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I unleashed myself, driving into her with a carnal hunger that should have scared her.

My canines ached with the need to bite her, to have her blood trickle into my mouth and my venom swim through her veins.

Not… yet.

“Harder!” she demanded with a frantic edge that made me pause.

I stopped driving into her, stilling with the warmth of her saturating the full length of my cock.

“Please,” she begged, flexing her hips in desperation, but I did not allow her to move.

I shifted her weight to one hand and brought the other to her chin, tilting her face up to look at me.

Tears clung to her lashes, glistening in her eyes and turning the striking cerulean into shattered glass.

My heart squeezed so violently I wondered if the rot had chosen now to claim it.

“Make it hurt,” she whispered, those wide eyes staring into what little I had left of a soul. “I deserve to hurt.”

“You want me to punish you?” I licked a wayward tear that spilled from her eye and trailed over her flushed cheek.

“I deserve it,” she whispered, throat bobbing with the emotion she was swallowing. Hiding from me.

I drew back with deliberate restraint, stretching the moment between us until nothing but the tip of my cock was inside her, before gliding forward again in one slow, reverent motion that stole a quiet whimper from her lips.

“No,” I murmured, my forehead finding hers. I moved with slow, deliberate care, loving her the way I should have from the very beginning.

As much as I loved fucking her, I knew what she needed.

I moved backwards until the backs of my legs found the bed, then lowered myself onto the mattress with my cock still buried inside her. Leaning back on my forearms, I drank her in as she settled over my hips, her open palms resting on the hard planes on my stomach.

Her skin glowed with a soft, iridescent radiance, as though she had absorbed every ounce of the desire I felt for her until it spilled from beneath her skin.

She ground her hips against me.

Oh, she likes that.

I bit the inside of my cheek to distract myself, muscles tensing against my will.

“You are a goddess, Lyra.” I reached between us, thumb pushing against her clit and circling it with just enough pressure to make her walls clamp around my cock.

Fuck, she was going to make me spill inside her before I had proved my fucking point.

“Take your pleasure on me, love. I am done being your punishment.”

Her fingers dug into the flesh of my stomach, and she had the nerve to look annoyed as she lifted herself up, grinding her hips down onto me.

Another tear fell from her lashes, and she moved faster, anger warring to give way to grief.

She let out a frustrated noise as I slowly thumbed her clit.

“Punish me,” she snarled, eyes flashing with that iridescent gleam. “I deserve it. Deserve to hurt.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Her voice broke into a sob and she squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s all my fault.”

“Lyra, look at me.” I waited until her eyes found mine. “Whatever happened before this life... it does not define the woman before me. Let go.”