in a kiss meant to reassure her that he wasn’t going to seriously harm her.
She bit him. Hard.
He hissed and pulled away, licking at the inside of his bottom lip where the coppery tang of blood met his tongue. He let it pool then bent and lapped at her nipple, leaving behind a streak of bright red. “You have made me bleed, Yasmeen,” he said quietly.
When she didn’t so much as look but continued to rebel by holding his eyes, Lucian cupped the back of her head and brought it down. She gasped when she saw her bloodied nipple.
He gripped her damp hair and pulled until she was once more looking into his face. As his body went up in flames, he landed a kiss on one corner of her mouth and then the other. He made sure to let her hear the apology in his voice when he said, “I am going to punish you now, pet. Prepare yourself.”
“How? What are you going to do to me? Lucian!”
He left her for a brief moment to go to the cabinet on the other side of the room. On his way back, he picked another strawberry from the bowl. When he was in front of her once more, he bit into the berry, and as he chewed the fleshy fruit, he brought what remained to her breast.
“I would like you to eat.” He coated one nipple and then the other as she watched his face, her chest rising and falling too quickly for someone who was standing stationary.
“I would like you to answer my fucking question.”
He bent and sucked the darker peak into his mouth and tasted sweetness and copper. Berries and blood. He moved to the other and got nothing but sweetness. Needing something else, he licked up the valley between her breasts and filled his tongue with the salty moisture dripping down her skin. The moan that escaped him was no more than a rasp of vocal cords. The next sound to come was the crack of skin on skin. He immediately cupped the ass cheek he’d just swatted.
“Ladies should not curse. Try to curb the impulse.”
Her lips peeled back from her teeth. The chains rattled as she growled through her clenched jaw. He’d angered his pet worse than ever. It seemed he wouldn’t be fucking his playful sex kitten today. She was currently too feral to be considered such a thing.
Going around to her back, forcing himself not to touch yet, he deftly put a satiny blindfold over her eyes.
“No!” Her tone changed in an instant, and she stiffened as if she were expecting a blow to land. “Take it off. I don’t like the dark. Get it off!”
Hearing a true note of fear in her voice, he didn’t even think about it before he was clamping onto her with a snug hold that had his forearm separating her breasts and his hand latching onto her neck and jaw. He tucked something into his waistband so he could free his hand which he used to deliver a calming stroke to her smooth flank. He’d worked her up, and now he was soothing her, offering comfort to bring her back down.
“You will not feel fear when I lure you into the darkness, Yasmeen. This is my domain, and you are my guest.” He kissed her bicep. “Nothing will get to you if you allow me to protect you as I know I can.” His arm constricted, melding her back to his front as that skipped and began repeating in his mind. Only he wasn’t saying it to her. He’d shouted it at Markus.
“I appreciate your intentions, Lucian! But this need you have to protect me is interfering in my life! I cannot live under this suffocating dome you’ve placed around me!”
He shook his head before burying his face in the dark hair tickling his chin. “Allow me to do for you what I know I am capable of.” His whisper was a demand layered with a guttural plea. “The moment you refuse, the moment you tie my hands, you will be a target, and the monsters that live around us will get to you.”
They would get to her the way they got to Markus. The way they got to his father and his sister. His mind twisted with malevolence, reacting to the thought of one day adding Yasmeen to the growing pile of corpses.
“Lucian?” Her chains rattled. “Are you still here? Can you hear me?”
He was gripping her tightly,