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“Will you be free if I do?” I challenge her. “Will you stop thinking about me? Will you stop being in love with me?”

Lilia gives me a desperate look, like she’s begging me to stop talking. I’ve swallowed down my pain and hatred for her for two years, and it’s been a bitter feast. Words of love and tenderness are coating my tongue and I want to spill them into her mouth.

“Elyah—”

The sound of my name on her lips is heaven. I groan and slant my mouth over hers, tasting her mouth as she lets my tongue sweep against hers.

I should take Lilia out of here. Konstantin and Kirill must be impatient to finish today’s challenge and they and the other women are watching us through the glass. Let them watch. I only care about what Lilia is feeling and thinking, and if I move her, this moment might be broken forever. I have to see this through until she’s mine, once and for all.

“Lilia Aranova,” I murmur, angling my head the other way and kissing her again. “You have always wanted me.” I slide both hands down to her ass and squeeze, pulling her firmly against me. This ass I’ve coveted since the first night she swayed her hips as she walked in front of me. “I have always wanted you. Let me show you,solnyshko.”

I lay her back on the carpet and her golden hair spreads out around us like she’s an angel.

“But how can we do this?” she whimpers. “What future can there be for us?”

“Our future is whatever we make it.” I grasp the straps of her dress and ease them down her shoulders. Her nipples are dark pink and sensitive from Konstantin’s clamps, and I suck them gently. Lilia moans and arches up into my mouth. How deliciously she reacts to my touch. Nothing has changed about how much we crave each other.

“The first time I touched you, really touched you, was just like this. Pulling your clothes aside. Tasting you where I could.” I push her dress up her thighs, grasp her thong, and move it aside. My tongue runs over her sweet slipperiness, and I groan.

I raise my head and our eyes meet. “You always get so wet for me,solnyshko. Do you remember how to ask me for this?”

16

Lilia

My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s going to batter itself to pieces and I really will die today. Elyah’s touch has set my soul on fire, and every touch, every press of his lips, every swipe of his tongue is burning me up. This is madness. I need to tell him to release me. He’s my killer, not my lover, but those are not the words that come to my lips.

“Pozhaluysta…” I breathe.Please. That’s all I can remember. That’s all that I can feel.

Please, Elyah. I’m begging you.

“Trakhni menya pozhaluysta,Elyah,” he murmurs, and his voice is husky with desire. “Say it, Lilia. I am going to hear you say it.”

He dips his head back between my thighs and licks straight up the core of me. The noose lays on the floor next to us like an evil omen. I picture myself suspended off the ground, fingers scrabbling at the rope. Legs kicking uselessly back and forth while Elyah impassively watches the life slowly crushed out of me.

His tongue swirls slowly against my clit. My body wants so desperately to live, and he’s making me feel more alive than I have ever been in my life. My head falls back with a moan. “Trakhni menya pozhaluysta,Elyah.”

“Do you know what you are asking for, Lilia?” He spreads me open with his fingers and torments me even more with his tongue. “Once I possess you, I am never letting you go. I will pursue you to the ends of the earth if you ever run from me again.”

I take his head between my hands, and there’s a sob in my voice as I say, “You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted. I’m yours, Elyah. Love me. Kill me. I don’t care. Just never let me go.”

He groans and slides up my body, wrenching his pants open and pushing them and his underwear down his thighs. I tear off my own clothes and wriggle beneath him, capturing his hips with my thighs.

We both look down at the sight of his cock jutting between us. We’re here again. Everyone and everything is against us, but we’re drawn back together and burning so hard for each other that nothing else matters.

“Lilia,” he breathes, and leans down to kiss me. “The world could end right now and I would still make you mine.”

His kiss is slow and thorough, a man determined to savor every moment of this.

“You’re tempting fate,” I whisper, squeezing his muscular body with my thighs. “We could be stopped even without the world ending. I could be ripped from your arms again.”

“If anyone tries to take you from me, I will kill them.” His tongue swipes my lower lip. “After I am done making you mine.”

He takes himself in his hand and strokes his length slowly up my sex. Teasing me with the sight and sensation of him so close to my core. Teasing both of us.

“Elyah, you’re driving me crazy.” I flex my fingers on his shoulders, digging my nails in, clenching and unclenching.

A smile touches his lips. “I have been dreaming of this forever. Let me drink in the way you are looking at me.”

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