“Come here,” he commanded softly, and held out a hand.

I stood. His gaze, widening pupils and paling skin except for a faint blush of color on his cheekbones, traveled down my body along with rivulets of water. I waded towards him, sliding my hand into his. Raniel’s fingers clasped mine, too tight for a second, then he pulled me into his arms, settling my back against his chest. His arms wrapped under my breasts, trapping my arms at my sides.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured, kissing my shoulder.. “Do you fear this? Fear me?”

A rhetorical question. He felt anything I felt if he so chose, but he wanted my response.

“I’m not afraid of sex.” It wasn’t the physical act that frightened me. It wasn’t even intimacy I dreaded.

He filled his palms with my breasts, his fingers pale against my flesh. Long, graceful, flowing into tapered wrists. Deceptively pretty hands—I’d seen them wield a sword, I’d seen them tear out a throat.

“I will not hurt you.”

“That is almost a lie, Prince.”

He did not demur. Renaud, earlier, had looked like he had a number of plans that involved hurting me. In any case, it wasn’t physical pain I feared either, or the abuses he could inflict on me for our pleasure. I did not fear teeth or tongue or cock, or chain or whip or delicate blade. I did not fear being restrained or gagged, or put on display.

I was Fae. Nothing about sex frightened me.

With this male, I feared I could not control him, or myself. He held more power in his pinky than I did in my entire body and I was used to rule, to commanding the wills of others because I was certain no matter how flawed my judgment, at least my desperate intent was pure. I only wanted safety for my family, and to avenge their deaths. Everything I’d done had been toward that goal. Safety was not the Prince’s goal. Almost the exact opposite, in fact, and I could do nothing to stop him.

“That is. . .not entirely accurate,” he said.

I could not stand against him. My will, if he willed, would be dust under the force of his personality. We had chosen each other, by fate or happenstance, and it was so unequal a choosing. An Old One, the son of Ancients, and the halfling girl. Would my mind ever be my own? What volition I retained was by his permission.

“That is also not entirely accurate.” Raniel sighed. “I did not choose you only to break you. Perhaps Renaud craves nothing more, but he is only one aspect of the whole. There are ways to keep him sated.”

“Who am I speaking with now?” As I asked the question, I shifted my mind towards his, merging the outer edges of our consciousness, tasting his thoughts, his emotions. Tasting him.

Tasting them. Raniel and Renaud I was unsurprised to find, but the remnants of Darkan’s presence took me aback somewhat. The General was nowhere.

“You are speaking with your bonded,” he said, fingers digging into my breasts. “We are separate, but one, Aerinne.”

Raniel released one, and his free hand traveled down my middle to cup me between the thighs. He kissed my shoulder again, and this time he released his fangs, the tips scraping against my skin as he nudged my head to the side to expose my neck.

I inhaled, and the tremble I’d been ignoring increased. No, I didn’t fear being broken.

I feared I wanted to be broken. By him. Remade and broken all over again.

For years I’d used war and wine to drown out my need for him, even when I hadn’t remembered it was he I craved. I’d teetered on the edge of different addictions and managed to pull myself back in time.

There would be no pulling back from Raniel. Once I had him, I would be lost.

“You are already lost, my halfling,” he whispered against my skin.

His hand on my breast tightened, massaged. Fingertips moved between my thighs, sliding up and down between my folds. Light, taunting. Waiting for me to voice a demand we knew hovered on the edge of my tongue.

“You are already mine. Already bound.”