My lips bruised. My mind became a washed-up origami sail-boat.

“Fuck, Pim. I’m—I can’t stop.”

Sweeping me off my feet, he sank to his knees with me in his embrace. His mouth never stopped claiming mine, biting and nipping, forcing me to accept whatever passion he’d held back.

And he’d held back a lot.

I gasped as his hand tore at my robe, yanking it open to reveal my breast. The cool air licked around my nipple. It hardened.

Pim screamed.

Tasmin moaned.

The bondage in my mind reached snapping point.

His hand clamped on the sensitive flesh. Nightmares and flashbacks threatened to take me under. The terror that this was the moment Elder turned into Alrik begged me to cut loose and sink inside myself until it was over.

But Tasmin clung to sensations; she threw back her head and said yes to living.

That strange, unwelcome molten desire licked from his touch into my core, keeping me locked in his embrace. For the first time in my life, I felt a siphon of pleasure beneath the rage of being hurt.

Pim lost a smidgen of power; Tasmin snatched it.

Elder didn’t pay any attention to my internal battle. He didn’t know how much he affected me, how much he drugged and shredded my mind.

His thoughts weren’t on me for once. He didn’t watch me, judging how far to take me. He was utterly obsessed with his demons.

“Christ, I need you.” His words tipped into my mouth, pushed down my throat with his tongue. Sitting up on his knees, he ripped the terrycloth belt undone and spread the robe wide. The soft cotton had no power against whatever madness lived in his blood.

The moment he’d spread my gown into a cape, he positioned me over his thighs and fumbled with his belt.

His knuckles grazed my inner thighs, nudging my sex.

Pimlico burst into tears, hiding her face, begging this to be over.

Tasmin stiffened, giving into the fear from Pim and pausing for a second too long.

Horror replaced my fascination over how well Elder played my body. I was his cello now. My spine was his bow and my breasts his strings. He created love but violence at the same time.

The back of his hand caught my sex again.

I stiffened even as something inside me melted rather than screamed. I didn’t know what he was doing, how far he would go, but everything I’d been trained to expect in sex, every nuance my body had learned to shut out, was achingly sensitive and kept me on a knife-edge of sensation.

A growl rumbled in his chest as his touch turned swift and angry. Blistering heat branded me from his fingers.

My tummy twisted as his belt jingled, falling away. The sound of his zipper screeched through my ears and like always, my body clamped down against what was about to happen.

Now, Pim and Tasmin were back into one person. There was no more split. Neither wanted this—not like this, not so soon or so quick.

But Elder didn’t notice my quaking legs or feel my writhing arms. He was too far gone in lust to notice.

No. Stop…

His hand delved between my thighs, two fingers finding my core and pressing into me.

He grunted beneath his breath, and despite Pim’s dryness and unresponsiveness, Tasmin had condemned us both with the slick invitation of wetness.

“Fuck, I never thought I’d get inside you like this.” Elder curled his fingers, sinking deep.

I stopped breathing as his touch withdrew then swirled around my clit, forcing my mind to stay anchored when all I wanted to do was flee.

The longer he touched me, the more my body decided to ignore everything it knew and give in to him. It was too hard to fight. Too exhausting to care.

My mind was a sprinting circus. My blood jumping flees. My limbs prancing white horses. Something heavy curled in my belly, whispering through my veins stealthy and swift.

It didn’t matter that I refused this. It didn’t matter I wasn’t mentally prepared. My body blossomed beneath his touch. It relished his soft ministration, not agonising punishment. It liquefied for erotic bliss while I rocked in the corner in tears.

He groaned as he touched me again, his fingers sliding in and filling me.

I shuddered despite myself.

My mouth opened in a silent scream.

His lips trailed fire from my mouth to my ear, hoisting me higher in his embrace as his legs bunched beneath mine. “Shit, Pim.”

He hadn’t put me on the carpet once. Hadn’t stopped cradling me once. His hands took control, but there was still a semblance of caring in the way he touched me.

I tried to focus on that, rather than where his fingers were. I tried to remember the laughter when I stole his wallet and not the heavy breath growing thick with desire in my ear.

“Let go…goddammit, let go.” His fingers thrust up. “Enjoy me as I’m enjoying you.”

My back bowed, and something I’d kept locked deep inside since stepping onto the auctioneer block in QMB floated to the surface. The longer Elder’s hands stroked me, the closer his cock came to claiming me, the less flimsy the lock became.

Cracks and fissures ripped like an earthquake.

I hated how unstable he made me.

How I didn’t know what was up and down and around. I clung to him even as I tried to run. And when his fingers slid from my body, and he clutched my frame to hoist me higher over his thighs, I lost it.

I stopped thinking.

I turned catatonic with numbness while at the same time became a firework about to ignite. Two massive extremes. One massive event.

“I need you so fucking much.” His legs worked as he positioned me over his cock. His trousers were open and nothing else. Clothing hindered both of us—a prison for our bodies while I was imprisoned by fear in my mind.