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I was the princess, the dragoness, the future queen of all shifters. Everybody wanted to be me. Except me.
When I read my books, I escaped. I had adventures. I loved and laughed and cried in a million different ways.
When I played my violin, it felt like I was hanging my soul on a piece of rope to let it air out. I was all me.
As I walked with Janet toward the houses, it occurred to me that I was still a prisoner here—at least for the time being. But I’d be a liar if I said I would rather be home.
“Not until you want to be owned,” I thought he whispered, but it was so low I couldn’t be sure, and then… “You look…different.”
He really had saved me for me.
But something twisted inside me, something I almost missed from the pleasure trying to rip my body open as he squeezed my breast one more time. It was like a chain snapping—or rather linking together, like I was being connected to him in some way. And it scared me shitless.
Punish you. Gods, why did that sound so dirty…in a good way?
“And the next time you slap me, I will put you over my knee and slap you, too, little fox…” The corner of his lips turned up when I sucked in a breath. “I will slap that beautiful ass raw. You won’t be able to sit on it for days.” His words poured liquid heat all over me. He turned and walked out of the house, leaving me struggling to catch my breath.
“Happy?” I snapped, trying to calm my racing heart. It was over—just a trick. The asshole found tormenting me entertaining, but it was over now. Just breathe… “Very. I think I like you breathless,”
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you sitting there with those animals around you.” My breath caught in my throat. His voice was more than soft—a summer night’s breeze, silk against my skin, snowflakes falling on my tongue. “You might be the most stunning woman I’ve ever met.”
“This doesn’t mean we’re at peace,” I forced myself to say. “I will help you, but I still need to leave, Lucien.” He was already in front of me, his presence as imposing as ever. It didn’t help that there was something else in the way he looked at me now, something warm, something sparkly. I didn’t like it. “How am I going to let you go now, little fox?”
Unlike the day before, it didn’t stop the air from going to my lungs, and it didn’t feel like hands around my waist…or between my legs.
His face was open, his smile wide, his shoulders completely relaxed. Strings of his hair fell in his eyes as he looked down at the animals, but he didn’t seem to mind. So surreal. To be honest, the whole thing looked like a sequence from a dream. A silly thought occurred to me—he, sitting in the woods with all those animals around him, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in all my lives, too.
“Because you’re mine, little fox. And nobody touches what’s mine. Do you understand that?”
“Be a good girl for me and spread your legs,” he said against my lips. “I just need a little taste. You won’t regret it.” It was a promise I somehow knew for a fact that he would keep. And, fuck, I really wanted to be a good girl for him.
“It’s two-fifteen in the morning. You didn’t come downstairs to play the violin.” My breath caught in my throat and my lips parted. “Why?”
“Of course, I knew. I was there most nights,”
“Why do you think I never locked that door?”
“So why didn’t you stop me?” To think that he’d always been there when I thought I was alone, that he heard me break apart with every note I played, then get myself back together again…That he’d heard me play away the pain of missing him, too…did he even realize any of it? “Because I’ve never heard anything better in my life.”
As if hypnotized, I pushed the blanket off, forgetting how hard my nipples were—and how little the nightgown covered—until it was too late. I stood up, then looked down at myself when the cold air of the room wrapped around me. Lucien’s eyes were on me, too, but when I turned to grab the shirt at the foot of the bed, he said, “Don’t.” I froze. His footsteps echoed in my head as he came closer. “Don’t cover yourself, little fox. You’re absolutely perfect. Let me see you.”
“We are what we are during the day. Right now, I don’t want to be anything other than a man completely obsessed with you, little fox.”
“That’s a good girl,”
Every ounce of pleasure I was feeling belonged to him. And he loved it. Good girl. You did so well. You played the violin much longer than I thought you would. You were so beautiful when you came for me.
“I’ve thought about you, little fox,” he said, running his hand down my back, over the curve of my ass, sending jolts of electricity throughout me. “I’ve thought about you so much it feels like you’ve always lived in my head.”
“Lie down,” I whispered, and he did. I sat on the bed next to him with the violin, and I played him a slow melody that always calmed me, and I knew it would calm him, too. Lucien slept before the second minute was over, knowing I was the only one in the room with him. That’s how he told me that he trusted me.
“You’re more beautiful than the rising sun, little fox.
“Good girl. That’s my good girl,”
“Because when I take you, when I make you mine, you can never be anybody else’s for as long as you live. Do you understand me?” He lowered me onto the bed and climbed on top of me. The weight of him pressed to my body felt incredible. “You will belong to me forever, little fox. Forever.”
No matter what happened tomorrow, I would always have today.
“You’re such a good girl,” he whispered, trailing kisses all over my face.
“I think I always was. I just didn’t know it yet,” he said—again, simply, calmly, like it was an undeniable truth, as natural as the sun rising every morning.
