She stopped struggling and looked at him cautiously. “Do you not?” Anteros looked into her wide, cornflower eyes, earnest and waiting for his response. A grin spread across his lips and he answered her with a slow, leisurely kiss.
“Don’t you think we should be leaving?” she gasped when Anteros let her breathe. “What with hundreds of guards outside and all.” Anteros responded by thrusting his tongue into her mouth, forcing her silent. Nails gripped his waist as needy desperation escaped her throat in little whimpers and moans.
When he pulled back, her hot breath warmed his lips, stuttering like an uncertain breeze. The urge to throw her to the ground was nearly blinding, but he had something else in mind. Anteros ran his hands up and down her arms, bruising the flesh, then dragged Frankie to the bar, planting her on top.
“What are you doing?” Frankie asked as he tried to walk away. She held his shirt, refusing to let go, her need so deep and transparent it was like a fresh cut bleeding from her voice. He smiled to himself then pushed her hard and flat on the bar, chest to chest.
“Take off your dress,” Anteros ordered, words low and hot below her ear. Her nails curled deeper into his shirt, her swallow visible by the way her throat bobbed, then she nodded.
Anteros went and dragged a stool to the middle of the room. She watched him work with wide eyes, doing as she was told, quickly ripping off what little remained of her dress and tossing it to the floor. Then she fell back, spreading her legs.
“Dirty girl,” he said, coming between them. “I didn’t tell you to spread your legs.” He ghosted his touch between her thighs, featherlight over her naked cunt. She arched into him, legs falling wider apart at the same moment he removed his fingers. A loaded, frustrated groan fell from her lips. Anteros curled his fingers around her neck.
“When you act like a whore,” he rumbled. “You’ll get treated like one.” He unleashed her neck then gripped her hips, lifting her from the bar and carrying her toward the stool. Frankie immediately attacked his mouth, devouring his lips, starving. Anteros let her suck, lick, and bite every inch of him while he carried her across the room. When he broke the kiss, she still held on to him, dragging his bottom lip between her teeth.
“Get on your knees,” he growled through Frankie’s bite. She released him reluctantly, letting go of his lip but still holding his shirt. He slapped her.
Hard.
The smack echoed in the empty room. Frankie released him with a sigh that transformed into a small, needy moan, and fell to her knees. She looked up at him, red lips pouty from kissing. Anteros thumbed her cheek, caressing the angry, strawberry skin.
“Stay where you are,” he commanded, letting his hand fall from her face. Frankie didn’t outright disobey, but there was a twinkle in her eye—a glimmer he’d come to recognize as disobedience. He bent over and captured a nipple. “Be good.” She only nodded, so he twisted harder, pinching and curling the sensitive peak between his thumb and forefinger. “Say it.”
“I’ll be good, Boss,” she said breathlessly, eyelids drooping. Her cornflower eyes connected with his in an intoxicating cocktail of need and submission. Fuck. She was perfect; blue eyes wide, watching and waiting for his command, body curling into his touch.
He released her nipple.
Anteros instructed her to rest her arms on the stool so she was bent at a ninety-degree angle, hands crossed at the wrist. Then he trailed his finger along the delicate, curving arch of her back before grabbing the next item: the flickering candle.
“This candle is going to melt hot wax down your sweet, sexy, fucking perfect thighs.” He drifted his touch along her inner thighs. “It’s going to get deep inside you.” He bent between her legs, spreading her ass and the folds of her pussy. “And it’s going to take some time. So you’re going to stay still and fucking take it.”
“But the guards…” The protest was weak.
With a lingering, barely there touch to her inner cunt, he stood up and came to her head. He got on his heels, face obscuring her view. “Do you trust me?”
“Absolutely,” she responded without hesitation. A moment like dry lightning passed between them—dangerous, volatile, sizzling and throbbing. She arched her neck ever so slightly, as if reaching for his lips, but Anteros nodded and stood.
He brought another chair opposite her, flexing his arms behind his head and resting a foot on his leg. The wax melted slow rivers down her smooth skin, over the swell of her ass, between her thighs.
He shifted, erection straining against his jeans.
“Please,” she moaned. “At least talk to me. What are you thinking?” She squirmed, shoulder blades rolling and showcasing the beautiful dimples of her back. Anteros followed the dripping wax as it disappeared into the shadows, melting deeper inside her.
“Are you on birth control?” The question popped out. He was never a man to be unprepared, but they’d fucked countless times and always bareback. If there was even the smallest chance Frankie was pregnant, that changed things. Silence followed while she refused to answer. “Frankie,” he said, voice steel.
“This isn’t a romance novel okay,” she huffed, resting her head on a shoulder to look at him. “I’m not going to get pregnant because you fuck me. I might not even be able to get pregnant.” She turned away, face to floor. “I was sick for so long and we had a lot of unprotected sex when I was with you so when I got my period the week after I left, it just confirmed what I was thinking.” Another man may have cared she might be infertile, but all Anteros cared about was erasing the tension that had grown in her limbs.
“Is there a reason you never used a condom before?” she whispered after another long minute. Anteros rubbed the back of his neck. He always wore condoms. Usually he made sure the women he slept with were on birth control as well. With Frankie, it never crossed his mind. He told her the truth.
“It’s your choice as well,” he admitted. “I’m done taking away your choices. I regret I ever did.”
“But I like it when you take away my choices,” she admitted on a breath. Wax melted stringy tears down her thighs, hardening into her pussy. Some escaped down the curve of her waist, drawing a faint erect line. Her hair was tangled and in disarray from being locked in a goddamn box, but still so fucking perfect.
“But before it wasn’t up to you,” Anteros explained, shifting again as he grew uncomfortably hard—practically throbbing. “The difference is everything, because the difference allows you to love me.”
Her scarlet blush was visible even in the shadow. “If it hadn’t happened the way it had, this wouldn’t have happened.” She wiggled her ass, the candle wobbled. “Just know that I have forever to punish you for the way we met, and I will.”
Anteros laughed and sat forward, zeroing in on the smile visible through the veil of her hair.