After three weeks of living with him, I thought I’d be better. He’d promised me he’d find a cure.

You’re a liar.

Standing, I stepped forward.

I’m over this!

His eyes tightened, but he didn’t speak as I took another step and another. My crossed arms wrapped tighter, as if they could shield me from whatever might come next.

I kept encroaching on his space—not caring I went closer to him—my goal was to push past and fly out the door before he could break his promise of not touching me (for the second time tonight) and force me to talk.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, his face cast in shadows. His eyebrows were angry black slashes, his hair tangled from playing such soul-crushing music.

I’m leaving.

A few more steps and our chests would touch. A few more steps and I’d be able to shove him away and bolt out the door.

My gaze kept darting between him, the exit, and that damn awful cello. I didn’t care that the first time he’d forced me to stay it hadn’t been as bad as I thought. This time—actually feeling the notes quiver and swell beneath my fingers—all I’d felt were Alrik’s whips.

Sickness sat in my stomach like a cannonball.

Two more steps and our bodies aligned. I craned my head to stare.

Just let me go.

Elder stood his ground. “Sit down, Pim. We’re not done.”

Yes, we are.

I didn’t second-guess my need to strike him, to hurt him. Even as my hands flew up on their own accord and shoved him backward to give me space, I wasn’t fully in control.

Get out of my way!

He stumbled but quickly righted himself. The air crackled with brutality.

“You seriously want to do this?” His voice wavered with violence.

Do what? Let me go?

Yes, let me go!

For all his perceptive patience and cruel understanding, he didn’t have a clue what I felt. Did he think he’d fixed me? That his cello was some magical pill and now I was normal?

It doesn’t work that way!

I don’t want to talk to you!

Nothing about the sudden switch from pickpocket flirting to destroying me with music made me want to open up and have a heart to heart.

He doesn’t need a heart to heart.

He read your secrets, remember?

More anger poured through me like hot wax.

All I wanted was to leave and get away from the lingering tingle in my blood from his heat and the sparking fear from his notes.

I advanced on him; my hands outstretched and ready for war.

He braced his legs, his jaw lowered. “Push me again and see what happens, Pim.”

The warning should’ve been enough to make me sit back on the bed and behave. To open my mouth and utter a single word. But he’d let me get away with other misdemeanours. What was to say he wouldn’t let me get away with this one?

I wasn’t pretending. I needed to go. Right now.

And you’re in my way.

Baring my teeth, I shoved him, putting all my power into the force behind my pummel.

He staggered back, his eyes widening only to go black as death as I darted toward the door.

Freedom.

He was no longer a roadblock. I’d done that. I’d turned the key. Now, all I had to do was cross the threshold and return to my room, and this could all be forgotten.

I took three steps before his hand lashed out, wrapping around my wrist. “I warned you, Pimlico. I fucking warned you not to push me.”

He whirled me around, slamming me against his chest. “You pushed and pushed, and I can’t fucking take it anymore.”

His lips came down on mine, tearing my mouth open and kissing me deep. My tummy tangled in horror and heat as I squirmed in his embrace.

This kiss was different.

This kiss was real.

His past kisses had been fakeries. Elder chose this moment—a moment when I was scattered and jittery—to reveal who he was beneath his masked decorum.

This kiss was utter violence.

Violence, I knew. Danger was what I’d been fed, and violence was what I’d drank for years. My body reacted. Shutting down, it turned stiff and unyielding even as something strange happened. The foreignness that’d been budding from seed to seedling ever since I’d woken in Elder’s domain flourished.

The wetness he’d caused in the streets of Morocco returned without permission.

I hated that two women lived inside me. Two personalities, two hopes and dreams and wishes.

The male tongue in her mouth appalled Pimlico. She wanted to bite it, run from it. She hurt with every lick and would forever remain just a little bit broken. She would never enjoy sex because her induction and life had been too traumatic to untangle.

But then there was Tasmin.

A girl who’d enjoyed late-night touches from incompetent boyfriends and was still a virgin to pleasure. A girl who was steadily learning to take back control. A girl who flickered into authority and felt Elder’s kiss rather than endured it.

My body stiffened then softened. Fought then floundered.

And Elder didn’t stop kissing me. His tongue didn’t stop dancing with mine, and I didn’t know if I licked him back in war or welcome.

His touch hurt but in two ways now instead of one. I was familiar with the bite of fear and unwillingness, but I was new to the heat and fire of his dominance.

His hand wrapped around my nape, kissing me harder.

Part of me wanted to run from his touch, the other wanted to have him collar me so I could feel safe in his control.