“What is it?” she asks me.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I tell her honestly.
“Tomorrow then,” she tells me softly with defeat in her expression and it shreds me, but tomorrow she’ll see.
“Is this what it will always be like?” she asks. “I do something you don’t like, and I’m punished for it and then fucked until I forget I hate you?”
I don’t think she meant her question to be humorous, but a short chuckle makes my chest shake. Running my fingers down her arm, I decide to tell her more, to set boundaries. But with them comes new rules.
“In the bedroom, I want you to obey. Anywhere else,” my blood pumps harder and hotter as I finish, “I want you as mine.”
“There’s a difference?” she asks with feigned sarcasm. That mouth of hers is going to get her in trouble. Her disobedience shouldn’t make me as hard as it does. As much as I love it, tomorrow night she’ll be punished. There’s no mistaking that.
“You already know there is,” I say and although my voice comes out deep and foreboding, I try to lighten it. “It’s time for a new game, Aria.”
“No games.” Her voice rises, and she has to lower it before adding, “I’m done playing games with you, Carter.”
“You’ll never be done with me.” My words whisper against her skin. “You already know that.”
Her fingernails dig into the sheets, pulling them tighter as she continues to avoid looking at me. I know why she doesn’t want to meet my heated gaze. It will make hers fill with desire, too. She can’t deny what she feels for me and how much power is in the tension between us. The push and pull that drives me wild does the same for her. The difference is that I can admit it; even if it will destroy me, I can fucking admit what she does to me.
“What do you want?” she asks me although she stares straight ahead, her expression flat and indifferent. “Tell me what you want from me,” she says, and a spike of anger plays in her tone. “Tell me what it means to be yours,” she asks through clenched teeth and I merely stare back at her. She already knows. We both know that she knows exactly what it means.
“Here you fuck me… you punish me like you did before.” I don’t miss how her eyes darken as she gazes around the room, looking to where I’ve spanked her, throat fucked her, made her cum harder than she ever had before.
“Yes,” I tell her and watch as her pupils dilate and her legs scissor to ease some of the heat growing between her legs.
“And what do you expect outside of this room?” she asks and when she does, her voice wavers. She knows how much is at stake.
“For them to fear you.” Her eyes flash to mine and suddenly my songbird is very much interested. I continue, “The way they fear me.”
She laughs a sad and pathetic sound, ripping her gaze from me as she shakes her head. Her soft lips part, but no words come out and instead, she continues to shake her head and stares at the knob of the bathroom door across the room. Looking anywhere but at me.
“Fear is easy to attain,” I tell her the simple fact. And it truly is. Keeping it is the curse that never fades. But I can bear the weight of that burden. She only needs to play the part. They have to believe it.
She shakes her head gently as if I don’t understand. She tells me, “I want to draw. Maybe own a studio one day. That’s my ambition. Or sell some of my pieces to people who would love them the way I do. I want them to feel what I feel when they look at them.” I can see the light of hope in her eyes as she tells me a dream of hers I would never have known otherwise. I can give her that, so easily. All she had to do was tell me. “That’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted beyond being happy. Having a family and making them happy.”
A family.
I can give her that too, and the thought of her swollen with my child makes me force back a groan of want in my throat. Closing my eyes, I remind myself she needs time. All in good time. Once the war is over, everything will change.
Opening my eyes, I ask her, “And what does any of that have to do with what I’ve asked of you?” My question catches her off guard. “You forget the world you live in.” A family, a gallery. It’s all so easily attainable. But only when we have control. And that requires fear. They must fear her.
I ask her, “You want that studio? A gallery? Children, Aria? Do you think your name alone is one that wouldn’t put a target on your back?” She flinches at the question and I can see the doubt and worry play across her face. Her lips turn down as her breathing picks up. It doesn’t matter if Aria stands beside me or not; the minute she was given the name Talvery, her entire life was at risk.