“But I wasn’t ever his!” I had to make him see reason. “I wasn’t trying anything with that cook.”

He shook his head, hellbent on not listening to me at all. Nudging forward, he pushed his cock against me and rubbed the head over my juices.

“I was trying to help a member of your staff with an injury.”

“I don’t fucking care what your excuses are.” He slammed in, robbing me of breath for a long moment. Just like every other time he filled me, the stretch thrilled me and prompted me to surge up against him for more of that friction right where I needed him.

“Not… excuses…” I said between panted breaths as he rammed into me over and over.

Strung out like this, with my hands tied to the bed and his hands gripping my ass, I was as captured as I ever could be. I was his to play with like this, and I enjoyed it. But I couldn’t let him get away with this insanity.

“Maxim—”

“No!” he roared, pummeling my pussy even faster. Each time he smacked against me, my clit burned that much hotter with an aching need. My breasts jiggled, so sensitive as they moved back and forth, and I couldn’t hold on for long.

He stared at me with that smoldering intensity, as if he were a madman who’d never get deep enough. Like he had to brand me from the inside out with his soul and mark me for the whole world to see.

Like this, it didn’t seem like he was fucking me and stuffing me with his big cock just to make a baby. In this way, he wasn’t only trying to knock me up.

Seeing him pushed to such anger at the idea of another man—even someone who wasn’t a threat like his own cook—had me realizing another reason.

He’s jealous.

He’s fucking jealous and?—

He slammed into me faster, pushing me closer and closer to the orgasm that waited so near. I closed my eyes and held on to his tie, bracing myself for the shattering pulse of relief that would render me so spent and weak.

He wasjealous, and I tried not to let the stupid thought mess up my head.

Maxim was jealous, and that insinuated that he cared. I wasn’t just a thing, a possession. I was not only a captive woman to impregnate. If he could be this enraged and jealous, it had to mean that he cared. That he wanted me to fully be his in every way.

Oh, God.

I couldn’t let my mind go there. I refused to consider that something deeper and more profound than constant hot sex during my captivity was building here.

“Mine,” he yelled, digging his fingers into my ass cheeks as he held me in place and fucked me so furiously. “You are mine, Sloane.”

But I wasn’t. Deep down, I couldn’t forget that I was only his captive. Nothing more.

Coming under the waves of blissfully potent relief, I sobbed and waited for him to follow me. This orgasm hit hard, just like all of them did, and I no longer tried to guilt trip myself from embracing how damn good he made me feel. A band of tension snapped and gave way in my stomach. My nipples pulsed with the ache of this climax, and the deep euphoria of coming ensured wave after wave of endorphins to flood me.

I was his. His to fuck. But in this hazy aftermath of climaxing so intensely for him after our fight, I had no willpower to analyze how else he saw me as his.

He didn’t insist on anything else, because with one more quick drive into my pussy, he came. The jerk of his dick inside me gave me that sense of triumph, like it always did, and I had to wonder as he shot his cum into me if he had it all wrong.

I was his like this, in a physical sense.

But with how well I could push him to the brink of insanity and invoke him to get this mad in a fit of jealousy, I had to wonder ifIhad him. IfIhad power over him to render him a beast like this.

No.I kept my eyes closed as he lay over me, breathing hard and slumping to the mattress. Spent from fucking me, he covered me, and I tried to hate the weight of him over me. No matter when and how he took me, this was what I cherished the most. His body on mine. His arms and legs weighing over me and keeping me tucked into his security. In this position, with hisdick still twitching in me a last couple of times as he emptied himself into me, I was warmed and comforted with how snugly we were united.

As one.

I cringed as he untied my hands without getting off me or slipping out of me. The moment my arms were lowered, I let them fall on his back as I hugged him. Making a liar of myself, I showed him, again, that I was his. While I stroked my hands over his broad, toned back, the memories of his anger receded.

But not completely.

I’d never forget how furious he was. And as my heart slowed and he relaxed with me, I realized that I was promised more of his wrath in the future. The longer I hid my pregnancy from him, the madder he would be…