To see me.
Her hands came up to rest against my chest as I pulled away, touching my forehead to hers and wondering what it would take for her to see me as I was. For who I was. Would she remain oblivious until the moment I revealed myself? The thought bothered me more than it should.
I leaned forward, touching my lips to hers again and tracing the parted seam of her lips with my tongue. She moaned for me, opening wider as I slid inside and claimed her mouth as mine. The first part of her to be possessed by me, the first part of her that I would take. As she adjusted to the softness of my kiss and the slow and erotic tangle of our mouths, I exerted more pressure.
Her eyes drifted closed finally as I plundered her mouth. She inhaled suddenly as I released her hair, dragging a hand down over her arm to grab the zipper at the back of her dress. Pulling it down slowly, I waited for the moment when she’d come to her senses and realize the dangers of being so reckless.
For the moment when she’d walk away, not knowing that what would happen between us was inevitable. Whether it happened here and now or on our wedding night was her choice, but in the end Thalia would be mine and mine alone.
Instead, she pulled her lips away from mine and brushed the straps of her dress off her shoulders. The forest green fabric dropped to her waist, bunching around her hips until she slid her hands down to it and shimmied out of it. She stood nearly naked in front of me with a tease in her eyes as she backed away a step, unconcerned with the fact that it was the first time she'd been nude with a man. Only a scrap of lace covering her pussy hid her from my view, her small breasts high and perky on her frame without a bra.
The heels on her feet made her legs look even longer, and she bit her lip as a trace of insecurity filled her face when I didn't move. Wrongly assuming I may not want her, when the reality was that I couldn't move or take my eyes off her.
Finally shrugging my jacket off my shoulders, I tossed it over the back of the arm chair at the side of the room. Thalia's eyes narrowed in on my fingers as I worked open the buttons of my shirt one by one. I smirked at her when her eyes heated, throwing my shirt to join the jacket and then stripping off my shoes and pants. "Last chance, my beauty," I murmured. Every second where the words sat between us made my deception worse. Every time I used the name that didn't belong to her, it struck against the deepest part of me. We were finally reunited, but still so far away.
I left my boxer briefs on for the moment, closing the distance between us again. She tilted her head up to accept the kiss I didn't give her, taking her waist in my hands instead and tossing her onto the bed behind her. She giggled lightly as she bounced against the surface, the sound trailing off as I climbed up and spread her legs to slip my hips between them.
My cock nestled against her pussy, her heat like a brand through the only clothing remaining. With the warmth in her amber eyes, I leaned my weight over hers. Pebbled nipples rubbed against my chest, driving me mad with the need to drive inside her.
I kissed her, groaning when her cautious hand slid between us to touch my cock. She nipped my bottom lip before pulling away. "If I wanted gentle, I could have picked a dozen other men," she said. A warning grumbled in my chest; the very idea of her choosing anyone but me would have been disastrous for all involved.
I'd kill anyone who dared to touch her.
"Fuck me," she ordered.
"I'll hurt you," I returned, raising an eyebrow at her. I couldn't say any more than that, because the knowledge that she was a virgin wasn't something a stranger could have. As much as I'd wanted Thalia to recognize me, it was truly for the best that she hadn't.
She nodded. "I want it to hurt," she said, a questioning hurt filling her gaze. She couldn't understand that there was nothing wrong with having desires like that, and she'd never be able to fulfill them in a safe way with a husband she couldn't trust, but everything about our first time would be wrong if I gave her what she asked for.
She deserved so much more than to be brutally fucked by a stranger in a hotel, and everything inside me rebelled against what had become of her, that this was how desperate she was for even the ability to make her own choice just once. It seemed like such a simple thing to anyone else. Her right as a human being.
But for her it was an act of rebellion at best. Suicide at worst, because if her father found out what she did, if Damianos rejected her if he realized the truth?
Origen would have no use for her.
It was very fortunate for my Little One that she would never marry Damianos.
I leaned forward, nipping her bottom lip with my teeth before surging inside her mouth. I kissed her like I wanted to consume her, painting every corner of her with my possession. With only our undergarments between us, she squirmed beneath me. Rolling her hips against the outline of my cock, she gasped into my mouth at the pressure it put on her clit. I was overwhelmed with the need to feel her slick heat rubbing against me, to glide through her parted lips and drive her mad with the teasing thrusts long before I ever slid inside her. But Thalia would need to know who was in charge, and her very demand for me to fuck her before I was ready went against everything I knew about myself.
As my wife, she'd need to know exactly what to expect from me, and there was no time like the present to start with her education.
I grabbed her hands away from my body, pinning them to the bed beside her hips as she narrowed her gaze up at me. "I think you've misread the situation," I purred, gliding my lips away from her mouth and toward the sensitive skin of her neck. I trailed them over her skin, feeling her squirm and press up against me as her body was lost to the instinct that lurked inside her. "You are not in charge of anything when you're in my bed, my beauty."
"Unless you live in a hotel, I'm not sure how that's relevant," she said quickly. The comeback came with such ease that I chuckled hoarsely. While it hadn't been anything dramatic, the very fact that she had one after being so beaten down by the life I couldn't protect her from proved everything I'd always known about her.
She was stronger than anyone imagined.
"If you're in it, it's my bed," I murmured, biting her ear briefly before gliding down over her collarbone to touch my lips to the swell of her breast. She shuddered beneath me, her body going taut as she prepared for the contact she'd so desperately craved. With my hands occupied to pin her down, all I had to work with was my mouth.
But it was enough.
"I think your logic is faulty," she gasped as I sank my teeth into her flesh, biting harder than I should in my desperation to mark her. "Don't," she warned, seeming to realize the dangers of returning home to her stepmother with bruises. It took everything in me to pull back and run my tongue over the mark gently.
Releasing one of her wrists, I gripped her breast in my palm as my mouth found her other nipple. Her back arched off the bed as her free hand plunged into my hair. Grasping and pulling at the short strands, she kept me pressed tightly to her as I worshiped her and every inch of her torso with my mouth. By the time I'd slid down between her legs, she quivered beneath me with desperation. Her amber eyes met mine as I tugged her underwear down her thighs and tossed them to the side once they were freed.
She spread her legs wider for me without needing me to ask, her body bared to me without a hint of hesitation. She didn't need to care what I thought of her when she thought she would never see me again, and she most definitely didn't want to waste the opportunity to feel what she probably never would again.