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“Whom you hate.”
His fingers slide along my forearms.
“What you like.”
His lips brush my jaw, they are rough, warm. His breath trembles against my skin and his tongue travels along me without grace, in an impatient gesture.
“What you dream.”
His mouth slides over my lips without regard. My hand constricts against his chest, it wants to push him away, yet it remains there, a prisoner of two opposing forces surging through me.
“Tell me. Tell me what makes you afraid.”
His fingers abandon my jaw and weave into my hair, pulling slightly. His mouth descends to my neck, lingering, marking. A sound escapes his lips—short, raw—as his body presses against mine and pins me to the mattress.
I feel the pulse in his throat, the hardness that expands and asks no permission.
“What makes you afraid, Dorian?”
At the sound of his name, something in him shifts. His body stiffens against mine, he takes my hand and lifts it.
His fingers run over mine with a slowness that weighs more than any haste. His thumb rests on the back of my hand; his lips close over my thumb, then move to the others, one by one.
“I do not know,” he says finally.
His voice is more naked now.
“What I do know... is that I feared you would no longer wish to see me.”
The heat rises to my face. “And if it were so?”
His mouth continues its slow journey, without mercy.
“I will not allow it.”
“It is not for you to choose.”
“It would be to go against your own will.” His teeth brush my flesh.
“This hand,” he murmurs, “knows how to obey and how to command. I want to feel it tremble for me.”
His fingers tighten around my wrist.
“There is no music without a certain measure of pain, Evander. You feel it, don’t you?”
Nothing exists without pain.
His touch grows more decisive. “Do not go against yourself.”
“It is you who are going against yourself.”
“Viscount,” he says softly, “I never go against myself.”
I lift a hand and bring it to his hair. He freezes instantly, his gray eyes snapping wide, his breath catching.
I barely arch an eyebrow. “Why do you react so whenever it is I who touch you?”
“I should sooner expect a blow than a caress from you—”
