Danae’s POV
The climax crested and broke like a wave against rock—sudden, obliterating, and so violent it left me entirely defenseless.
My inner walls spasmed, clamping down around his thick length in successive, pulsing waves of white-hot heat that drew a muffled scream from my throat, my mouth pressed hard against the hot, sweat-slick skin of his shoulder to drown out the sound.
My whole body shuddered, thighs trembling as I clung to him like a drowning person, my fingers desperately tangled in his damp hair.
Caspian followed moments later.
His grip on my hips sharpened into a punishing, near-bruising hold, anchoring me to him as his rhythm faltered under the sheer force of his release.
His jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped, a low, guttural growl tearing loose from somewhere deep in his chest.
It was a completely feral, unadorned sound that had nothing polished in it—no performance, no calculation, just the raw, stripped-back beast inside him submitting to the connection.
I felt the hot, thick rush of his release filling me, matching the rhythmic contractions of my own body, and I found myself strangely, deeply moved by the absolute vulnerability of his surrender.
The car fell quiet around us, the air heavy, humid, and thick with the combined, sweet tang of our sweat and the deep musk of our bond.
His hand moved to my back—slow, heavy, and hot against my damp skin as he traced lazy, soothing patterns along my spine.
I lay collapsed against his broad chest, my weight fully resting on him, listening to the thunderous drumming of his heart beneath my cheek.
It was forceful, a solid, rhythmic tempo that slowly began returning to its resting pace, entirely unimpressed by the storm we’d just unleashed, yet holding me close as if the idea of letting go had never crossed his mind.
The windows had fogged completely.
A private world.
Then the outside began reaching in.
My father’s face surfaced behind my closed eyes—not the father from five years ago, broad-shouldered and capable, who’d given me a handshake at move-in because he’d always known I’d cry if he hugged me.
The father I’d last seen at Christmas, thinner now, moving slowly, pressing two fingers to his temple when he thought I wasn’t watching.
The failed interview this morning at Jorah Medical Center, where the hiring manager’s assistant had thanked me with a smile that had already moved on before I’d finished standing up.
The stack of hospital bills photographed on my phone because looking at paper was too much.
My phone buzzed from the heap of clothes on the floor.
Three times, insistent.
Eirwen: Where are you?
Then: Dana are you okay?
Then: Should I be worried??
I typed back: Fine.
Sorry.
Home soon.
Set the phone down.
Caspian’s hands, which had been drifting lazily across my spine, shifted.
More purposeful.
His palms settled on my hips, fingers tightening with intent.
“Ready for round two?” The voice that had undone me earlier, dark and unhurried.
His eyes had gone dark again.
“I can’t get enough of you.”
“No.” I said it clearly, attempting to lift off his lap.
“I need to go.”
His grip didn’t loosen.
It settled more firmly instead, as if my withdrawal were playfulness rather than a position.
Something inside me snapped.
My hand came down across his face before the decision had fully formed.
The crack of it in the enclosed space was shocking even to me.
“I said no!”
The change was instantaneous.
He went still.
Completely, unnaturally still—the kind of stillness that isn’t calm but its opposite.
Something shuttered in his expression, and what replaced it had no human softness in it whatsoever.
His eyes shifted: the deep blue bleeding out to something colder, brighter, stripped of warmth.
A sound came from his chest that a human throat could not have made.
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not gently.
The grip was precise and absolute, his fingers finding the bones with the thoughtless ease of something that had never worried about being too much.
“Do you have any idea,” he said, the words coming out slower than usual, carefully separated, “what you just did?”
I stared at him.
My pulse had gone from one kind of frantic to another—nothing warm left in it now, only the cold clarity of having stepped somewhere I didn’t know the ground.
“You’re the first woman who has ever dared to strike me.” He shifted beneath me, and I became acutely aware of my nakedness, my position, the small sealed world of fogged glass around us.
“Do you have any idea what the consequences are for that?”