Page 43 of Sold to the Nalgar
Her.
Sweet. Complex. Bright and dark at the same time.
It made his fangs ache.
He shifted behind her now, moving so swiftly and silently that she barely noticed until his breath was on her ear.
“I’m going to show you,” he said, “what your body can feel in my hands. What you were made for.”
She stiffened.
But when he placed his hand on her shoulder, she didn’t move to stop him.
Slowly, he drew his hand down the curve of her arm, along the velvet sleeve. Not forcing the robe open—no, that would come later, if she allowed it—but simply tracing her through it. Letting her feel the intent, the hunger held in check.
She was shivering.
Not from the cold, not from fear alone.
“Touch is the first lesson,” he murmured. “Before the blood. Before the bite. I want your body to know mine. Towantmine.”
He pressed a kiss to the side of her throat: not biting, not even grazing with fang, just the heat of his mouth on her pulse point.
She gasped.
His tongue flicked out, just once. Just to taste the salt of her skin.
Then... he pulled back, just enough to meet her gaze.
“You see,” he said softly, “I can take nothing… and make you feel everything.”
Her eyes were wide, her lips parted.
She hated him, but he saw it now, unmistakable beneath the defiance.
Desire.
It was deeply buried and conflicted. But it was there.
Zarokh smiled and reached for the knot at her waist.
His fingers—unhurried, assured—slipped beneath the sash and began to loosen it slowly, reverently, as if he were unwrapping a long-awaited offering. The thick velvet belt slithered free, and the weight of the robe shifted against her small frame.
Still, she didn’t stop him. She didn’t move.
But when she turned her head, her eyes met his, and they were no longer wide with shock or fear.
They were cold.
As cold as the ice-crusted steppes of Rakharis, where the sun never touched the ground and the wind stripped flesh from bone.
Still… after all this.
It amused him.
She glared like a warrior defying her executioner, not a human slave sitting helpless on his bed.
The robe slipped from her shoulders in a silent cascade, pooling behind her like dark water. He traced the path of it with his eyes: her newly bared skin, the soft, glowing texture of it. The dips and swells of her waist, her hips, her thighs.
