“It shouldn’t work that way,” he said, his voice dropping.
“The Void and the Primal are opposites.
They should repel.”
“But they didn’t.” Ariella stepped closer, her hand coming up to rest on his bare chest.
His skin was hot, fevered, his heart hammering against her palm.
“They fit perfectly.
Like two halves of something that was always meant to break apart.”
Grimshaw let out a low, pained sound.
He grabbed her waist, pulling her flush against him, his forehead dropping to rest against hers.
“You’re playing with fire right now, Kitten.”
“Good,” she whispered.
“You bought me.
You might as well get ruined.”
The kiss wasn’t gentle.
Grimshaw’s mouth crashed into hers with a desperate, claiming fury.
His hands roamed her body, one sliding down to cup her ass, the other tangling in her wet hair, tilting her head back to deepen the kiss.
He tasted like bourbon, blood and a hunger that had been building for days.
Ariella clawed at his back, her nails leaving red trails on his scarred skin.
She could feel his Void surging, that cold, vacuum energy wrapping around her Primal spark, not to drain it, but to mate with it.
It was a sensation that defied description—like being drowned and set on fire at the same time.
“Tell me,” Grimshaw growled against her throat, his teeth grazing the pulse point.
“Tell me who you belong to.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she gasped, even as her hips ground against his.
“Then why are you wet?”
The crude question should have offended her.
Instead, it sent a jolt of pure, electric shame through her body.
She hated him.
She hated how his touch made her feel hopeless.
She hated how the Void pulled at her heat like a riptide.
Grimshaw laughed a dark, dangerous sound—and lifted her off the ground.
Ariella wrapped her legs around his waist instinctively, her silk robe riding up, her core pressing against the hard ridge of his arousal.
He carried her back into the bedroom, kicking the balcony door shut, the moonlight replaced by the dim amber glow of the bedside lamps.
He dropped her on the bed, looming over her like a dark god.
His eyes were pure black now, the Void fully surfaced, swirling with a hungry, predatory need.
“You wanted to know what happens when a Primal and a Void bond,” he said, his voice dropping to a deep, resonant rumble.
“This.”
He grabbed the collar of her robe and tore it open, the silk shredding like paper.
Ariella gasped, her hands going to his chest, pushing, but he caught her wrists, pinning them above her head.
He descended on her breasts, his mouth hot and demanding, his teeth grazing her nipples.
Ariella arched off the bed, a strangled cry escaping her throat.
She could feel the Void wrapping around her senses, amplifying every sensation, turning her skin into a map of nerve endings that demanded more.
“Grimshaw—” she gasped.
“Alpha,” he corrected, his voice a dark command.
“In this room, in this bed, I am your Alpha.
And you will address me as such.”
“Make me.”
He smirked against her skin, a flash of white teeth.
He released her wrists and flipped her over, pulling her up onto her knees.
His hand came down on her ass— once, twice—with a sharp, stinging crack that sent a shockwave of pain and pleasure through her body.
“Say it,” he commanded, his voice vibrating through her spine.
“Alpha,” she choked out, her face pressed into the furs.
He rewarded her with his mouth.
The sensation was devastating.
His tongue moved with a precision and a hunger that made her vision blur.
He wasn’t gentle; he was thorough, his fingers filling her while his lips worked her into a frantic, desperate frenzy.
The Void amplified everything, turning her arousal into a roaring inferno that threatened to consume her whole.
Ariella came with a scream, her body convulsing, her walls clenching around his fingers.
But he didn’t stop.
By the fourth, she was sobbing, her body trembling with oversensitivity.
“Please,” she gasped.
“Alpha, please—”
“Please what?” He pulled back, his chin glistening, his eyes wild with a feral, possessive triumph.
“Please…
don’t stop—”
She didn’t get to finish.
The alarm blared.
It was a deep, pulsing red that turned the bedroom into a hellscape of flashing lights.
The sound was a shriek of mechanical fury—not the standard security breach, but something worse.
The Perimeter Breach Protocol.
Grimshaw was off her in an instant, his body shifting into full predator mode.
He grabbed a pair of tactical pants from the floor, shoving his legs into them, his eyes already locked on the tactical screen embedded in the wall.
“Report,” he barked into the comm system.
Mina’s voice crackled through, frantic and breathless.
“Alpha!
We have a three-pronged assault at the Eastern Ridge!
Siphoners—at least thirty of them!
They’re not trying to breach.
They’re trying to break in.
Vane’s main force is hitting the Sanctuary access tunnels while a smaller unit is circling toward the Spire’s weak point.”
Ariella sat up on the bed, her body still trembling from the denied climax, her mind a fog of frustrated lust and sudden fear.
“What’s happening?”
“The war just came to us,” Grimshaw said, his voice cold and lethal.
He grabbed a tactical vest from the weapons rack, shrugging into it with practiced efficiency.
“Vane doesn’t want you for breeding, he must’ve thought that’s what I bought you for.
He wants to drain you dry and parade your corpse as a warning to the Council.”
He turned to her, and for a split second, the Alpha mask cracked.
She saw the man beneath, the one who had kissed her knuckles in the car, the one who had let her pull his Void into herself.