understand what she was up against, after all.
Aon shuddered at her words, and he wrapped an arm around her, clutching her to him as if she might give him purchase against whatever just overcame him. He buried his head into the crook of her shoulder, and she felt him press a hot, slow kiss against the spot where her neck and shoulder met. “Oh, my darling,” he purred into her. “My sweet and wonderful creature. You must stop teasing me with such wonderful games.”
She let out a startled cry as suddenly the world moved around her. He had whirled around, pulled her down from the wall, and half-thrown her away from him without any warning. There was barely the sensation of ground under her feet before it was suddenly moving. Without being able to see, there was little she could do but stagger and flail. She cracked into a piece of furniture and her hands went to the corner post of the bed in a desperate attempt to stop her forward momentum.
Hands fell on her shoulders and whirled her around. He placed the corner post at her back and pressed her there. When she tried to grab hold of him to try and slow him down, he merely laughed. Hands grabbed hers and roughly yanked them behind her back. It brought a grunt of pain out of her as he bent them up behind her, each wrist on the other elbow.
Something else joined the feeling of his hands, cinching around her arms, tying them together. Sure enough, when he slid his hands up to her shoulders, she couldn’t move them. She could barely even wriggle them with such little slack, tied wrists-to-forearms as she was. It didn’t stop her from trying as she squirmed, trying to yank her hands free to no avail.
He chuckled darkly at her sad attempt at escape. The point of a sharp claw was tracing down her neck, and it suddenly made struggling dangerous. She pressed back against the bedpost and froze.
“I do not think you can even begin to comprehend what it is you do to me,” he purred. “Do you know how you have lingered in my thoughts? How much sleep I have lost, dreaming of what I wished to do to you? How you might look as you writhed within my grasp?”
The sharp claw worked its way across her shoulder, leaving goosebumps in its wake. He slipped it under the strap of her nightgown, and yanked upwards, slicing the fabric. “I fear you became a bit of an obsession of mine, my darling Lydia. Your strength, your fire…” He pulled in a shuddering breath as he traveled his claw slowly across her collarbone. “I see in your eyes a love for the darkness that I bring. A fear to follow me down that path, yet you cannot pull away. How I longed to feel you since the moment I saw you…how tempting it was to simply ravage you like a beast. But,” His claw worked its way under the other strap of her nightgown and sliced it free of her body. The thin shift pooled at her feet and the cool air against her quickly gave her goosebumps. “I will never steal what could be given.”
Lydia could only whimper as he pushed her underwear off her hips and to the floor. His hands lingered for a moment before he took a step back and let out an appreciative hum in his throat. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her body, even without being able to see him. Her face felt hot, and she knew she was blushing. “How I would adore to lash you to that post and torment you for hours, but I fear you have utterly ruined my restraint.”
When a single sharp talon pressed into one of her hard nipples, she gasped in surprise and tried to cave her chest away from him and the knifelike point he had resting on her tender skin. He chuckled and stepped in closer, his other hand slipping around her throat. He pressed himself against her side, pressing his burgeoning hardness against her. “Do you know how hard it was to sit through that dull meeting with this? You are an insufferable tease. You wicked creature, so ignorant to what you’ve done…”
His confession of his desire for her twisted in her stomach, and she could only moan low in her throat at the feel of him against her and the sharp claw still pressing against her pink flesh. The hand around her neck made her feel lightheaded and strange. He was too much. He used his gentle grasp at her throat to tilt her head backward, arching her back and pressing her chest harder against his hand.
“I have desired you since the moment I saw you in my dreams. I have kept myself from ruining you—but oh, how tempting it has been all this time.”
“I—” she broke off in a gasp as the tip of his claw dug harder into her.
He shifted to let off the pressure before piercing her skin but brought it just to that point, before backing off. Between his metal knuckles, he pinched her nipple hard, and that brought a cry out of her throat as pain lanced up through her.
“There we are! I have missed that sound. What a wonderful symphony you played for me in your dreams when we first met. It is much more charming in person, I must admit…” he growled the words into her ear and placed a hot, sensual kiss against her jawline.
How someone could feel so warm and so cold at once, she had no idea. But here she was.
The hand around her throat tightened, restricting her air. Lydia writhed, letting out another small cry as she pressed up against the bedpost. “Know this, my beautiful creature; I will push you to your limits, of which I likely have a very different opinion of than you.” He let out a dusky chuckle, his threat making her head spin. He tightened his grasp around her throat even further, and she whimpered, moaning with what little air she had. He growled in pleasure at her response. Before she could even get a straight thought in her head, Aon threw her onto the bed on her side.
“What a sight,” he purred. She heard the rustle of clothing. She rolled onto her back as she felt him climb onto the bed with her. When she tried to shuffle back away from him, his hand was back around her throat, stopping her retreat. Not tightening—but promising to. “Now, now,” he scolded her. “It’s far too late for that.”
She swallowed thickly in her throat as he pushed her legs apart, and she felt him kneel in between them. The skin that touched hers was bare, and warm. The thought of him naked there so close to her made her remember the sight of him in his hot spring, and she swallowed thickly in her throat.
His hands roamed her body, surveying her. Sliding over her stomach, her sides—raking his nails and claws against her to watch her squirm in response. She chewed on her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut. Even though she couldn’t see, it was an instinctual response and she couldn’t help it.
Sharp talons like dagger points trailed across her skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. She squirmed underneath him, her whimpers only bringing another low chuckle out of his throat. “This is as blissful as I had imagined it would be,” he murmured to her. The touch of his claws stung, but it only fed the fire that was burning inside of her. “No. Perhaps more so.”
Her eyes flew back open as his flesh-and-blood hand found her core, fingers exploring and suddenly delving into her without warning. Lydia cried out and arched her back as Aon sunk two fingers unexpectedly inside of her. Her hips bucked up off the bed at the sudden assault.
He laughed as he began to work his fingers inside of her slowly. “Such theatrics! Such false pretenses! And here I thought you did not find me attractive,” he teased her, goading her over her own obvious state of arousal.
“Shut up, you—” she growled at him and gasped as the point of a sharp metal talon touched her sensitive nub. He called her bluff, and she fell silent, biting back her words.
“Hm? What was that?”
She didn’t answer and grit her teeth.
“No, no, do say it. I’m curious.” He twisted his fingers inside of her and plunged them deeper, as far as they would go. Her cry ended in a moan as he tormented her, her words forgotten in the rush of pleasure that cut through her. “I thought as much.”
She could only whimper and writhe as he plunged his fingers slowly into her, again and again, exploring her. His thumb ran circles around her apex, taking the place of his claw, and she let out a sharper cry of pleasure and tossed her head back against the sheets. He brought her right to the edge of release before suddenly stopping.
He pulled his hand from her, and he let out a small “mmh” sound, and she realized with a hot rush to her face what he was doing.
His clawed hand leaned against the bed next to her head as she felt him bend down over her. The touch of his long hair was all the warning she received before his lips descended on hers languorously—taking her at his leisure. He finished by letting his tongue slide slowly along her bottom lip. “I adore how you taste,” he whispered to her. “If it were not for your clever stalling, I would not know it. For that, I thank you.” He brought his teeth down in a bite along her lower lip—growing in pressure until she let out a noise, and then relenting before kissing away the pain.
His human hand slid to cup her breast, kneading it in between his fingers. It brought a moan out of her throat against his lips, and she couldn’t help but shift underneath him. God, she felt like she was on fire.
His lips found her other breast, and he took over the torment of her body with his tongue and teeth instead of metal and claw. Each time he would bite or twist at her, she writhed underneath him, squirming against his body. He continued until a mewl or a cry would leave her throat—until she tossed her head in helplessness—and then would relent, kissing or licking at the maligned and tender skin gently.
She realized he was testing her limits. Learning when the pain was too much for her. Worse still, he was muddling the sensations of pain and pleasure together until they were starting to become indistinguishable.
To her surprise, both were affecting her about the same. Each time Aon dug his teeth into her, she felt her body light up in electricity just as much as his tenderness. She wanted him to not hold back. She wanted to know what dancing with him truly felt like. Well, there was something she never knew about herself. Yet, it seemed, he did.
When he shifted his head to switch sides, he changed hands, as well. That brought a new level of danger and a new kind of pain as he dragged his claws over the exposed skin of her chest. The note she hit went higher as he pulled a single metal nail along the line of her bust. By the burning, she knew he had scratched her hard enough to make her bleed. All she could do was let out an open-mouthed gasp as she tilted her head back against the bed.
Aon ran his tongue, hot and slow, over the cut. He moaned and shuddered against her. His human hand was suddenly underneath her back, pressing her to him as he began to lap at the wound in slow, repeated strokes of his tongue.
He shifted suddenly, and she let out a startled noise as he pushed himself up to kneeling again, and with a hand on her hip and the other on her shoulder, yanked her up to follow him. She tensed, startled, as she was now sitting on his thighs. An arm banded around her lower back and tugged her flush up against him.
She moaned at the feeling of his chest pressed against hers and at the sensation of his arousal, pressed between them, hard and throbbing against her. It didn’t help her nervousness and she felt her muscles lock up reflexively. She’d had lovers in her life, but no one like him before—nothing like what she felt up against her.
His clawed hand was slowly sliding over Lydia’s shoulders and wandering around her neck, brushing her hair back away from her face. He shushed her gently, clearly seeing the nervousness on her face, as his metal prosthetic tilted her head away to give him room to lean his head down to kiss her. Even sitting on his lap, he was taller than she was. “It’s alright, my darling,” he whispered to her. “Relax. I will bring you no harm that you do not enjoy. This I promise…”
His words were true, she realized. Even when he drew the line across her chest that still stung, she had felt her stomach twist in knots in excitement as he had licked away the blood he had drawn. There was no way to deny the furnace that was raging away inside of her. That every time his clawed nails brushed against her skin, she shivered.
“Besides,” he rumbled into her ear. He slid his metal claws across her rump, and when he squeezed, the tips pressed against her sensitive skin, making her yelp and squirm. His words were painted in a deep moan of pleasure as she rubbed her body unwittingly against his and his trapped arousal between them. “I think you may just be loving this just as much as I. Well,” he said with a breathless and single huff of a laugh. “Perhaps not as much…”
She went to open her mouth to insult him, to bitterly complain about him teasing her like that, but his lips silenced her before she had the chance. She melted against the assault of as he kissed her bruisingly.
The slight release of tension in her body was all he needed as a sign to continue. His metal hand grasped her and lifted her, and he used the other to guide himself to her entrance. She felt him there against her, and she let out a “mmnh!” against him. She broke the kiss and let out a breathless “Wait!”
Aon laughed, quiet and cruel. “No.”
No sound escaped her as he drove her down onto him with such force it robbed her of even a cry. He sunk the entirety of his length into her in one motion, plunging into her and ramming into her end in an unapologetic collision of their bodies. It felt as though he was going to split her in half. But it wasn’t the agony of the sudden sensation that drove her mind blank and took all sound out of her throat—it was the unexpected wave of ecstasy that crashed over her like the tide. His invasion sent her over the cliff and pleasure wracked her and drove everything else out of her mind. Everything in her was alight, leaving her trembling, all her muscles locked tight.
Both of his arms were wrapped around her now, clutching her to him. His body was tensing and releasing in waves, and he was shuddering against her. He let out a tight and broken moan, muffled where he had buried his face into her hair. “Oh, how I have wanted to be inside you—how I have imagined this. Hah…nnh! Oh, my beautiful thing.” He gasped, tilting his head away from her and moaned low. “You nearly ended our fun so soon, right then and there.”
Arms tightened around her and pressed her downwards and he lifted his hips up against her, driving him harder against her end. It almost sent her over the edge into ecstasy a second time. It burned. It hurt. He was driving himself so hard into her body she knew she would feel it in the morning. But god damn it all, she wanted more of it. Wanted it never to end. She let out a moan and wished she could grab hold of him. Wanted to do anything—but she was helpless with her arms tied behind her back. “Shit,” was all she managed to say.
He slid his tongue slowly up her cheek towards her ear before whispering to her. “There you are. I thought I had lost you.”
She could barely think through the feeling of him buried inside of her. She could only whimper as he slowly eased off, only to repeat the pattern again. He wasn’t even moving yet—just changing the pressure he applied against her as he held her. He was relenting only to press her down on him once more, again and again. The ache was horrible, and wonderful, all at once. “Aon—” her words broke off. She was trembling in his arms, feeling breathless and reeling. Her body was still tingling in the aftershock of what he had done.
“Yes… that’s it…” he praised her quietly, kissing her shoulder. He lifted her from him, barely an inch, before pressing her back down to the hilt. He did it with an unflinching force that it brought the sensation of him driving against her end back tenfold. He moaned loudly, meeting her sharp cry at the sensation. “Nngh! Do you feel how wonderful we fit together? I am just barely too much for you…this is perfect. You are perfect. Tell me; does this bring you pain when I press so deep into you? When I claim you like this? When I claim you as mine?”
He held her down against his hips again, pushing himself against her and her end. It ached. He filled every part of her and his presence made her want to melt against him. To surrender to him. It felt so goddamn amazing it made her head spin. “Yes,” she admitted in a breathless moan.
“Do you want me to stop?” He did it again, somehow harder than before. She forgot that he was inhumanly strong. He could probably snap her if he tried. His fingers dug into her hips as he ground himself into her core.
She let out a moan, resting her head against his shoulder. Her body was electric. Tight and tense and full of him. She had never felt anything like it before.
“Well? Shall I stop? Love you like a gentle fairy prince instead?” He relented on the pressure only to repeat.
Oh god. No. Anything but that. Anything but what he threatened to do instead. She wouldn’t be able to handle it now, knowing what he could really do to her. “No,” she whimpered. “Please don’t…don’t stop.”
“You want me to ravage you? Take you? Mold your body to mine? Say it.”
Her stomach felt like she had been thrown over a cliff. She shuddered in pleasure at his dark words, even as much as the feeling of him inside of her. She whimpered and bit her lip.
“Say it,” he growled into her ear, his voice dusky and thick with need. He could feel the effect his words were having on her as she clung to him, she was sure.
“Yes. Please, Aon…”
“Good girl.” Another experimental lift and he pulled her back down onto him harder and with a bruising force. It was almost enough to send her reeling over the edge into ecstasy again, and the sound she made was proof of it. A third time and it was too much—she almost wailed, overwrought as another crashing wave of pleasure drove over her. Her head was spinning and she breathlessly cried his name.
He was shuddering, nearly overcome as well. “Aah…ngh, how quick you are to ruin me, quivering as you are…”
With that, she was suddenly bent backward as Aon nearly threw her without breaking where they were joined. Her shoulders hit the bed, and without being able to put her arms out to support herself, it bent her at an angle that made him burn inside of her.
His hands supported her hips and kept her pinned against him like a vise. He pressed into her—harder, somehow—and she arched her back, crying out again. “Aon!”
Pain and pleasure both racked her body as he didn’t move—didn’t relent from the pressure as he dug himself deep into her core. She writhed, and her noises of agony and pleasure drew a deep laugh from him, painted thick with heated desire. “Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice a deep, breathy purr.
She nodded, unable to find the words.
“Do you want me to stop?” He asked again. Giving her another chance to ask him to let up. Another chance to admit how much she loved this. “This is your last chance.”
She shook her head. No, anything but that.
“Do you enjoy this?”
She nodded.
“Good. Because we have only just begun, my sweet…”
One of his hands was then pinning her shoulder to the bed, the other gripping her hips as he withdrew from her nearly all the way before slamming back in with all his force. A choked cry left her mouth as he did—and each time after that.
He was relentless as he pistoned in and out of her with a crushing force. Each time, a low, guttural noise in him met her sharper, mewling cry.
Her mind was dissolving into white noise. The only thing that existed was his intense and amazing presence. It was overwhelming her—so white-hot was the mixture of pain and pleasure. If it killed her, she’d die happily like this. She could barely hear his muted praise between his own moans of pleasure as he unleashed himself upon her.
It was visceral, brutal, euphoric, and threatened to wipe her mind away for good as he overwhelmed her body in sensation. How long it went on, she had no idea. Ecstasy rushed over like a crashing wave, again and again, as she arched and writhed underneath him in a silent cry—so overwrought with it that she couldn’t even form a noise. If she hadn’t been pinned by him, she would have twisted from his grasp. It was almost impossible to tell if, or when, it faded. His attacks hadn’t slowed and kept her pouring over the cliff’s edge.
When she thought she might pass out, when she was at her absolute limit, his thrusts suddenly became desperate as he groaned. His hand pressed her into the sheets, holding her still and pliable as he took his fill from her. With a deep, animalistic growl, he rammed into and kept himself there. She felt him arch away from her in his own broken cry, and she felt him spasm against her, as he too, met his end.
The noise in his throat ebbed into a moan, and a heady gasping for air, as he caged her in, his arms on either side of her. His body was hot like a space heater over and around her. He clutched her close to him, as if afraid she might vanish into nothingness. He was shivering as he slumped down over her, lowering his head to her shoulder. “By all the gods in all the worlds…” He seemed unable to finish his sentence for once. She could feel the sweat on his forehead as he laid it against her shoulder.
When she thought she could find the strength to speak, she took in a slow, wavering breath. “Aon…”
He sounded as worse for wear as she was, out of breath and shuddering. “Yes, my darling?”
“I can’t feel my hands.”
Aon burst out in a laugh, and she felt the binds around her arms disappear as miraculously as they had arrived. She let out a groan as she moved her arms—feeling her shoulders angrily protest and holler about having been misused like that. The pins-and-needles sensations in her fingers began to reside.
He was still hovering over her, his long hair brushing against her cheek. His weight was on his elbows, and while they were no longer joined, he still was lying idly between her bent legs.
She wished she could see his face. It hit her with an odd pang, and she reached up to touch him, running her hand along his cheek. He turned his head to her palm and kissed it with surprising tenderness.
She let her hand run through his hair, tucking it behind his ear before settling her hand against his shoulder. His heart was pounding like a drum, same as hers. She pulled in a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out—feeling much better for it.
Aon leaned down to kiss her, but paused, his lips hovering just a hair’s breadth away from hers, hesitating. She realized he must be curious if she would turn away from him. Wondering if she would reject everything that had just happened. Everything that she had just felt. Her body ached. Everything hurt. But one thing she couldn’t deny—one lie she couldn’t tell—was that she had enjoyed it.
Immensely.
Silently, he was asking her if she regretted their evening. She leaned up to kiss him—zeroing the distance between them. It was a warm, gentle embrace, and a far cry from how he’d just been seconds prior. When they parted, he let out a small contented sigh and felt tension melt away from him.
“Did you think I was going to be upset?” she asked him curiously.
He paused before answering and sounded reluctant when he finally did. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Once the allure has died away and thoughts run clear once more, most regret their choice to lay with me.”
She couldn’t help but look up at him in disbelief, even if she couldn’t see him. He had been violent and rough, sure, but she had never once asked him to stop or slow down. He hadn’t really hurt her. Then again, she was just a fragile mortal after all. Perhaps he had started “slow” with her.
“Do you wish for me to go, or stay?” He interrupted her thoughts, guarded and devoid of emotion one way or another.
She gently took the hand that was running through her hair and brought it to her lips, kissing the side of his fingers. It was Aon’s flesh-and-blood hand, and his skin was warm against hers. She let her eyes slide shut and felt suddenly exceedingly tired as her body calmed down. “Do you wish to stay or go?” She turned the question around on him.
Aon let out a low, aroused growl in his throat as she kissed his fingers. “If you continue on like that, you will have something else against your lips in short order, and the question will not matter.”
She grinned, feeling fiendish, and let her teeth graze along his skin, and she felt him twitch slightly in her hand and pull in a breath. “Maybe I just want to make sure you don’t ditch me for another week.”
“I do not think that is a concern,” he said in a low murmur and leaned down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “May I assume then, you wish for me to stay beside you tonight?”
“Yeah,” she said honestly, and let her fingers entwine with his. “I think I’d really like that.”
Aon smiled against her. “I, as well.” He rolled onto his back with a contented grunt, and she felt him sprawl out on the bed beside her. The feeling of the cool air against her felt amazing. She stretched, winced as she felt the soreness in her limbs and knew she was going to be bruised in the morning.
The tug of a hand on her arm and Lydia chuckled at how needy and impatient he was. She moved to curl up against him, tucking her head into the crook of his shoulder. For a moment, she was surprised to feel a blanket settle down on top of them before she remembered—oh right. Magic.
He pulled her tight up against him, and the last thing she remembered before falling asleep was the press of lips against her forehead.