I look up into Armin’s eyes and ask, “What is your home truly like? Don’t give me any bullshit about it. I want to know the truth.”

He nods, thinks for a moment. “It’s beautiful,” Armin says finally. “And I don’t just mean it’s appearance. I mean the way the world works there... there’s this indefinable quality to it, Mavey. It’s the sort of thing you have to experience to understand. I think only our Old Tongue would have stood a chance at giving it an adjective.”

“Beautiful,” I say, the word sort of flat on my tongue, as if it doesn’t quite fit.

“Beautiful,” he repeats, nodding. “And cruel, too. Like you.”

I frown. “I am not cruel.”

A wicked smile lights Armin’s face. “You don’t deny your beauty, though?”

There’s a smile trying to form on my lips. I do my best to push it down, but I’m unsure of how well I do before I say, “Why deny what was given to me by the Gods?”

The smile on his face only broadens. I think it might be something that would have anyone else tucking their tail and getting the hell away from him, but for me, it only lights a fire deep inside of me. He says, “It is not the Gods who made you. If it was, I fear we would not be quite so compatible.”

And that does it for me. “Armin,” I whisper, bringing my lips to his ear so that no one can hear me say his real name, “I think I’d like to leave now.”

He presses a tantalizing kiss to the spot just below my ear, nips at it with his teeth so that my eyes fall closed.

When they open again, we are no longer in the ballroom.

And I am no longer standing.

We’re in his room, on his bed, and his intoxicating scent wraps completely around me. He grins at me as he pulls his suit jacket off before undoing the buttons of his shirt as he stands at the foot of the bed, looking down. “Normally, I’d get rid of the shirtafterI’ve already made you come with my mouth, but I’ve discovered something about myself, Mavey.”

My breaths rise and fall faster and faster with each button that those swift, deft fingers undo. I cannot pull my eyes away from them, even as I ask, “What’s that?”

He grins, finally gets the shirt off, and prowls toward me. Armin presses a kiss to my lips as one hand yanks my dress up, and the other pulls my underwear down. All I have to do is arch my hips for him, something I do on instinct anyway as I mold my mouth to his.

When he pulls away, something like fire glitters in his eyes. “I discovered I like the feeling of your nails on my back. I like when I catch sight in the mirror and see the dried blood.”

Fuck. Have I ever heard anything as hot as that?

No. I don’t think so.

Armin backs down my body until he’s hovering over my exposed pussy. He says, “Do your worst, Mavey. Make me bleed.”

I know the second that he spreads my legs apart with each hand and slips his tongue along my folds that I will have no trouble following his orders.

Armin doesn’t waste any time as he devours me, the wetness that has pooled at my entrance. He licks and nips and sucks, and my fingers look for purchase at his shoulders, clawing lower when I don’t find it. He groans, and I feel his cock harden against my leg.

He really does like it, I realize. He likes it very much.

A moan falls from my lips as he swirls his tongue around my clit and then teases it between his teeth, so gentle that a shiver slides across my skin and my body shakes as it holds back the climax that’s building along my spine.

Armin slides three fingers inside of me without stretching first, and the sound that leaves my lips is sharp, desperate, and my fingers dig deeper into his back. Armin hums against me, the noise vibrating against my clit as his fingers rub against my g-spot, like it’s a personal assault and I cannot get enough of it. Even as it’s too much, I press down on him for more pressure, beg for it, for more. Armin lets me, doesn’t seem to mind that I’m pushing his face against me so hard that breathing might be nearly impossible. He just ravages my clit, sucking and nipping as I grind on him.

Then Armin switches, and brings his fingers to my clit and his tongue to my entrance, rounding the entrance, licking at me like he’s never tasted anything better.

It drives me wild.

I want nothing more than this, all the time. I want to be here with him like this forever. But he flicks my clit, makes a sound something like purr against my entrance, and it reverberates through my entire body.

I come on his face with an intensity that has tears leaking from my eyes.

He works me through it with what feels almost like an intimate sort of ease, pulling his face away from my pussy and watching the expression I wear as I come—something he’s been doing more and more lately.

When I’m finally still, Armin stands back up and starts to pull his trousers down his legs, and I don’t know exactly what it is that has me following after him and dropping to my knees in front of him before he can even get the button undone. “Allow me,” I say.