over his shoulder, rubbed the swell of his biceps, again and again.
Eventually, she spoke into his chest. “Assuming you’re not completely insane, what . . . what would you do?”
“Worship, adore—take complete control. Strip your soul as bare as your gorgeous little body. You’d come only at my command, be bound if I wish, as I wish. I want to hear you sob with pleasure, beg me for release.” He stopped, his breath coming short. “Nothing to do, nothing to think, nothing to worry about—except obedience.”
Erik’s heartbeat reverberated under Prue’s ear, heavy and a little fast. Her mind was a mishmash of competing desires and terrors, and she couldn’t seem to think straight. She’d never met a man so compelling, that was true. And he could sing the birds from the trees, that was true also, but this . . . this delusion! It went beyond confusing to crazy. She should be concerned, she knew, but she felt so safe, curled up in his arms.
She raised her head a little. “Obedience?” Her snort of disbelief stirred the hairs on his chest. “Gods, typical male thinking! What is this supposed to prove?”
Erik’s chuckle had a strange sound, deep, but hollow. “What greater proof of the Voice could there be? I command a stubborn, independent woman to give herself into my control, to deliver everything she is to a man she doesn’t truly trust. And you, Prue McGuire—you obey.”
He grasped her chin in his hand and stared deep into her eyes, his own sheened a brilliant blue. “I’m damned, love. By my own bloody weakness. You’re the trap the gods laid for me, the ambush I walked straight into. I tried so hard not to—” He swallowed. “This isn’t the first time I’ve slipped, used the Voice on you. Remember when I nearly—up against the wall? It just about killed me to stop. I’m so sorry I hurt you like that.
“If I was even half a man, I’d walk out of here right now.” His lip curled. “But it’s too late, the damage is done.”
Setting her a little way away from him, he skimmed his fingers over her shoulders, curving under the swell of her breast, drifting over a furled nipple. His gaze followed his touch, a perceptible brush against her skin. “Gods, I want you more than my next breath.”
When he traced figures of eight from Prue’s sternum to her navel and back, nerves deep in her pelvis fluttered with delighted apprehension. Her sex tingled and glowed, softening. Against her thigh, his cock stirred like a warm, sleepy animal.
“I can’t make it right, what I’ve done,” he said, the velvet voice strained and curt. “So instead I’m going to make it worse. And I can hardly wait. Ah, fuck it!” He turned his head away, but he’d forgotten about the mirrored wall.
The expression that crossed his face was so utterly desolate, it was beyond the benison of tears. She didn’t think she’d ever seen such a purity of anguish. Prue found herself patting his shoulder, murmuring nonsense, the way she’d done when Katrin was little.
“Erik,” she said at last. “You realize this is too bizarre to be credible? I don’t—I can’t—believe you.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You will.”
Surreptitiously, Prue inhaled the scent of his skin. It made her blood sing, a bittersweet melody. Connection between two hearts, even between two bodies, was such a transient thing, so fragile and precious. “Look, we’ve got tonight.” I’ve got tonight. “Just hold me.”
She took a cautious nibble of his neck. When he jerked and his grip tightened, she licked a leisurely trail over the pulse pounding in his throat. “Make love to me.”
“Can I tie your hands?” His mouth curved in a tender smile, but his eyes blazed.
Immediately, her sex tightened, a hot arrow of sensation streaking through her lower belly. Helpless. “N-no,” she whispered.
Because when he’d held her down on the shabby couch in his dressing room, his long fingers wrapped around her wrists, the real Prue, the sensible Prue, the woman she knew, had disappeared—leaving her to drift, an empty, yearning vessel with only his hands, his voice, his body, to fill and anchor her in a world of overwhelming sensation.
She should forget how satisfying it had been, on some level so visceral, so deeply buried, she still couldn’t quite grasp its true significance, or even understand where it had come from.
“There are clasps over there,” said a soft, dark voice in her ear. Lightly, Erik tugged her nipple, startling