“I don’t believe it,” Nicolae murmured.

I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me move. His grip tightened around my wrist, but this time, he wasn’t trying to cause me pain. There was something else he wanted, I just couldn’t tell—

“You respond to my touch like an omega would,” he finally said in answer to my confusion. “Every erogenous zone makes you squirm. And your scent…”

I swallowed, humiliation crawling over me like insects. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” His knuckles brushed my side and I caved into him, my head falling to the crook of his neck.

“You’re hypnotizing me,” I accused, gripping his shoulders because I no longer knew how to stand up.

“I wonder,” he whispered in my ear, entirely supporting me with the arm that was wrapped around my back while his other hand cradled my head with gentleness that was so unnatural to him. “Did you respond to her touch this way?”

I gave him a hard shove and stumbled back. More offensive than the question was the answer. I had, in the beginning. I’d never experienced any desire for women, but the way I felt when Francesca touched me was bewildering. It was addictive and terrifying and confusing. I’d latched onto it, to her, in the desperate hope that every relative who’d told me I just hadn’t met the “right woman” was right. And for a while, that spark had been enough to bridge the gap between who we were and what we both needed.

It was still so much different from what Nicolae was doing to me. It was fainter, subtler, quieter. This was… God, it was exhilarating and at the same time, it made me want to dive out that window and hope for the best, because falling twenty stories seemed safer than staying here to let him keep playing with my head this way. To say nothing of the games he was obviously capable of playing with my body—

“Have you changed your mind?” he asked wryly.

“No,” I gritted out. “I’m just not in the mood for your hypnotic bullshit.”

“I’m not hypnotizing you,” he said with bite in his tone that made it clear he didn’t appreciate the implication. “Why would I do that when I want you to bask in the knowledge that you begged for everything I’m going to do to you tonight and loved every minute of it?”

His words made me shiver again, without touching me. How could malice sound so sweet? How could I want him this much?”

“Fuck you,” I seethed.

He pushed me up against the wall, pinning my hands as he glared down at me, his eyes full of lust. I felt some force pulling me toward him, daring my lips to brush his, but I knew that I’d regret it. Not because I had any shame or decency, no. Because it would confirm what he already knew, if not from my scent, then from my erection grinding against his. At least he had the excuse of being pissed off. Of being an Alpha who, according to Leonie, were always ready for action.

“Do you want to rephrase that?” he asked in a harsh whisper as his hands tightened around my wrists.

My lips parted and so did my legs, making room for his thigh as he ground up against me. I didn’t want to say the words, but I was so desperate, so in need of this thing that was too repulsive to even speak out loud, that the words escaped me. “Fuck me…”

“See?” he taunted, his eyes lit with satisfaction as they wandered over me and he gripped my chin in his hand to force my head up. “Begging already.”

Before I could respond, his lips took mine with the violence of a hurricane and I let the destruction wash over me. I’d never kissed anyone like that. Not any of my experimental lovers, not my wife. It was foreign, but familiar, especially the taste of him when his tongue delved into my mouth, demanding and claiming and searching all at once. I swallowed the smoke and liquor on his breath and he swallowed my moan as his tongue went deeper and his hands gripped my waist.

I realized he was trying to unfasten my jeans and tried to help him, because if I was going to abandon my dignity and sell out everything I stood for, I figured I might as well go all in. Instead, he pushed my hands away with a punitive snarl and his nails nicked my skin as he tore my jeans and boxers down in one go.

Until this moment, I’d been convinced that the only pleasure Nicolae was going to get out of this encounter would be my subjugation, but one look in his eyes told me otherwise. I knew the lust in them because it mirrored the darkness in my own soul, and as he took his fill of my naked body, I knew he wanted me as badly as I wanted him.

Maybe only in this moment. Maybe not for the same reason. But he wanted me and I wanted him, and the reasoning behind it all didn’t really seem to matter. Not now.

He took me by the hand, or maybe the forearm. My bones turned to jelly at his touch, so I was lost on the finer distinctions between my body parts until he threw me down on his bed. I scarcely had time to realize this was the first I’d seen of his room, exactly as cold and featureless as I’d imagined, before he was on top of me.

This time, when I reached to unbutton his shirt, he let me. I was surprised he didn’t insist on fucking me while partially clothed just to drive in the stark difference in our stations, but when he disrobed, all I could think of was another proportional distance between us.

I’d never had dick envy. No, I wasn’t porn star thick or anything, but I’d never had any complaints. Knowing my primary partner for the last sixteen years had also been with the man standing in front of me, that came as a surprise. Nicolae wasn’t just thick, he had the girth of a fucking soda can. I didn’t even bother to hide my shock and he didn’t bother to pretend like he wasn’t amused by it.

“Like what you see?” he asked dryly.

“I’ll let you know when I’ve seen all of it,” I muttered under my breath.

He laughed. He actually fucking laughed. As he lowered himself onto the bed again, his fully erect cock bobbed with the movement and grazed the inside of my thigh as he planted his hands on either side to observe me. “You look like you’ve never seen another man’s junk before.”

“I have,” I said, swallowing hard. Not as much as he probably thought. “Just not…in this context.”

“Context?” He raised an eyebrow.

“I haven’t… you know. Bottomed.” I’d just assumed that was what he meant by mating, but the pensive look on his face had me second guessing myself. Maybe that wasn’t the plan and I’d made an even bigger fool out of myself. If he didn’t already think I was the repressed closet case I probably was, he did now.

“That’s a surprise. You seem like a man who takes it up the ass on a regular basis.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

He smirked. “You are easy to rile, you know that?”

His thigh went between my legs again and I grunted as he trapped my shaft between our stomachs. “You have me in an easily riled state,” I wheezed as his weight came down on top of me.

“That I do,” he mused, stroking my hair with unexpected tenderness. “I suppose I have somewhat of an obligation to make your first time go smoothly, hm?”

Anything he said in that accent sounded wrong in all the right ways, but fuck, how was I supposed to respond to that? I guess he didn’t want me to, because he reached into his nightstand drawer and pulled out a bottle of lubricant. I watched, torn between humiliation and fascination as he squirted some out in his hand and marveled at how he could make even the act of lubing someone up seem sexy.

“Open your legs.”

It was another command, but this one lacked the strange psychic resonance of his first. He wasn’t compelling me, but my desire to obey was even more troubling knowing that I couldn’t blame it on anything else. I felt the sting of humiliation as I parted my knees and his fingers slipped into my crack. I tensed up instinctively, but his fingers dove in, undeterred by my virgin ass’s resistance.

“Fuck,” I groaned as the ache gave way to pleasure. My cock throbbed as he started fucking me with his fingers, spreading the lube that was starting to tingle like it had some heated pleasure gimmick to live up to. Then again, maybe it was just that his touch had that effect on me.

“Relax,” he ordered, pushing my knees up with his free hand to get a better angle. He crooked his fingers and I let out a cry. He’d barely even started touching me.

“God, you’re fucking tight,” he growled. “What’re you trying to do, break my fingers off?”

“You know what you’re doing,” I panted. I just hoped he wouldn’t stop. I didn’t even care that I hated this man, or that he was just fucking me because he wanted to own me. Hell, he could leash me to the post outside in the parking lot and call me Fido as long as he kept…

“Good boy,” he breathed, his breath hot on my dick. I hadn’t realized how much lower he’d sunk, and when had he gotten that third finger into me? He was holding my left knee away because my hips were bucking too hard for him to keep hitting that spot I needed him to —

His mouth wrapped around the head of my shaft and I thought I was going to cum right there. Fuck, I came close, but his fingers had me stretched enough that the pain kept me off. I stared down in pure disbelief that Nicolae fucking Ursache was actually lowering himself to sucking me off.

And he wasn’t doing it halfheartedly, either. He took to giving head with the same authoritarian intensity he had with everything else, and the sensation of his stubble grating against my inner thighs as his head bobbed up and down between them was too goddamn much.

My hands dug into his hair without my permission, but his growl didn’t seem entirely foreboding. His fingers surged into me, three at a time, and he deep-throated my cock to keep my hips pinned as they fought to rise. If I was supposed to wait for permission to cum, it was beyond my current ability to do so. He seemed to sense it and sucked the life out of me those last few seconds as my ass tightened around his fingers until I filled his throat and he filled my head with splashes of light and bursts of color.

“Oh, fuck…”

“Are you even capable of articulate speech anymore?” he taunted once he finished drinking my cum.

“Dunno… ask me when I’m not still high off you sucking my cock.”

He pulled his fingers out fast, and pretended like it wasn’t to punish me. Not that I particularly cared. Of all the punishments I’d imagined Nicolae would have to dish out, this was by far the most generous.

“We’re not done,” he said, gripping my hair as he brought our bodies close once more. He kissed me hard, forcing me to taste myself, but the way he tasted was so much more… everything.

What had begun as a ritual and turned into a hate fuck had become something I didn’t even understand myself. I didn’t want to. Somehow, I knew that dissecting it would ruin it and while I was sure the guilt and shame would be my punishment come morning, I just wanted to drown in ignorant bliss right now. In him.

“Turn over,” Nicolae demanded. I decided I liked the way he told more than the way anyone else asked. I got on my knees, not even caring that I was acting like a dog in heat in my haste to make myself accessible to him.

When had I become so desperate?

He was in the drawer again, and I assumed he was looking for more lube. I’d been hesitant to take him, especially when I saw the size of his dick, but now I just wished he’d get on with it and fuck me. When I felt the soft brush of fabric against my side, I looked over my shoulder in confusion.

“I need to restrain you,” he said in a husky voice that made it sound like the best damn idea anyone had ever had, even if I didn’t understand. I shouldn’t have been surprised that a man like Nicolae had some kinks, but he was so domineering that it hardly seemed necessary.

“Why?”

“Because I’m a werewolf and you’re human,” he said harshly. It was hard to take it personally when the thought that he was just as desperate and impatient as I was turned me on so. “I could hurt you if you start acting like prey, and given the way you squirmed while I had your dick in my mouth, that seems likely.”

I swallowed hard. Prey… that’s really what I was to him. The realization shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it should have been enough for me to get out of that bed, pull on my boxers and call the whole thing off. It shouldn’t have made me hard all over again, but it did.

This man, this monstrous thing who seemed intent on chasing away every last remnant of humanity within himself, reminded me of my own mortality at every turn, if only because my heart felt like it was going to explode whenever he touched me. He was cruel and cold and I hated him, but he knew my body and parts of my soul in a way no one else ever had.

As he bound my willing arms behind my back and my face dropped into the blankets that still smelled so heavily of his musk, I felt myself slipping into a trance, and not the kind he’d put me under before. This was all organic, all born of the fact that I couldn’t believe this was real. I couldn’t believe I was on my knees for Nicolae Ursache, begging him to fuck me and ready to fall apart if he didn’t.

His hands traveled down the length of my sides once more and like before, I shivered on cue. “Good boy,” he coaxed again, his voice deceptively kind. I felt his thick shaft pressed against my left buttock as he repositioned to guide himself in.

I held still and bit down on my bottom lip, hoping the pain would keep me from squirming for him. When I felt his crown at my entrance, all bets were off. He’d thoroughly, aggressively fucked me with his fingers for so long I’d started to feel like he was part of me, but it still wasn’t enough to fully prepare my body to make room for his girth. The tension was almost worse than the pain, and I craved both, shuddering when he finally worked it in. His shaft was heavily lubed, which was the only thing that made it possible for him to get in as deep as he was, and I couldn’t tell if he’d used more or if he was just that slick from what he’d done to me.

The thought made me moan, but he seemed to misunderstand. “Just relax,” he coached, spreading my cheeks open wider as he pushed himself further in.

“Hell,” I groaned, arching back into him despite myself. It hurt like fuck, but my body wanted more when I should have been taking it slow. Nicolae grabbed my hips to keep me in place and stopped his steady descent into me.

“This is what I’m talking about,” he said in a tone of scolding accusation, like I was a disobedient fool who needed to be chastised. “I’ll tear you if I don’t go slow, and bleeding around a sexed-up werewolf is not a brilliant idea, even for you.”

His taunting was all the foreplay I needed, but somehow, the warning got through the fog of lust in my brain. “Since when do you care about hurting me?” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was the voice of a man who hadn’t touched water in days, and I was thirsty, but it wasn’t for that. Suddenly, I regretted not taking the opportunity to taste him. Oh, well. Another time…

And then I remembered that there wouldn’t be another time. That this was a moment, a one-time necessity that wouldn’t bear replication. Not when the lust faded and we were left with only ourselves. Him and me. Two men on opposite ends of everything. All we’d have was the hatred, and I’d cherish it because it was here, even now when he was bringing me pleasure I’d never experienced. The lust would taint that hatred and I decided I could stay high on the lingering essence of it.

Nicolae was silent. I knew he wasn’t going to answer when I felt him pushing into me again, this time pulling out before he’d reached the halfway mark. He drove into me again and I cried out as his girth tortured my tight hole, stretching me to the brink of comfort only to push me past my previous limits. And still, despite the pain or maybe even because of it, the only thing keeping me from grinding against him like the desperate whore a single touch from him turned me into, was the fact that he was holding me still. I’d never really had a kink for being tied up, but the association with the cloth binding my arms behind my back and Nicolae’s cock sliding in and out of my aching ass was creating a new fetish. My fists balled up and I bit the comforter to keep from screaming when he hit my spot. Maybe it was on accident, maybe he knew exactly what he was doing, but fuck, I’d never known something that felt that good could hurt so bad. I’d never known I needed pain to feel the reality of another person. To really feel him. His body. His weight pushing up against me. His heat, his pulse pounding against the membrane of my most sensitive place.

The vibrations of the growl building in his chest as his thrusts became faster, matching my need. Every thrust sent him deeper into my spot, and he filled me to the point of absurdity. I writhed, proving he was right to tie me up, as if him slamming into me over and over again simply wasn’t enough. I begged for more, just like he said I would, and I didn’t even care that I was proving him right. The tradeoff was worth it. More of him inside of me. Harder, faster, more.

“Nicolae.” I breathed his name like a prayer. And it was. He was my god of sex and rage, and I was his sacred whore, offering myself up fully to his mercy.

And he had so little of it to give. He pulled out all at once and for the first time, I cried out in pain, not because it hurt but because his absence did. Before I could question his betrayal, he flipped me over and brought his weight down on me. His eyes were blazing, absolutely livid, and I wondered what I’d done to earn his wrath. Whatever it was, I’d get down on my knees and beg forgiveness if that was what it took to get him back inside of me. To finish what he’d started. If he didn’t, I felt like the flames were going to engulf me.

My arms were crushed behind my back at an awkward angle as his weight pressed me to the bed, but I still parted my legs to accommodate him between them. “Nicolae…” It was a plea, a question, begging him to tell me what I’d done so I could fix it.

His hooded eyes softened with something like pity for a moment as they swept over me. I felt him at my entrance once again, pushing gently when I needed him to force and claim and thrust. “I want to see your face,” he said in a harsh whisper that felt like sandpaper on my skin, chafing my already sensitive flesh and making my need all the more pronounced. It was cruel what he was doing to me. Or rather, what he wasn’t. The cruelest he’d been yet. Couldn’t he see I was dying? That every moment he kept himself from me, he was prolonging my torture?

Having his cock buried hilt-deep inside of me had taught me the unexpected lesson that my body existed only to be claimed by his, and I’d accepted it all too readily. I just needed him to do the same.

His forehead grazed mine, both slick with perspiration, and his dark hair fell over me like a burial shroud, which was going to be necessary if he didn’t get back to fucking me. Did he want me to spontaneously combust? His hand swept my face and gripped it with gentle roughness. “I want to see your face when I come inside you.” Somehow, those vulgar words sounded like poetry on his lips.

I nodded, eager to prove that I understood. My fingers dug into the mattress beneath me and I flexed them to keep my arms from going to sleep entirely. I just didn’t care enough to ask him to make any adjustments. Wasted time. He drew his hand up the outside of my thigh and pushed my legs up and apart before he entered me once more. This time, my body put up only minimal resistance and he delved back into me all at once. It had only been a few moments, but my tight hole had already forgotten what it was like to have him sheathed within and I moaned into the crook of his neck as he reminded me. His hand slipped behind my head, but I wasn’t sure if he was comforting me or just getting a better grip. Either way, I felt the heat spread up the back of my scalp, his touch washing over me like spring rain.

He started thrusting again, right back to where we’d left off, and when he hit my spot, all was forgiven. I unwound in his arms and the pain in my own was forgotten. He draped my calf over his back and forced my thigh to stretch, but the place he was able to reach with that new angle was so worth it. His body ground against mine and I threw my head back because it was all too much. Too much and not enough. His lips found my neck as his balls-deep cock throbbed inside me and he sucked hard enough that my head spun. When his teeth grazed my skin, something snapped within me. I should have been afraid that he would bite me, and I was, but I craved it still. I wanted it so much I froze when I’d been rocking and writhing with him a second earlier, desperate to reach climax. Whose, I wasn’t sure. His, mine, it all seemed like the same thing in the moment.

Nicolae’s breath was hot on my neck and I realized I’d turned my head into the pillow to offer my throat to him. It was unintentional, instinctual, yet I would have known what it meant even if I hadn’t been told. In my lessons, I’d learned that for shifters, baring the neck was the ultimate sign of submission—the equivalent of rolling over on your back.

Well, I’d done both for him tonight. It would humiliate me come morning, of that I had no doubt, but it seemed right in this moment. It was what I needed, even if him taking me up on the offer would mean certain death.

Nicolae claimed that wolves were instinct-driven creatures who knew no reason when their desire, whether for flesh or blood, became great enough. Maybe humans weren’t all that different.

Maybe I was just weak. For him. For the one person I needed to hate in order to maintain my own identity. If I didn’t hate him, who the fuck was I?

Nicolae froze just as I did, gazing down at me. He’d promised to take great satisfaction in the look on my face when he had me at this point, so close to climax and so utterly dependent on him to allow it, but instead, he looked bewildered. His eyes darkened and traveled back down to my neck, his throat constricting visibly as if he was considering taking me up on the unspoken offer and his mouth was watering at the thought of it.

Knowing he wanted my flesh in that way, too, made me squirm and I felt the heat of his rock-hard balls grinding into my ass. Our bodies were trying to press even closer when there was no space left between us, like there were two black holes, one inside each of us, just sucking in everything until they became one.

His eyes widened and the next second, I knew why. He was already buried inside of me as deep as he could possibly go. Hell, if he got any deeper, he was gonna be fucking my heart. Nonetheless, I felt him grow inside of me, a thickening at the base of his shaft, stretching me beyond what seemed possible.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked breathlessly. It hurt like hell, and I felt like I was going to be split in two if he moved at all, but it also felt…

Good seemed both too generous and inadequate. The pain kept it from being pleasurable exactly, but the extreme pressure up against my prostate was making me squirm.

“Hold still,” he growled, pressing his right hand to my chest. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What is that, Nicolae?” I demanded, my teeth clenched tight. I knew he was right. I could already feel that he’d torn me, but fuck, it was hard to hold still.

“It’s my knot,” he grunted.

“Your what?”

“I’m an Alpha wolf. You do the math.”

“Fuck! You could’ve warned me—”

“I didn’t know this would happen,” he snapped. “It’s not supposed to.”

“This can’t be the first time.”

“It’s not. Just the first time it’s happened with someone other than an omega. I knew you had the other traits, I just wasn’t expecting my body to respond this way.”

It took me a second to replay all Leonie’s lessons, wondering if she’d mentioned this part or just conveniently left it out. She got blushy whenever it came to more than the basics of were biology, so I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like I needed to know the mechanics of how the rare class of werewolves fucked. From the way Nicolae was acting, it wasn’t something he’d imagined would come up, either. Unlike his fucking knot.

“It hurts,” I muttered. “Can’t you pull it out?”

“If I wanted to kill you, sure.”

“So we’re just stuck like this forever?” I cried, both horrified and strangely pleased.

“Just until it goes down.”

“When will that be?”

“It depends on how long it takes after I cum. Usually twenty minutes, sometimes longer.”

“Fuck!”

He gripped my hair and stared down at me with a stern expression on his face that made me forget about his knot—or at least the pain it was causing me—and realize my own climax wasn’t all that far off.

“I need you to relax,” he said in a gentle tone that made me doubt my theory that the strange effect he had on me was all about my latent repression of some masochistic sub fetish. Gentle, rough, it didn’t matter. It all made me tremble like a leaf ready to break off the vine. The common denominator was him. “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt you no matter what I do, but I’ll try to make it as easy as possible.”

I nodded, because when he looked at me like that, I couldn’t remember how to speak. He was sorry for hurting me? And here I’d become convinced that he lived for nothing else.

“Good boy,” he murmured, bending his head to kiss my neck on the spot that still tingled from the caress of his fangs. It was usually a degrading term meant to keep me in my place, but somehow, it felt different this time. Like a term of endearment from a man who held nothing dear at all.

“Please,” I whispered. I wasn’t even sure what I was asking him for. His knot was already doing things to my spot that no sex toy ever had and all I had to do was think of moving to send waves of pleasure rolling through me. It had to be about the tingling in my neck that had become a burn.

Somehow, he seemed to understand. “I can’t,” he said into my neck, his tone almost apologetic. His tongue swept out over the same spot we’d both fixated on for some reason, him with his mouth and me because it was there. “It would destroy you.”

I let out a moan that was dangerously close to a whimper and felt myself tighten up around him out of instinct. He grunted and surged forward before catching himself, as if the extra pressure around his knot had taken him off guard. “What the devil are you doing to me?” he breathed, searching my face for the answer. It was an accusation, but one that seemed to come from wonder more than anger.

“I want…” The words rushed out with my breath and I swallowed the rest because I knew they’d just come out in a senseless jumble. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just knew I wanted it so badly it hurt. The agony of desire made me shudder and he nuzzled into me.

“Shh, shh,” he soothed, stroking my hair as he started rocking his hips ever so slightly. Not thrusting, just moving enough to stimulate me anew each time. My dick was pressed so tight between his coarse abs and mine, ready to erupt any moment. I needed it so bad I was dizzy, but I didn’t want it just yet. I needed something else, something I couldn’t put into words, but he knew.

“I know what you need,” he whispered. And he did. The gentle suction at my neck, the subtle movements of him inside of me, proved that my body was an instrument under his maestro’s touch. He strummed every chord to perfection and without him even having to demand it, I fulfilled his prediction.

I begged.

“Please, God,” I sobbed, not sure if I was calling out to Nicolae or not. “Please, fuck, please… Nicolae, please…”

Well, that settled that. Not like his ego needed the boost.

“Jack,” he growled with such force I thought he was scolding me again. And then, he came. His seed exploded within me, pulsing and streaming violently until there was no room left in me to fill. I cried his name and a slew of other nonsensical things, most of them profane, as my orgasm bled into his. My cock shot a full load between our chests, but he didn’t seem to care. He captured my lips and his nails dug into my scalp as he tugged my hair in his grasp and his hips gyrated into mine, bone and flesh knocking violently together. His balls slapped my ass as he thrust into me, even though his knot left no room to pull out. Every time he tried, it was agony, but it was also the most earth shattering experience of my life. When the last of his seed was in me and the last of mine was spilled between us, all I had left to my name was his. Nicolae, on my lips, in my veins, carved on my skin in indelible ink, forever.

He collapsed on top of me, panting and growling and it was the hottest sound I’d ever heard. My body convulsed with the aftershocks, but his knot showed no sign of going down. I was still too breathless, too shocked by my own reaction, to ask.

“Son of a bitch,” Nicolae muttered into my neck, his arms wrapped tight around me. I tried to move a little, because my arms felt like they were going to fall off, and he growled.

I froze. “Can you at least untie me?”

He looked up and I could tell the growl hadn’t been intentional, just an automatic reaction to keep me where he wanted me. He nodded, obviously still recovering himself. He unbound the cloth around my wrists, but the pins and needles made me groan.

“Sorry,” he muttered. It was the second time that night he’d apologized to me and I’d been certain that he wasn’t capable of it. He started rubbing my arms and I cursed, but it was helping to bring the feeling back into my abused limbs. They were worse off than my stretched hole.

His hands found their way to mine and somehow, that light brush of his fingertips against my palms as he pressed my hands to the bed felt more private than anything else we’d done. I stared at him and he looked back at me, his face unreadable again. “You,” he murmured, shaking his head like it was some great mystery.

I waited for him to finish his thought, to elaborate the ‘you,’ but he didn’t. Instead, he gathered me into his arms and rolled onto his side. I winced at the change in position, but it was more comfortable once I adjusted. I draped my leg over his and came to terms with the fact that this was how we were going to stay for the foreseeable future.

Come morning, I would hate myself for enjoying this and especially for hoping it lasted a little bit longer. Come morning, he would judge me for all of it, even though he’d been a willing participant. The instigator, if anything. But for tonight, he held me and I let myself be held. I let myself feel paradoxically safe in the arms of the man I had reason to fear more than any other. I let myself pretend I was someone else, because pretending that he was someone else would have defeated the whole purpose. And then I would have had to admit to myself that Nicolae, for all the ways he was wrong and unobtainable and dangerous, was exactly who I wanted him to be.