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draconic-desire · 1 year ago

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A Dance With the Dragon II — Mates

Yandere Neuvillette x Reader

[Part I] [Part II — You are here] [Part III] [Part IV]

Neuvillette brings you to your new “home”, which also comes with new challenges.

Warnings: Emotional manipulation, forced imprisonment, Neuvillette accidentally goes a little feral here, brief non-con at the end

One of the first things Neuvillette did was move you from the apartment at the Palais Mermonia (your prison for the past four centuries) to his personal residence. Securing his palms to your waist, he teleported you directly into the foyer of the massive home.

The interior was splashed with blues and whites that matched the Chief Justice’s own color palette. The upper walls were decorated with friezes depicting various marine creatures, from floating otters (how ironic) to bobbing seahorses. A grand spiral staircase led to the upper floor, while a set of double French doors connected the foyer to a massive living room adorned with plush love seats and armchairs, tasteful artwork of Fontainian landscapes, and enormous windows that overlooked the sea. It appeared the house was set into a cliffside, with the waves battering the rocks far beneath you.

You paced into the living room, running your hand along the blue silk couch cushions. To your left, a door led out to what appeared to be an inclosed courtyard with a miniature fountain. To the right was a closed door, a familiar dragon carved into its exterior. Your arm burned in resonance.

Though you were loathe to admit it, the place was beautiful.

“Do you like it?”

Shifting your gaze to him, it was clear that Neuvillette was desperate for your approval. Ever since he let you outside to discover the true length of your imprisonment, you had rarely spoken a word to him. Clearly, your silence had done a number on him, as the normally composed man was fidgeting nervously.

When you kept quiet, Neuvillette cleared his throat. “I admit, part of why things took so long was due to my insistence that everything be perfect for your arrival. I rearranged our bedroom perhaps a dozen times, and I couldn’t for the life of me decide what your personal room should entail.” When you glanced out towards the fountain, he coughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, that was a…sentimental addition. It makes me think of how we met.”

You’d never forget that Archons-damned fountain. If only you hadn’t been so naive. Hydro Dragon, Hydro Dragon, go away.

Neuvillette extended his palm towards you in what appeared to be both a peace offering and an order. “Shall I give you a tour?”

Suddenly your feet appeared very interesting. What were you supposed to say? This technically was your home now, like it or not. You’d become painstakingly familiar with it with time. Although you weren’t imprisoned within the Palais as before, your new life still promised shackles nonetheless.

“Could you just show me my personal room?” You sighed. “I’d prefer to just rest after that.”

Neuvillette smiled softly, relishing the sound of your voice. “Of course.”

Twisting his fingers through your own, he led you towards the dragon door. Once again, your hidden tattoo pulsed with energy. It felt like a pull forward, a welcoming embrace. You realized then that there must be some sort of warding spell on this room, likely meaning only you and your captor could enter.

Marvelous.

Pushing the door open, Neuvillette swept his arm gracefully through the entrance. “After you, my love.”

You stepped in and immediately went still.

For in every direction around you was rows upon shelves upon stories of books.

Neuvillette had build you your own personal library.

And not just that. You noticed that entire sections pertained to your personal interests—marine biology, photography, even your personal favorite genres of novels. A separate door labeled Dark Room promised an avenue for you to pick up photography again. Similar couches and chairs as the living room were arranged around a huge coffee table, and a cracking hearth added to the cozy atmosphere.

Your throat bobbed. You had always dreamed of owning a room like this, a place where all your passions converged. But to have it under these circumstances…you didn’t know how to react, torn between frustration and a grateful little voice in the back of your head that you buried at once. No, I didn’t earn this. I don’t want this. It was forced on me.

All you could choke out was, “This is…mine?”

“Down to the last book.” You could hear the pride in his voice. “I spent the most time on this room. Over a century to get it right.”

You startled. A century? Your heart stumbled, but your hands fisted by your sides. So much given, yet what had it cost you?

Shaking your head, you simply said, “I’d like to be alone.” Connecting your eyes with his, you could see his hurt, the expectation of a grand reaction on your part that you refused to indulge.

However, the look was quickly wiped from his face, for he must have seen something broken in your facade. A muscle in his jaw feathered as he approached you, a gloved hand stroking your cheek. “I understand you must be overwhelmed. I’ll leave you to explore,” Neuvillette said, placing a kiss on your forehead before heading for the exit.

“Neuvillette?”

Said man turned back towards you, a hopeful look in his eyes.

“Why me?” You grabbed your arm where the shadow of your draconic tattoo hid. “Why…all this?”

His gaze immediately softened. “My dear, we have centuries for me to show you.”

~*~

It was times when Neuvillette was vulnerable that it was hardest to hate him.

He had returned home after a long day at court to find you sitting in the courtyard on the edge of the fountain, peering up at the night sky as if the stars held some answers. Moonlight bathed you in an ethereal glow, and if he didn’t already think you a goddess, he would have pledged himself to you then and there.

You hadn’t noticed him yet, too involved in your own thoughts. True to his word, Neuvillette had given you time and space to enjoy your new (cage) home. You had to admit, it was a major upgrade from the Palais, and you knew the Iudex would continue to let you explore Fontaine, if you tolerated his presence beside you. However, you knew this dance wouldn’t last—it was only a matter of time before Neuvillette expected something in return. It was abundantly clear that he desired your affections, but how far would he go in order to sway you? To fully make you his?

A sea breeze whipped around you, eliciting an involuntary shiver to rip up your spine.

A sudden warmth enveloping your form brought you back to reality. Blinking in surprise, you peered up to see the Chief Justice smiling softly at you, his purple irises sparking with longing and care. His elaborate attire was gone, leaving only his pale undershirt.

He’d given you this coat.

“I…thank you,” you mumbled, averting your eyes from the man.

“Do my ears deceive me? Did my dear (Y/n) actually acknowledge me?”

Your grip on his robes tightened. “Don’t mistake my words for kindness. I haven’t forgotten what you are.”

A sigh. “Despite what you may believe, I’m not a monster.”

You deadpanned. “You’re quite literally the Hydro dragon.”

“Archons above,” Neuvillette whispered, glancing up at the sky as if it held the key to winning your heart. “I was referring to a monster in the definition you humans use.”

“What? You mean like a man who would kidnap and imprison an innocent person—”

“Considering you are not in the Fortress of Meropide, I’d hardly consider this imprisonment.”

“What, have I offended you?” A scoff left escaped you. “If you want to play house, at least own up to your actions. Don’t pretend you’re some sort of gentleman.”

Neuvillette was silent for a beat, his mouth a thin line. Unexpectedly, his muscles relaxed as he released his tension. He lowered his large frame, taking a seat next to you. “You’re right.”

You sketched a brow in surprise.

Neuvillette trained his eyes on his palms, facing upwards in his lap. “I understand neither what it means to be human, nor what it means to be a god. I was given this duty to protect and uphold the laws of Fontaine, and yet I cannot save those who need it most.” His fingers formed fists, and his lids closed solemnly. “Carole, Vautrin…all of the others I have failed…”

You worried your lower lip. Although he had already informed you of his friends’ fate in your absence, it was still a raw wound for the both of you. Yet the anguish in Neuvillette’s eyes twisted your heart. How could a man be so duplicitous, so capable of both justice and blind obsession?

As if sensing your conflict, Neuvillette gently took your face in his hands, tilting your chin so that your eyes locked once again. His eyes danced with silver sparks of emotion, like cracks of lighting across a dark sea. A thumb brushed away a tear you hadn’t even realized had fallen.

“So if I can protect but one thing, one person, I will do it.”

~.~

You often noticed that Neuvillette’s horns got stuck in his robes.

Honestly, it was kind of humorous. In the beginning, watching him struggle gave you a sick sense of satisfaction. You’d take any circumstance that inconvenienced him, however petty that might be.

But today, seeing the Chief Justice pouring over a case regarding the protection of Fontaine’s sea life at an ungodly hour, head propped on a fist to keep him awake, you couldn’t help but feel sympathetic when he emitted a low hiss as his horns tangled into the ornamentation of his attire once again. “Damned human attire,” he cursed.

Neuvillette wasn’t an inherently bad man. In fact, your own case aside, he had invoked significant and positive change in Fontaine’s legal system. He judged cases fairly and prudently, working himself ragged each day to ensure the nation’s safety. It would have been admirable to you in any other circumstance.

You didn’t know what possessed you when you stepped behind him and carefully untangled his twin blue horns.

At your touch, Neuvillette immediately froze. His heart rate skyrocketed and his mind went blank because you were touching him.

And not just anywhere, but his horns. Unbeknownst to you, a dragon’s horns were the most sensitive part of its body, only to be handled by itself or its mate. One brush was akin to a lovers embrace, the whisper of a kiss, the hot breath shared between partners in the thralls of passion. Not only was the touch intensely intimate, it was also an acknowledgement—an acceptance of the male’s advances onto his partner.

Oh, if only you knew how many times he had fantasized about this, your acknowledgement of him and his love for you. Although his rational, human side knew your touch as unintentional, the dragon within Neuvillette reared and roared against his skin, demanding to be set free upon its mate.

“Your horns were caught,” was all you said as you settled back into the sofa, flipping to the marked page of your novel.

If you had looked up, you would have witnessed the Iudex gently touching his horns in awe. He swore he could still feel the brush of your palm against him, shivering delightfully at the mere memory of your touch.

Little did you know that your simple act of kindness would unleash the storm.

~*~

The one unfortunate deviation of your current accommodations from the Palais Mermonia was Neuvillette’s unyielding insistence on sharing a bed.

You had foolishly thought escaping him, even if just within the confines of your shared home, would be simple. You believed the library, what he even referred to as your room, would be your bedroom as well. Despite the lack of an actual bed, the plush couches and ever-lit fire provided more than enough comfort to lull you to sleep.

But when you had opened your eyes, you were mere inches away from Neuvillette’s shirtless, sleeping form.

You had assumed it was due to the draconic symbol guarding the room; perhaps it linked you to him more than you had thought. So, the next night, you decided to sleep in the parlor instead.

Only for your hopes to be shattered the next morning when you awoke not only in bed with your captor, but with your limbs entwined.

Anger, shame, and a touch of something you couldn’t quite place—something not entirely unpleasant—flooded you as you tore yourself out of his embrace. How was he doing this? Was it magic, or would he physically carry you to bed each night?

This pattern repeated itself. You would pick various places around the huge house to retire for the night. However, you would wake up in bed next to Neuvillette each morning without fail.

You had even reverted to your previous stubbornness and slept on the ground a few nights, but to no avail. It seemed you were bound to his bed.

Tonight, you decided to face the issue head-on. You stormed up the stairway and into the spacious bedroom, ignoring the pain in your lower back due to all the errant surfaces you had tried to sleep on. The downy pillows and lush, cream comforter practically begged you to surrender to the king-sized bed and its occupant.

Instead, you halted at the foot of the bed and crossed your arms. “You have to stop this.”

Neuvillette immediately looked up from the tome in his lap, his reading glasses slipping down his nose. He hadn’t yet changed out of his white dress shirt, and the buttons revealed a hint of his toned chest as he set the book down. “And what exactly are you demanding I stop?”

You huffed a laugh. “I wish I could say all of this,” you waved your hands around, as if that would convey the entirety of the situation, “but I mean putting me in your bed each morning.”

“Our bed,” he corrected, as if that were the issue.

“No, your bed. Are you really telling me that with all this space, you can’t just let me sleep alone?”

He removed his glasses with a sigh, setting them on the nightstand. “I could, but I don’t want to.”

You seethed. “Well, I do.”

Neuvillette’s violet gaze pinned you with something like hurt. “Have I truly done something to upset you? It seemed as if you were settling into our new home quite nicely. Our conversation and touches were…” His throat bobbed. “Pleasant.”

You narrowed your eyes and bit out, “Don’t take any of that as complacency. You’re still a monster.”

Neuvillette flinched in response and, for just a moment, you felt a piece your heart falter. That is, until he whispered, “Mates don’t sleep apart.”

The room went utterly still.

Your voice came out as a breath of air, but the words were clear: “I am not your mate.”

It was then that you noticed the claws emerging from his fingertips, piercing into the sheets under his form. His eyes flashed silver, dangerous as knives. You could have sworn you saw a pair of elongated canines as he grit his teeth. “You have no idea how difficult it has been,” he breathed, voice tight, desperate.

On instinct, you took a pace back. You suddenly felt like a cornered animal, unable to avert your gaze from those claws that looked ready to tear into you. Clearly you had misjudged the situation—the Hydro Dragon was a starved, deadly predator, and you were practically served on a silver platter as its next meal.

Icy panic raced through your veins. You’ve never seen him like this, so out of control and inhuman. Trying to mediate the situation, you put your hands up in surrender. “Neuvillette, listen to me. Just calm down.”

You had hoped that saying his name would do just that, but it seemed to only rile him up further. The Chief Justice of Fontaine actually growled in response. You couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a plea. “You deny your mate, and now you’re telling me to simply calm down?”

Another step back. Just put out the fire and deal with the consequences later. “I apologize for being confrontational. I think it’s best if I just go—”

Before you could react, Neuvillette pounced forward and grabbed you by the shoulders, pulling you onto the bed. You released a cry and tried to scramble away, but he spun you around and pinned your back against the mattress with his muscular frame. He loomed above you on all fours, his hands gripping your arms and applying just enough pressure to hold you still without hurting you. The glint in his eyes, however, promised pain that was yet to come. You were the prey about to get its throat torn out.

“Wh-what are you doing?” You struggled, heart skyrocketing at the feel of his arousal pressing against your core.

"Something I’ve needed to do for four hundred years," he growled huskily, his breath fanning your lips moments before they slammed against yours.

The kiss was hungry, predatory. Obsessive. You could feel the release of each year, each century, as his mouth devoured yours. You arched your back in an attempt to get away, but Neuvillette was quicker. He lifted your form easily and slammed your back against the bed once again. At your gasp of shock, he took the opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth.

You fumbled around for something, anything that you could take purchase of. Your arms were pinned, but you were just barely able to grab onto the first thing and tug: his horns.

Neuvillette moaned, a deep, throaty sound that sent heat flooding through you.

It was in that moment you realized your mistake. You recalled how some marine animals with horns had millions of nerves within them, making these appendages a source of sensory stimulation. When you had started adjusting his horns after they were getting stuck, it must have been like touching his—

Oh, fuck.

Neuvillette released you arms, grinding against your thigh. “Do that again,” he begged, though it came out as more of a growled order.

“Neuvillette, stop—” An involuntary whine escaped your lips.

Your lewd noises only instigated him. His movements became more erratic as he slid a clawed hand up your leg and to your core, which was protected by only a nightgown. You jerked as his finger pinched your clit, eliciting another whine.

Neuvillette’s eyes sparked with heat, dual purple flames that devoured your form. “That’s it, my dear. Let me take care of you.” He bit down on your neck, causing you to cry out. He was marking you before he took you fully.

“Tonight, you become more than my wife. You become my mate.”

~*~

You laid there limply in Neuvillette’s arms. He peppered you with kisses and whispered words of protecting you and lofty dreams of your future together, but it fell on deaf ears. None of it made you forget about the bites along your neck or your throbbing core.

You couldn’t believe you had let his kindness fool you for even a second.

You had to escape this prison.

#yandere #yandere neuvillette #yandere neuvillette x reader #yandere genshin x you #yandere genshin impact #genshin impact #dragon #obsessive love #tw kidnapping #tw noncon touching #neuvillette doesn’t understand the concept of personal space #neuvillette is down bad #mates

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xxsyluslittlecrowxx · 2 months ago

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𝐈𝐧 𝐎𝐢𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

[ 𝐑𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐥 ]

𝐚/𝐧 : This story was born as the unholy lovechild between me and @laddelulu30 in the dead of night, when our brains short-circuited and conjured this version of Rafayel. Bratty. Dominant. Unraveled. I haven’t known peace since.

He lived in my head with the weight of a temptation I couldn’t ignore—drenched in sin, sarcasm, and the kind of control that begs to be challenged. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. So I wrote him. Or maybe he wrote himself. Either way—here he is. The Rafayel that would, without question, absolutely ruin me. I hope he ruins you too.

𝐜𝐰/𝐭𝐰 : Explicit sexual content • power dynamics • breathless dominance & resistance • biting • bondage (light restraint) • consensual rough sex • possessive behavior • intense psychological tension • brat-taming dynamics • degradation (mild) • mutual obsession • themes of control, pride, and surrender.

𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : To @laddelulu30—beautiful, brilliant, and dangerously enabling. A cherished mutual in the sacred halls of smutuals. Thank you for dreaming this version of Rafayel into existence with me. This one breathes because of you.

And to the incomparable @lovenstan, whose existence is a blessing and whose support is pure magic—thank you for always knowing exactly how to scream in the comments and fuel the fire.

This sin-stained offering is for you both. May it ruin you kindly.

𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐎𝐰𝐧 : [ 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞! ]

𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 touched the painting in three nights.

Not out of satisfaction—no, that would have suggested closure, a lie he could not afford. The work remained unfinished, not in the way of technical incompletion, but in something far crueler: a silent resistance embedded in the shape of her mouth. There was a truth there he could not name, and so refused to capture. A defiance, perhaps. Or the veiled threat of mercy. Either way, the moment he felt himself approaching comprehension, his hand had faltered—as if to know her fully was to forfeit something irrevocable.

Now he stood before it again.

Palette in one hand, brush in the other—fingers twitching not from fear, but from reverence so sharp it bordered on pain. To complete it now would be to submit to her, to her memory, to the impossible idea of her. And submission, for a man like Rafayel, was a form of self-destruction he reserved only for gods and ghosts.

The gallery breathed around him with the scent of turpentine and oil—sickly, sacred. Moonlight fractured itself across the marble floor, a cold and pitiless illumination. The portrait—her portrait, though she would spit at the term—watched him from its place on the easel. It did not wait. It judged. With the patience of a saint and the cruelty of an oracle.

He touched the brush to the corner of her eye.

And in that instant, his breath betrayed him.

He hated painting her.

Hated the muscle memory of her made flesh in oil and shadow. Hated the way his hand moved unbidden, recalling the soft edge of her cheekbone, the lift of her brow when she reached like she had just defied heaven. He despised the intimacy of that precision—the hunger that resided not in his gut, but in his fingertips. A hunger that remembered her better than he did.

What was she, if not his most magnificent error?

He told himself this was about control. About preservation. About conquering the wildness of her and immortalizing it in pigment and linen. But every hour spent dragging color across canvas had begun to feel more like penance than creation. Less dominion, more worship. And not the kind given in churches—but the kind offered in secret, in the dark, with bloodied hands and bent knees.

She was no muse.

She was a consequence.

He stepped back.

The brush lingered in the air, uncertain. The red he had chosen for her lips—once defiant, now docile—was wrong. Too soft. Too floral. It lacked her venom. Her dare. No, she was not a rose. She was a briar. A blade disguised as bloom.

He sat the palette down.

Wiped his hands on the cloth that hung at his hip—habitual, futile. Rituals meant to suggest control where none remained.

Still the portrait stared.

Still it asked questions it always asked: Is this all you see? Is this all you dare to want?

He did not answer.

He never did.

Not because he lacked the answer, but because to utter it would desecrate it. The truth was not merely unbearable—it was sacrilege. And though Rafayel had long since turned his back on God, he still clung, in some small, desperate corner of himself, to the illusion that certain things might remain untouched. Unsullied. That she might still be sacred.

But he knew—God, he knew—that the moment she stepped through that door again, that fragile altar would be shattered. He would not meet her as a man.

He would meet her as a penitent without confession.

He had imagined her naked.

Not in passing. Not in the idle, mechanical way a man’s gaze might linger and move on. No—Rafayel dwelt there. He inhabited it. The idea of her was not a flicker but a cathedral in his mind, and he had knelt at its altar night after night. He envisioned her not only in the heat of flesh, but in the sacrament of stillness—in the cruel, perfect silence of bare skin and parted lips, as if she had been created solely to unmake him.

Not even the saints received such reverence.

In those fantasies, her body was never simply seen. It was offered. Not to him, no—never to him—but to some cosmic force that taunted him with proximity. She lived in his mind like a myth: untouchable, yet maddeningly near. His hands would wake aching, as if they had truly held the curve of her thigh, the delicate, defiant line of her throat. As if he had whispered into her skin, to with words, but breath: Will you let me ruin you?

Some nights he awoke choking on guilt. Others, on arousal.

Most nights, both.

He could no longer till which came first. Love? Desire? Something worse?

He didn’t know. He was no longer certain there was a difference.

He had never wanted to possess anyone before—not in the biblical sense, not in the artistic one. Not like this. Not to the point of delirium. Not to the point where each passing glance became a negotiation with the monster he kept sedated beneath layers of discipline and diluted paint. This was not longing—it was violence. The kind born of wonder. Of worship. He wanted to touch her the way the starving touch bread. The way the dying might reach for salvation and dare to hope it has a face.

He wanted her undone.

Not through cruelty, but through tenderness. The unbearable kind. The kind that strips a person bare not with hands, but with recognition. He wanted her trembling not from fear, but from the pressure of being seen. Completely. Flaws intact. Darkness acknowledged. And adored anyway.

But she could not be possessed.

That was the wound.

She wielded her power with a grace that required no effort, no performance. She was a woman who had been shattering men since the womb—gently, wordlessly. Her defiance was not a storm. It was a breeze at your back as you stepped off the cliff. A glance. A slow, deliberate turn of the head. A smile that said: You’ll drown before you reach the parts of me you think you want.

And perhaps that was the very thing that kept him circling her flame. The ledge. The fall. The exquisite absence of safety.

Perhaps that was why he kept painting her.

To hold her, if not in life, then in likeness.

To trap the infinite in linen and oil.

To make God jealous.

But the painting never breathed like she did.

It never laughed with that unbearable softness—the kind that mocked and beckoned in the same breath. It did not tilt its head with that maddening carelessness, a gesture carved from intent yet masquerading as instinct, as if to say: Try me. I dare you. It never spoke in that voice—that voice—which sounded like sleep and sacrilege layered into one. Her tone was not heard; it was embedded. It slipped into the bloodstream like silk soaked in poison. A whispering parasite, tender in its venom.

Even now, with only canvas and ghosts for company, he could hear her.

The way she said his name as though it belonged between her teeth. Not a word, but a verdict. Not shouted, never that—only laced, with the quiet cruelty of a woman who knew she needn’t raise her voice to command the room. That lazy, velvet cadence—more strangulation than speech—coiled around his throat with every recollection.

He loathed it.

Loathed the way it made him want to perform.

The way it summoned something feral from the pit of him—a need to outwit her, to catch her off guard, to win a war that had no name and no end. She didn’t argue. She baited. With smirks and silences, with that impossible grace and the godless confidence of someone who had never lost, not truly.

Their game was never battle.

It was ritual.

A theatre of glances and veiled defiance. Of distance weaponized. Of intimacy deferred until it bled. They wielded denial like a shared language, trading barbed sentences beneath the civility of smiles. Even her lies were art. He had memorized the way her lips parted just before she bent the truth—the infinitesimal flicker of amusement when she caught him watching, undone despite himself.

She knew what she was doing.

God, she knew.

And worse—she enjoyed it.

And still—still—he returned. Walked into the trap willingly. Let it spring around him like a collar, worn not out of weakness but worship. Because beneath the performance and the mockery, beneath the eyes that glittered like sin in motion, there was something else. Something deeper. Something he could not name—only suffer.

He didn’t want to break her.

Didn’t want to win.

He wanted to endure her.

To bear her in full. To remain standing while she dismantled him one breath at a time. To prove—to her, to himself, to whatever cruel God had made her—that he could withstand the full weight of her fire and not turn to ash.

He didn’t want to tame her.

He wanted to survive her.

And if the fates were merciful, if the stars aligned for even a single instant, perhaps—perhaps—he would be granted the dignity of being ruined by her hands alone.

But even that was fantasy. Too clean. Too holy.

What he felt for her was older than language, hungrier than virtue. It had claws. It had teeth. It did not beg.

It waited.

Waited for the night they would no longer pretend. When words would fail, and control would die screaming. When all that would remain was breath and skin and fury and silence—ripped apart and pressed together in the same moment.

He did not want a kiss.

He wanted a reckoning.

And Rafayel would not be content until they were both on the floor—paint-smeared, sweat-slick, and gasping for the kind of absolution that could only be earned through ruin.

It was then—of course then, as if summoned by blasphemy itself—that he heard her.

A voice from the doorway: smooth, assured, intolerably amused. It floated into the gallery like incense, thick with self-satisfaction. A knife wrapped in silk.

“Well. That’s one way to look at me.”

She stood with her hands folded behind her back, not as though entering a room, but a confessional. A judge disguised as a supplicant. The moonlight reached for her first, hiding the outline of her frame like a sacrament corrupted. That smile—sharp, unrepentant—wasn’t generous. It was intentional. Like she had read every feral thought he had ever had about her and chosen, with exquisite malice, to reward him for it.

Rafayel did not turn.

Not yet.

He kept his gaze fixed on the painting—those eyes he had failed to capture, failed to bind—and felt something monstrous and ancient unfurl in his chest. Not joy. Not longing.

Recognition.

Of course she would arrive now. Of course she would speak with that impossible casualness, that practiced cruelty.

Because she knew.

She always knew.

“I must’ve been very good,” she said, stepping forward with that same maddening elegance, “to live in your head like that.” Her tone, never quite loud, never quite soft, was the voice of inevitability. “Though I imagine it’s a bit crowded. With all the saints you’ve evicted to make room for your obsessions.”

That was her gift.

Every word a mercy and a wound. Every sentence a hymn and a heresy.

He turned—not to greet her, but to endure her.

And there she was. Real. Dreadfully, deliciously real. She had not dressed to provoke. And yet she did. She had not asked to be noticed. And yet she bent the very air toward her. Her gaze flicked from canvas to creator and back again, her amusement not in the brushstrokes, but in the man she’d caught mid-devotion.

“You didn’t get my mouth quite right,” she murmured, head tilted in mock critique. “But I suppose even gods have off days.”

He said nothing. Could say nothing. He only looked—truly looked—and something within him shifted. Not crumbled. Not yet. But fractured. The first crack in a dam that held for too long.

She had not come to be admired.

That much was clear.

She had come to play.

To see how far she could press her heel against the altar before the temple fell. To test whether the god she had been fashioned for could be brought to his knees.

And if she believed, even for a moment, that he would fall first—

Then she had gravely misunderstood the man who had painted her into eternity.

She moved with the terrifying grace of someone untouched by consequence. Each step measured, deliberate. Not toward him—not yet—but toward the painting. Her own face, her own expression—immortalized in oil and torment. She regarded it the way one might study a former lover across a funeral—familiar, curious, never quite reconciled.

“You made me softer than I am,” she said at last, her hands still loosely clasped behind her back, though one now lifted, hovering near the painted cheek as if debating contact. “Kind. Almost gentle.”

A pause.

“Is that how you see me, Rafayel?”

He watched her the way a man watches a blade just before it plunges.

“No.”

“Pity.” Her smile curved with cruelty. “I liked the idea of you lying to yourself.”

He tilted his head slowly, as if weighing the stormclouds gathering behind her eyes. As if deciding whether the rain would cleanse or drown.

“You’re not flattered?” she asked, mock surprise lacing her words. “Not even a little? Most men would unravel at the thought of being so possessed by a woman they had to paint her just to keep from going mad in her absence.”

He let out a sound—low, rough. Almost laughter. But stripped of mirth.

“Most men are weak.”

She clicked her tongue, a theatrical tsk of disapproval. “Then I suppose I’ve wasted my sharpest weapons on a man made of stone.”

“Then sharpen them,” he murmured. “Try harder.”

And there it was—that flicker. That beautiful, damning glint in her eyes. The one she tried to hide but never could. The thrill of resistance. Of being met, matched, measured. Boredom starved her. Banter sustained her. She shifted, almost imperceptibly, like a predator scenting blood—but held back. Not yet. Not quite.

“I wonder,” she said, quieter now, gaze drawn again to the version of herself on canvas, “if this is what it’s like for you. Always. Wanting to touch but never daring. Desperate to claim, but tethered by your own hand. That must be… maddening.”

“It is.”

The honesty startled her. Not because she had expected denial—Rafayel was never so petty—but because she had expected cruelty. He gave nothing easily. Least of all the truth. And yet here it was: raw and glinting like a blade place gently on the table between them.

She turned to him fully then.

No smirk. No posturing.

Only the unbearable stillness of a woman prepared to be either revered or ruined.

“And what,” she asked, her voice no longer teasing, “are you going to do about it?”

He stepped forward—just one step. Not enough to breach the space between them. Just enough to suggest that he could. That he might.

His voice, when it came, was quiet.

Not soft. Never soft.

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you came her to surrender,” he said, “or to see how long you can stand before you shatter.”

Her mouth curved—not into a smile, but into something far more dangerous. A flicker of satisfaction. Hunger unvoiced, but unmistakable. She didn’t retreat. That, Rafayel noted, was her first answer. Her first refusal. She let his words linger between them like spilled wine—dark, deliberate, staining the very air—and did not flinch.

“Oh,” she said at last, folding her arms. Not in defense, but in pose—like a swordsman settling into a stance he knew by heart. “So it’s a test, then. And here I thought this was a gallery, not a courtroom.”

“A gallery can be both,” he replied, eyes narrowing with slow precision. “Plenty of saints have been condemned under the guise of beauty.”

“Is that what I am?” she asked, chin lifting slightly. Sharp. Unapologetic. “Your martyr?”

“No.” His voice was flat. Final. “You’re the flame.”

Her brow arched—performative, practiced. Feigned boredom like a mask, though her eyes betrayed the pleasure she took in the game. “Poetic,” she said, half a sigh. “You always were indulgent with your metaphors.”

“And you,” he countered, stepping forward with ritualistic slowness, “always liked pretending not to understand them.”

“That’s because I prefer plain speech,” she said, voice cooling into something surgical. “Words you can taste. Not decode. There’s something honest about vulgarity, don’t you think?”

He nearly laughed—nearly. A breath caught in his chest, dragged over teeth. “You want vulgarity now?”

“I want honesty,” she snapped, a thread of heat breaking through her composure. “But I’ll take vulgarity, if you can’t manage the first.”

The silence that followed was no longer passive.

It was pressurized.

Metallic.

The kind of silence that follows the unsheathing of a blade.

He looked at her the way one might look at a locked door—not for lack of a key, but because the door wanted to be watched. Wanted to make him wait.

“You walk into my space,” he said, calm as glass, “stand before your own painted shadow, and ask questions you already know the answers to. That’s not curiosity. That’s cruelty.”

“And yet,” she said smoothly, “you keep leaving the door unlocked.”

A pause.

Longer this time. Heavy with history. With all the unsaid things that lived in the walls of rooms like this one. Every argument sharpened by tension. Every conversation that hovered on the edge of violence and vow. Every almost.

He tilted his head—not with wonder, but with calculation. “Maybe I want to see how far you’ll go.”

She rolled one shoulder in a lazy shrug—provocation disguised as nonchalance. “Maybe I want to see what happens when you stop pretending you’re above it.”

“You think I pretend?” he asked.

He was close now. Close enough that she would have to tilt her chin to meet his eyes, and she did—unflinching. Unmoved.

“I know you pretend,” she said, voice velvet-edged steel. “You paint control into everything you touch. But I’ve seen the way you look at me. You’re not hiding desire. You’re disciplining it. You think that makes you holy.”

He let her words strike where they were meant to. Let them settle deep into the fractures she knew by heart. And then, with agonizing slowness, the corner of his mouth curved—not into a smile.

Into a warning.

“And if I said I don’t want it tamed?” he murmured.

She stepped forward.

At last.

Not in surrender.

But in defiance.

A deliberate offering of herself to the fire she had lit.

“You’d still have to earn it,” she said.

Her hand rose—slowly, deliberate. There was nothing hurried in her movement, nothing uncertain. Just a single finger, drawn like a match across the highest button of his shirt. She didn’t unfasten it. Not yet. She only traced it, featherlight, like a whisper meant for skin. As though testing the heat of something volatile. The fabric quivered beneath her touch.

He did not.

“You like to dress,” she murmured, gaze locked on his, “as though temptation hasn’t the courage to reach you. Stiff collars. Stark lines. Everything sealed shut. But your eyes, Rafayel…” Her voice dropped into silk. “Your eyes are screaming.”

He did not flinch. Not because her touch didn’t rattle something deep within, but because to yield now—even a fraction—would be surrender. And they were too far gone for surrender to be cheap.

“Funny,” he said, tone clean and cutting, “I always thought you dressed like you were waiting to be undone.”

Her mouth curved. Not into a smile—into strategy. Her finger drifted, barely, to the second button. Still light. Still maddening. “Waiting implies patience,” she said. “I prefer provocation.”

“And yet,” he said, voice low, “you’re still standing.”

“So are you.”

The silence that followed was not absence. It was intention. Heavy and crackling, like the pause between thunder and ruin.

He inhaled, and beneath the stale scent of turpentine and drying paint, there it was—her. A faint sweetness—jasmine, maybe. Or something older. A perfume made from memory and malice. She smelled like longing dressed in elegance. Like violence on tiptoe.

She was the ache that kept waking him.

“You know,” she said, tapping once—deliberately—on the third button, “I half-expected you to crack the moment I walked in.”

He scoffed. A sound stripped of humor. “You overestimate your effect.”

“And you,” she countered, eyes flashing with unholy glee, “underestimate how much I enjoy watching you squirm.”

His gaze darkened—not with lust, not with rage, but something older. Elemental. Something that belonged not in conversation, but in scripture.

“Do you want to lose?” he asked.

She leaned in—not enough to close the distance, but enough to burn in it. Enough to make him feel her breath ghosting his jaw, the way sins once lingered on a priest’s tongue.

“I want to see,” she whispered, “how long you can stand with my hands on your shirt… and not on your throat.”

He laughed then. Low. Hollow. Without mirth—but full of warning.

“Is that a threat,” he murmured, “or a request?”

Her voice, when it came, was quieter. Rouger.

“Would you be more eager if I begged?”

“No,” he said, tilting his head like a beast scenting the blood of its equal. “But I’d enjoy the sound.”

And still—still—they did not touch beyond the ghost of her finger. The heat between them was unbearable, thick with everything they refused to name. It was not just tension.

It was a trial.

Their bodies were battlegrounds not yet breached. Holy sites waiting to be desecrated.

“I wonder,” she said at last, her lips barely parting, her breath like confession near his jaw, “if you’ll paint me again after this.”

He did not blink.

“I wonder,” he said, voice precise and unsparing, “if you’ll still be able to look at your own reflection.”

Her hand moved lower.

Not with haste. Not with hunger. With certainty. The kind that stripped time of its urgency. Each motion was a sermon in undoing. Slow. Measured. A dismantling masquerading as touch.

Her fingers traced the line of his buttons, descending with the deliberation of a liturgy, until it reached his abdomen. Then her palm opened—rested there, flat, unhurried. She did not press. She did not claim. She merely existed, poised between suggestion and surrender.

“So confident,” she murmured, fingers curling slightly, catching against fabric as if testing its will. “So composed. I’d wager you rehearsed these lines before I arrive.”

“If I rehearsed,” he said, lifting a lock of her hair from her shoulder with two fingers, “you’d be speechless by now.”

But he did not brush it aside.

He held it. Studied it.

He let it slip between his fingers like scripture read in silence. A ritual, not a flirtation. A reverence for something he refused to admit he feared.

“I never said I wasn’t,” she replied, quieter now. “Only that I hide it better.”

He brought the strand towards his mouth—not to kiss, not to taste, but to contemplate. To offer proximity without consumption. His breath warmed it. The gesture was not affection. It was sacrilege performed with devotion.

“Tell me,” he said, eyes locked to hers like a sentence yet to be served, “how far do you think you’ll go before the act breaks?”

Her gaze narrowed—not with fury, but with a pleasure so precise it might have been carved from cruelty. “You think this is an act?”

“I think,” he said, letting the strand fall back against the hollow of her collarbone, “you’ve never had to mean it before.”

She leaned closer.

Not to touch—but to haunt. Her presence filled the air between them like smoke in a cathedral. Her voice dropped to a register lower than language. Something meant only for the condemned.

“And you believe you’re different?”

“I know I am.”

A beat.

No word, no breath, no reason passed through it. Only certainty—that kind which does not need to announce itself to exist.

Her hand slid lower still.

Her palm now rested at his waist, thumb at the edge of his belt like the tip of a blade—not to cut, not yet—but to remind him: you bleed.

She did not pull.

She didn’t have to.

Her stillness spoke.

“If you knew,” she whispered, no louder than a confession beneath stained glass, “how badly I want to break you…”

She trailed off, not for effect, but because even naming it would fracture something sacred.

“You’d be running.”

Rafayel raised his hand—slowly—to the line of her jaw. Not touching. Just hovering. Just asking.

“If you knew,” he said, voice sharpened into prayer, “how badly I want you to try…”

He leaned in. Not closer. Deeper.

“You’d be trembling.”

And still—still—they did not touch.

They stood like relics behind glass.

Suspended.

Unbroken.

Unyielding.

Two absolutes in collision, orbiting at the edge of annihilation. Each daring the other to step over the line. Each waiting for permission they would never ask and would never grant.

Because desire, when holy, demands not consent—

— but consequence.

And then—

The noose snapped.

It was not gentle. It was not poetic.

It was violence—wrapped in heat, in breath, in the kind of hunger that makes men forget language.

Her hands found his collar like possession made incarnate—not to draw him in, but to claim him. A grip meant to bruise, to punish, to say: you belong to this moment now. And he answered with equal ruin—both hands in her hair, not careful, not reverent, but desperate. As if anchoring himself to the last solid thing in a world on fire.

Their mouths met like war.

There was no kiss. There was no gentleness. Only collision—teeth crashing, breath stolen and weaponized, tongues fencing with venom. This was not affection.

This was annihilation.

She bit first.

A brutal snap of teeth against his lower lip, enough to break the skin, to draw sound from his throat—something not quite human. Not pleasure. Not pain. Something worse. He answered without hesitation—wrenching her head back, not to dominate, but to expose. Her neck. Her jaw. The maddening smirk that lingered even as her chest rose in ragged, ruined breaths.

“You’re slow,” she gasped, laughter tangled in want. “For someone so starved.”

He growled—not metaphor, not metaphor, a true, guttural sound that scraped through him like flame—and crashed back into her mouth, one hand fisted cruelly in her hair, the other gripping her waist as if it had always belonged there. As if the shape of her had been carved for the curvature of his hand.

She pulled at his hair—hard. Not to guide. Not to comfort. To resist. To test.

He hissed, his lips parting in furious answer, and she used the opening—sliding her tongue back into his mouth like a blade slipping between ribs.

She moaned.

It sounded like a dare.

He shoved her into the nearest wall—not for control, but for defiance. Because he would not be the one to step back. She met the impact with a gasp, legs parting just enough to invite proximity—but not surrender. Not yet.

Her nails dragged down his back, shredding linen and scoring skin.

A warning. Not an offering.

“This all you’ve got?” she muttered against his mouth, teeth flashing, lips stained with his defiance.

He answered by lifting her—just enough to steal her balance. To remind her of gravity. Pressed his forehead to hers, their breath caught between them, trembling with the weight of everything they refused to name.

“No,” he said, voice broken open. “Not even close.”

Their mouths collided again—messier now. Hungrier. Rhythmless.

There was no choreography, only need.

No tenderness, only heat.

Spit and breath and mouths that didn’t ask—only took. Her hands were beneath his shirt now, nails skimming skin like threats. His teeth found her throat—not to mark, but to claim.

Neither surrendered.

Neither spoke mercy.

They burned, and called it survival.

He tore his mouth from hers like a drowning man breaking the surface—gasping not for relief, but for the next plunge. His hand found her wrist—not to restrain, but to command. There was no resistance. Only the thrill of momentum as he walked her backwards, step by step, with the unrelenting gravity of his body.

Her spine struck the edge of his painting desk.

The wood groaned under the sudden burden. Jars of pigment trembled. Brushes clattered in their glass reliquary, trembling as if they too knew what was about to be broken.

She smirked.

Not with affection. Not even with victory.

It was triumph laced with sacrilege—as if this, all of it, had been preordained. As if she were not victim nor witness but sovereign of the collapse. She leaned back across the chaos like a monarch laying claim to a battlefield littered with the bones of past hesitation.

He didn’t pause.

He gripped her thighs, lifted her onto the altar of his ruin—the desk cluttered with his reverence. Canvases shifted. Paint tubes rolled to the floor like fallen relics. Still, neither of them blinked.

“You always were good at making a mess,” she said, bracing her palms behind her, arching slightly—just enough to goad.

“And you,” he growled, stepping between her legs, “always needed to be the center of it.”

Then—

Rip.

No ceremony. Nor foreplay of button or permission.

He tore her blouse open in a single, brutal motion—collar to hem—like a man shredding pretense with his faith. Threads snapped, scattered. Fabric parted like a wound. Her chest rose into the chill like it understood what it meant to be offered.

She laughed—high, breathless, edged with mockery.

“Could’ve asked nicely.”

“You’d have said no.”

“I might’ve said please.”

His hand rose to her jaw, thumb pressing beneath her lip, tilting her head with quiet insistence. He kissed her again—not cruel, not gentle—starving. She bit his lips. This time, he bit back.

Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt—but patience had already been executed. She tore, not with haste, but judgment. Threads unraveled. Buttons flew. His shirt slipped from his shoulders, falling like penitence to the floor. He stood bare in the glow of his desecrated altar.

“Overdressed,” she muttered, fingers dragging down his arms like accusation.

“Entitled,” he answered.

“Correct.”

He pressed her down across the desk, her back bending over palettes and brushes and crushed tubes of color. Pigments smeared against her skin—red, blue, ochre—blooming like bruises authored by art itself. Her skin was a canvas now. Not for beauty. For truth.

She arched—not to yield, but to challenge. Her legs remained closed, a deliberate defiance. She dared him to earn the opening.

“You’ll ruin the canvas,” she hissed against his jaw, her voice unsteady, threaded with pleasure she hadn’t named aloud.

“Then I’ll paint something better,” he rasped.

“You?” she gasped, hips grinding against him—once, hard. She felt the way it broke his breath, how it staggered his control. “You can’t even finish what you start.”

He snarled—his thigh forcing its way between hers, hips pinning her down with the weight of wrath and want. His voice cracked, not with anger, but belief.

“Say that again.”

She laughed—wild, delighted, her mouth blood-warmed and blasphemous.

“Make me.”

His answer was not a word.

It was his mouth—at her throat again, but lower this time. Dragging like penance down the arch of her collarbone, then further, lower, into territory unspoken but often dreamed. The taste of her was thick with pigment and sweat, the smear of ochre and oil staining her ribs like a painter’s sacrament—devotion rendered in mess and proximity.

Her blouse hung useless, gaping like a prayer left unanswered.

He found the edge of her bra and pulled—without grace, without warning. The fabric snapped, groaned, gave. Her breast spilled free like a secret finally confessed. No reverence. No awe.

He did not marvel.

He consumed.

His mouth closed over her—hot, relentless. A tongue that moved not with affection but doctrine. He flicked once, then again—slow, arrogant. His teeth grazed the edge, tested her breath, coaxed it into stuttered surrender. He did not need her to cry out.

He needed her to twitch.

And when she did—sharp, involuntary, bitten back—he withdrew. Lips glistening. eyes dark and unforgiving.

“You twitched,” he murmured, gaze fixed to her chest like a sentence yet to be passed. “How delicate of you.”

Her hand flew to his hair—instinct, rebellion. He caught her wrists before she could find purchase, one in each hand, and pinned them above her head.

Paint smeared beneath her spine like bruises blooming in color. The canvas gave beneath her body, cracking beneath pressure it had never been meant to bear.

She smirked, even bound.

“If I wanted to be still,” she said, voice low and strained, “I’d have stayed home.”

He reached for the nearest relic—an old coil of twine, frayed and paint-stained, a forgotten tool now reclaimed for worship. Her eyes followed the motion—curious, defiant, feral.

He wrapped it around her wrists.

Not tightly. He didn’t need to.

Control was not in the knot.

It was in the fact that she let him.

“You’re enjoying this too much,” she hissed, breath hitching with every word.

He leaned in—his mouth grazing her ear like the edge of a sermon.

“I’m just getting started.”

Then he descended again. His lips mapped a trail between her breasts, across the soft plane of her stomach—each kiss deliberate, cruel, more ritual than seduction. Her body writhed beneath him, restrained but unyielding. He moved like a man delivering a punishment disguised as pleasure.

When he reached her hips, he paused.

Looked up.

Her hands were bound above her, her chest rising with silent war, her jaw clenched tight.

“Spread,” he said.

She didn’t.

And so he smiled.

That thin, dangerous smile of a man who had stopped asking questions.

He used his hands.

Parted her thighs with no gentleness. Only insistence. The cotton was pulled aside—not removed, but dismissed, with the same brutal efficiency one might show a curtain drawn back from holy ground.

And there—at last—he hovered. His breath ghosted just above her, and the look in his eyes was not lust.

It was confirmation.

“Still think I can’t finish what I start?” he asked.

Then—

He licked.

Slow. Flat-tongued. Full.

A sacrament performed not for forgiveness, but for proof.

She cursed.

It was beautiful.

He did it again—slower, deeper.

Her hips jerked. Her bound hands strained against the twine.

“Careful,” he murmured against her, tongue flicking like a threat between syllables. “You’re going to beg.”

She pulled harder.

And he grinned.

Because the moment was near.

And he would not take her.

She would give.

He licked again—slower this time. Deeper. Pressing the flat of his tongue to the place he knew she loathed to love. His hands kept her thighs parted—not cruelly, not tenderly. Just enough. Enough to remind her she was open. And that it was him—only him—who had made her so.

Her back arched. A prayer without language.

She cursed—low, guttural, almost ashamed.

He smiled against her.

Then—flick. Once. Flick. Twice. A third time—sharper, angled, a precise violence.

She moaned.

Not loudly. Not like she had lost. But it left her mouth like a truth too heavy to carry anymore. Honest, Unscripted.

His groan was smug, vibrating against her.

“See?” he murmured, breath hot and damp against the lips he’d just ravaged. “So much noise from someone who talks like she’s immune.”

“Tied hands,” she panted, “don’t make me weak.”

“No,” he said, dragging his teeth over the inside of her thigh, leaving no mark, just threat. “They just make you mine.”

She laughed.

It was a fractured sound—half-breath, half-dare. Almost wrong.

“I let you have them.”

He didn’t respond.

He just flicked his tongue again. Lower. Slower.

Her body jumped.

“I took them,” he said.

“Did you?” she whispered, her voice silk sharpened on the edge of something dangerous. Her hips rolled once, subtle and slow. A test disguised as grace.

He didn’t answer.

He licked again.

Then sucked—once, firmly, with the precision of a man who knew where sin lived and refused to worship it softly.

Her thighs trembled.

“Say please,” he muttered, mouth hovering, breath dragging across wetness like a sin he’d yet to name.

She gasped.

Her eyes sparked.

“I don’t beg.”

“You will.”

He dipped again—mouth open, tongue thick and slow, tasing her like penance.

Her moan shattered the air, raw and feral, echoing through the gallery like a confession torn from the lungs.

He chuckled.

And that—that—was his mistake.

In his pleasure, he loosened his grip.

Her legs snapped shut around his head with the precision of a predator. His body jerked—half in shock, half in amusement. In that stolen second, she yanked her arms forward.

The twine—paint-stained, frayed—gave.

It had never truly bound her.

It was never meant to.

She sat up.

Hair wild, skin flushed, breasts bare beneath the ruin of her torn blouse, streaked in color and heat. She looked like a war made woman.

And he—

On his knees.

Between her thighs.

Looked up.

Not afraid.

But aware.

He had been warned.

“Your turn,” she said, voice heavy with triumph, husky with breath she’d refused to waste on surrender.

Then she shoved him—hard.

He fell backward.

The floor was cold beneath him, marble streaked with pigment and pride. He grunted as he landed, shirt torn, arms splayed. Before he could rise, she straddled him—fast, sure, devastating.

She didn’t speak.

She sat.

Claimed.

Her heat pressed down, and she didn’t move. Not yet. She simply looked—down at him. A queen atop a ruined throne.

Mocking. Ruinous. Beautiful.

“Still think I’m the one who’s going to beg?” she asked, grinding once—slow, deliberate, devastating.

He cursed.

Her smirk split into something dark and divine.

Then she leaned down—and bit his lips.

It wasn’t a kiss.

It was a claim—made with teeth, not tenderness. The kind of kiss that marked, not with affection, but with authority. He growled into her mouth, low and guttural, but she pulled back before he could seize control, before he could reclaim the moment and sculpt it into something he could command.

She would not be taken.

Not tonight.

Her fingers dropped to his belt—no grace, no pretense. Just hunger given hands. Metal clicked. Leather strained. She tore the buckle loose with the frustrated satisfaction of someone who had waited too long. He arched beneath her, just slightly—assisting, not surrendering. It was not submission.

It was strategy.

Clothing was the final illusion of distance.

She pushed his trousers down just enough to free what she wanted. Her knuckles brushed along his length through fabric—casual, cruel, a drag of heat that made him twitch.

She hummed.

A sound of knowledge. Of possession.

Then she sat.

Bare skin met bare skin. Her slick heat ground down on him through what little still separated them—intimate, obscene, inevitable. Her head fell back, just for a moment, her throat exposed in all its bruised glory—paint-smudged and bitten, blouse gaping open like a battlefield never meant to be healed.

He bit his lip.

Not to restrain sound.

To survive it.

She saw.

And punished him.

Her hand shot up and caught his jaw—fingers digging, forcing his mouth open, commanding his gaze.

“Oh, no,” she said, her voice soaked in smoke and spoiled divinity. “Don’t go shy now. You were mouthy two minutes ago.”

He glared, but it was hollow. Ineffectual.

She grinned. A wolf in a queen’s clothing.

Her other hand slipped between them. No hesitation. No preamble.

She wrapped her fingers around him—heat to heat, hunger to hunger—and guided him. Slowly. Deliberately. To the place where she burned.

He held his breath.

Not out of fear.

Not for control.

But because the sight—her above him, straddling, undone and merciless, her grip sure, her eyes locked on his as she lowered her hips until the head of him kissed her entrance—was sacred.

An icon no church could house. A vision no altar had ever deserved.

She didn’t take him in. Not yet.

She hovered.

Let it stretch. Let it ache. Let him feel what was coming.

The pressure. The promise. The inevitability.

He exhaled through his teeth.

She watched the muscles in his throat shift as he swallowed it down.

And then—

She moved.

Slow. Steady. Terrible.

She slid down, inch by inch, like absolution denied and then given only to be snatched away again. Her heat wrapped around him like prophecy, like poetry written in moans.

He bucked—reflex, not decision. His hands gripped her thighs like scripture.

She moaned—quiet, broken, perfect.

And still she held his jaw.

Still, she anchored him to her gaze.

Her voice dropped, low, fractured.

Scripture rewritten in sin.

“Look at me,” she breathed, as if anything else would be blasphemy.

He did.

And it ruined him.

She sank onto him fully—inch by inch, unhurried.

Not merciful.

Commanding.

Her hips rolled with deliberate cruelty, as though each motion carried a sentence, and he was meant to serve every one of them. Her pace was not passion—it was retribution. She made him feel it. Every decision. Every inch of punishment wrapped in velvet and vice.

His hands clamped around her waist—tight, trembling. Her skin burned beneath his palms, alive with sweat and pigment, breathless tension and too-much want.

He sat up.

Caged her.

One arm snaked into her hair, fisting at the root—tight, possessive, reverent in its violence. The other braced at her spine, dragged her chest to his, skin to skin, sweat to smudged paint, breath to broken prayer.

“You’re trembling,” she whispered against his mouth. Her hips moved in slow, cruel circles, dragging him deeper, tighter. “I thought I’d be the one breaking.”

“You haven’t earned it yet,” he growled, and thrust up once—sharp, not deep. Just enough to make her flinch.

She gasped.

Then laughed.

“Cute,” she said, tongue grazing his lip like a blade. “Trying to keep control while you’re inside me? That’s brave.”

He growled.

Not a sound.

A warning.

His fist in her hair jerked back—not to hurt, but to expose. Her throat arched, bare and daring. He kissed it—wet, open, possessive.

Then he moved.

His hips snapped upward—deeper, this time.

She moaned.

Louder.

He did it again.

And again.

Her nails scraped down his back in red, ragged arcs. He bit her shoulder—teeth grazing skin like blasphemy.

Still—neither of them let go.

Her pace rose to meet his, hips slamming down in rhythm to his rise. The desk beneath them groaned, overwhelmed by the sacrilege. Tubes of paint burst beneath heel and thigh, pigments bleeding across their skin like relics from a war neither of them intended to win.

She rode him like vengeance.

He met her like prayer—desperate, furious, devoted.

“I can feel how close you are,” he hissed, forehead pressed to hers, sweat between their brows. “You’re tight as a fist—”

“Then slow the fuck down,” she gasped, fingers digging into his shoulders like she meant to anchor herself to the world. “Unless you want this to end with you choking on your pride.”

He laughed—mad, breathless, undone.

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d frame it.”

They kissed again—wild and feral. Tongues clashing. Teeth scraping. Moans no longer belonged to either of them—they bled into each other, one voice, one rhythm, one threat.

And then—she changed it.

Her rhythm broke.

Not faster.

Slower.

Grinding now, each movement drawn-out, wicked, the kind of pace that hurts because it knows. His hands clutched her hips, tried to set the tempo again. She refused.

“Oh no,” she whispered, lips at his jaw, hips rolling with cruel slowness, “you don’t get to set the pace now.”

“You’re not in charge,” he snarled, biting her earlobe.

She gasped.

Then hissed back, “Then why do you sound like you’re begging?”

He cursed—loud, unfiltered.

Thrust up—hard.

She moaned—but stayed down, locked around him, refusing to give.

Refusing to lose.

They were trembling now.

Together.

Locked.

But not yet ruined.

Not yet.

Because pride was the last thing either of them would surrender. And if this was to be the end of restraint, it would not come quietly.

It would come earned.

She pressed her forehead to his, breath mingling in the fragile space between restraint and collapse. Her lips hovered above his—so close they burned—but never touched. Never gave. Her hips moved with precision now, less frenzy, more intention. Not to coax pleasure.

To drag him with her.

Into ruin.

Into silence.

Into the grave of control.

He grunted, one arm anchoring tight around her waist, the other fisted once more in her hair, holding her there like something sacred he didn’t dare drop. Sweat trailed down his spine. He was shaking. She felt him twitch inside her, thick and aching.

Still—she smiled.

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, voice trembling like prophecy. “Not before I do.”

“I’m trying,” he growled, snapping his hips up, hard enough to lift her off the desk. “To get you there first.”

“Try harder.”

She bit his shoulder—hard.

He jerked, swore.

Then bit her back. Her collarbone. Her lip. Each snap of his mouth was not affection, but rebuttal. And each moan she gave was laced with challenge, not surrender.

She rode him faster now.

Not desperate.

Demanding.

The sound of skin meeting skin, the grit of their breath, the sharp notes of her cries—they blurred into rhythm, into liturgy. He panted into her throat, jaw locked, as if he could delay the inevitable by force of will.

“Almost—” she gasped. “Fuck—you’re close, I can feel it—”

“So are you,” he snarled, thrusting again. Her head snapped back as a cry tore out of her throat. “You’ll break before me.”

“Keep dreaming.”

“Keep riding.”

She did.

And it broke something.

Not just rhythm. Not just pace.

Control.

The slap of flesh, the blur of sweat, the snarl of teeth and breath—it all reached a fevered pitch, the kind where thought dies and only instinct remains. Her hands cradled his face now, thumbs at his cheeks, grounding him, holding him.

As if, if he looked away, even once—it wouldn’t count.

“I want to feel it,” she hissed. Her body ground against his, every movement carved from vengeance and need. “When you fucking fall.”

He laughed—but it cracked, unsteady.

“Then fall with me.”

And she did.

And so did he.

They fell.

Together.

Her body clenched around him, shaking, head thrown back, a cry ripped from her lungs like an exorcism. His hips stuttered, then seized. A curse broke from his throat, sharp and hoarse and final. They clung to each other like lifelines—like wreckage—like the war was over and neither had won.

And neither cared.

He spilled into her with a sound he couldn’t swallow. Her walls fluttered around him, as though her body itself refused to let him go. As though it needed to keep him there—inside, undone, theirs.

Her head dropped to his shoulder.

His mouth—quiet now, reverent—pressed once to her temple.

They breathed.

Wrecked.

Ruined.

Alive.

No words passed between them. None were needed. Not yet.

Not while they still trembled.

Not while their pride lay in tatters at their feet, too raw to stitch, too tender to touch.

Not until the silence faded.

Not until their masks could be drawn on again with wit and mockery.

Not until the next round.