I have Neela exactly where I want her. She's bound and she's not fighting me anymore. I have her submission in the palm of my hand, and the rush of it makes my heart pound in my chest.

I wouldn’t call myself a dominant. Not exactly, at least. I own a BDSM club or two and I’ve dabbled, but I don’t need all the toys and games to get off. I just need one thing: submission. Now that I have Neela’s, there’s no turning back. Except I realized something else somewhere between her walking in here and tying up her wrists.

I’m never going to let anything happen to her, no matter how this all plays out. And I’m a fucking lunatic for thinking so, but if I thought letting her walk away would be the safest option, I know I’d do it. Thankfully for my throbbing cock, keeping her around is the only way to protect her. For now.

I pause, one hand gripping a fistful of her hair and the other squeezing her hip, keeping her ass right against me. I look at her profile, taking in the way every last detail seems as if it was perfectly crafted to make her irresistible to me. She’s not just something beautiful I want to take and claim for my own, she’s beautiful in a way that makes me feel like she has always been mine, even before I knew it before she ever met me. I can't put my hands on her or look at her without being certain that she was made for me.

If only I were made for her, too.

My tattooed arms make a sharp contrast to her milky skin. My rough, wide hands that have helped me to do things more terrible than she could ever imagine don't belong on someone so pure.

In a rush of clarity, I know what I need to do. I need to forget my lust and my hunger. I can’t just let her walk away only to be swept up by my father’s men, but fucking her now would be too great a sin—maybe greater than anything I’ve done until now.

“Neela,” I say. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Please,” she whispers. “I need you to do this while I still have my nerve. I need you inside me, Enzo. Please.”

Fuck. The sound of her voice and the pleading look in her eyes blast away my self-control, exposing it for the thin, weak thing it was. The better part of me is washed back into the depths along with my good intentions, leaving only the heat of my hunger for her.

I think of the way she struggled and fought with me to free her hands from the belt at first, unconsciously rubbing her ass into me as if her body was begging for what it knew it needed, even if she didn’t. Dirty girl. You’ll get what you need, even if you’ll regret it by morning.

Drunk on arousal, I free my cock and press it up and between her legs from behind, letting my entire length rest in the valley of her pussy. The feeling is ecstasy, even motionless, I can feel her slick folds and the radiating heat from her core that is drenched for me. Even better, I have a perfect view to watch the goosebumps form on the back of her neck and run down her spine.

I yank my underwear and pants down just enough to feel the soft skin of her ass against me and the warmth of her back against my stomach. She’s so smooth. So pure.

She deserves better than me. Someone kinder and someone soft, but my lips curl up into something like a snarl, anger rising when I think of another man ever touching her. After what I’m going to do, can I really expect to keep her as my own?

In frustration, I grip the base of my cock and dip my hips so that I can slide into her. I do it in anger, letting the frustration flow through me until the mercy is driven down deep. I don’t let her adjust to my size, even when she sucks in a sharp breath and tightens her hands into fists over her head, wrists still bound by my belt.

“Oh God,” she gasps.

She handles it well, even though she surely can’t be used to a cock like mine, she bites down her protests, making sure I have no doubt that her submission is mine.

I look up at the belt fastening her wrists together and down at my cock, already wet with her cream, and buried nearly to the root inside her. The idea of having her immobilized and at my complete mercy makes me clench my teeth together, barely able to suppress my animalistic hunger for her. Every inch of her.

I swallow up most of her narrow waist with one hand, forcing her to arch her back so my cock can find the final few inches of her pussy. I groan with satisfaction, absolutely in bliss at the way her walls are so unbelievably warm and tight around me. “Tell me what you want,” I whisper.

“What?” she asks, turning so I can see just a hint of her profile.

“Why,” I say, interrupting myself as I stop to appreciate the perfection of her pussy straining to fit my cock, simultaneously in a rush to feed my lust but knowing every second I delay will only make the reward that much sweeter. “Why did you come in this room? What did you want?”

I wait, knowing that the loss of friction and movement is torture of its own for her. Torture does not often come without reward. Maybe I’ll teach her that, before long...

“I don’t know what I wanted,” she says, almost pleading.

“Yes, you do.”

Another long pause. The faint anxious clenching of her walls around me, dare me to put her out of her misery and give her the orgasm she’s so hungry for.

"To be someone else," she says finally, speaking slowly as if she's piecing her thoughts together out loud. "Just for a little while. Someone who doesn't always have to do the smart thing."

I smirk from behind her. I run my fingers down her smooth spine, gripping a handful of her ass. “You’re right,” I say. “Coming in here wasn’t the smart thing.”

I take her by the hips and fuck her. I don’t go slowly. I don’t try to turn the experience into lovemaking, or anything remotely sweet. It’s raw. It’s hungry. It’s fast. It’s two bodies coming together for the most basic and instinctual need, to feel. In the blur of ecstasy, we can both be someone else. She can be the woman without boundaries she seeks, and I can forget all the pain I’ve caused so long as her sweet moans ring in my ears. For at least a little while, I can forget.

My hips slap against her ass and her bound hands clench and unclench above her head. Her moans come freely now, louder. They’re pure as music to me, driving me deeper into the trance of my lust. Anger and desire blur together inside me with every thrust. Anger that I have to destroy something so pure and perfect, and the desire to snatch at this one fleeting moment. My past is a riot of violence, hardness, and duty. For this one moment, I feel connected to something real. Something good.

I feel my orgasm building, growing until holding it back takes all my strength. I don’t slow or relax in the slightest until her whole body tenses and then spasms. Her moans break off with a sudden intake of breath. Her hands ball into fists, and she pushes her tight little ass into me, taking in every bit of my cock she can while her walls clench and unclench around me, begging me for my cum, desperate to milk me dry.

My own climax comes with so much ferocity that it nearly buckles my knees. I slam my palm into the wall beside the door, roaring as my cock jerks inside her, filling her with the warmth of my cum. Fuck. It’s only moments later that I realize my mistake.

I was so caught up in her perfection that I didn’t even think to pull out. Some distant part of me realized she must’ve noticed, too, and she didn’t try to stop me. Maybe she’s on the pill? It should matter more to me, and maybe later it will, but with the dull thud of my heartbeat in my ears and my cock still wet with her cream, I can’t make myself care.

I let my cock slide free from her and then turn her to face me. In the past, cumming has always given me a strange but instant desire to distance myself from my partner. Now though? I’m overcome by a need to stay close to her. She said she came into this room to feel like someone else, even for a moment. I realize that she’s giving me the same chance, and not just while I’m buried deep inside her. She’s soft in all the right ways, like a warm, comforting fire I could sit in front of and let the ice that has accumulated over my life thaw and melt away.

Except I’m past sitting. I’m past waiting and relaxing. I’ve forged my life out of pain, out of doing whatever it took to protect my family. That same violence will always follow me like a shadow.

I take the back of her head in my hand, threading my fingers through her thick hair and stare into her eyes. I kiss her then, tasting the sweetness of her lips and the heat of her tongue as it shyly flicks against mine.

“I would’ve kept things like this,” I say. “I would’ve. If I had a choice.”

She gives me a strange look, but doesn’t understand. All the better that she doesn’t. I take her into my arms and hold her, hating myself more than I ever have, because my choice has already been made, because I took her in the most intimate way and I knew all along that I could never keep her, not in the way I long to.

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