“Why are some of these faded like that, while others remain so crisp and vibrant?” I’d once asked Conrad, the old deckhand. Like many of the sailors on the ship to Sophrosyne, most of his body was covered, decorated with a wide variety of art and symbols.
“Always a curious one, aren’t you, little star-seeker?” he’d sighed. “They blur with age. These ones are over twenty yearsold—once ya pass about a decade, decade and a half with ’em, it’s bound to happen.”
Except…Kieran was only twenty-five. How old could they possibly be?
“I can feel you staring at me, Little Conduit.”
He hadn’t even bothered to glance over his shoulder, but I heard the self-satisfying smirk creeping over that croon, and pressed my thighs together.
“Can you blame me?” I replied airily, tossing my hair once he’d turned around to face me. Sweat was dripping from his temples in dangerous ways. “You have anexceptionalass, Captain.”
“Says the woman with the most flawless fuckin’ figure in Sophrosyne,” Kieran muttered, rolling his neck and stretching out his shoulders.
“Aww, only in Sophrosyne?” I teased, sticking out my tongue.
“Fishing for compliments is beneath a woman of your caliber, Asher,” he chuckled. “Let’s save that for the scoundrels like me. And put that pretty little tongue of yours away.”
I scoffed and crossed my arms, pretending to be scorned by his refusal to stroke my ego. Not that it really needed to be stroked when he was looking at me like…that.His very existence was an ego stroke, actually. One of the most attractive men I’d ever laid eyes on was standing in front of me, half-naked and glistening in the sunshine pouring from the skylight overhead. In the sunlight, I could also see the slightest tints of ethereal color, subtle shifts of dark greens and purples in the inky, raven-black hair he’d braided back to keep the silky strands out of his face. That gorgeous, gorgeous fucking face, scarred but made all the more beautiful for the damage.
“Are you going to stand there and stare all godsdamned day, Little Conduit? Or are you gonna be a good girl and come train with me?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIERAN
Fuck.
I’d played myself. I had absolutely played myself.
I hadn’t expected Arken’s nipples to pebble over, gently stiffening beneath her shirt—myshirt, actually—the moment I’d said the wordsgood girl.
Source damn me to the fucking void.
Here’s the thing: I knew Arken was submissive in the bedroom. And Arken knew that I was dominant. We had both toed that line already on multiple occasions, teasing out the truth with subtle—and not-so-subtle—confessions over time. At this point, having been inside her, there was little else I wanted from this world than an opportunity to delve into that dark dynamic with her, but I wasn’t ready. Not yet.
I needed time. Just a little bit more time to figure my shit out. Because if I went there—if Arken was willing to exchange such intimate power with me, and let her dark side dance with mine?
I was fucking done for.
For me, sexual domination started off as an experiment in my youth. Toward the tail end of my teenage years, I’d managed to wander into several of Sophrosyne’s secret sex clubs—places you could only find if you had the right connections and knew where to look. My proximity to the noblesse had done me favors in that regard, and in those darkened, wicked halls I discovered the addictive pursuit of bondage. Over time, it became a vice more than anything else—a damn good outlet, and essentially the only way I could get my dick hard enough to offer a stranger or two the best night of their lives. The kind of sex I liked was rough—dangerously rough, carnal and animalistic. I sought partners with the same energy, people who clearly found their catharsis through such vicious release. And it goes without saying that this brutality was always consensual, alwaysbegged for…but always temporary.
I didn’t do relationships, and I rarely did repeats. I could count the number of people I’d fucked more than once on one hand—a number that now included Arken—and that was by design.
It was easy enough to let strangers bear witness to my dark side in short bursts, letting them scratch the surface and get a small taste of the predator that lurked within. It was enjoyable, actually, to grant myself slivers of that intimacy, to reveal those parts of myself in the dead of night, knowing that come morning I’d be long gone—no chance of anyone looking too close or delving deeper into the depths of what fueled me.
But Arkensawme. She saw far too much, far too clearly—both for her own good, and mine. Those honey-gold eyes pierced straight through my fucking soul the moment they’d glanced in my direction. Iknewmy secrets and walls frustrated her from time to time, but what Arken didn’t realize was that I was pretty sure she knew me better than I knew my godsdamned self.
There would be no holding myself back with her. There would be no restraint, no calculated control, no slivers of truth tucked behind a casually carnal performance.
The day Arken Asher offered me her submission would be the day the trajectory of my life would remain forever altered, because if she let me take her like that…
I wouldnevergive her back.
“Train?” Arken laughed, the sparkling sound pulling me back to the present moment. “I’m hardly dressed to train right now,Captain.”
If she thought I didn’t catch the emphasis on the honorific, she was sorely mistaken—even if I kept my expression neutral as my gaze flicked from my barely-covered groin to her torso, in my shirt.
Gods, I like her wearing my clothes.