Page 71 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

I must maintain control. Must remember my purpose. Must forget how perfectly she fit against me, how sweetly she surrendered, how beautifully she took me?—

The ice spreads further, faster, despite my best efforts to cage it.

Like my control, it splinters. Like my resolve, it cracks. Somewhere in the depths of my frozen heart, something molten stirs.

Goddess damn it.

I never should have succumbed to my desire. To Lara’s invitation.

I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be back at my feet, begging for more. And next time, I don’t know if I can be so gentle.

She doesn’t know the price of her submission.

CHAPTER 19

LARA

Istalk away from the gallery, still trying to catch my breath and slow my racing heart.

I have to get somewhere safe.

Clutching my ruined dress to my chest, I make my way toward the suite I share with Izzy, ducking out of the way every time I hear the slightest noise as I do my best to avoid running into anyone.

I can still smell Ivrael on my skin, still feel those ridges—god, so alien, so fucking amazing—pushing into my mouth. Hear the way he talked to me. Feel the burning cold of his touch, the heat as he came…

Fuck. I can stilltastehim.

I shove those sensations down deep inside me, locking them away with all the other forbidden feelings he stirs in me. I can’t think about that now.

What have I become?

I clench my jaw and force that thought away, too. I need to focus on getting back to my suite without being seen, not on remembering what just happened. What I let him do to me.

What I begged him to do.

I pause, pressing my forehead against a window. My knees ache where they pressed against the hard floor of the gallery, and fury burns in my chest, hot enough to melt the ice covering every surface of this frozen hellscape.

I put myself there. On my knees. Like a servant, like property, like nothing.

Like everything I’ve been trying not to become since the moment he bought me.

Iwantedit.

And the way he said what happened between us was a mistake.

As if I was a mistake.

That’s the worst part. I let myself forget, for a few heated moments, exactly what I am to him. What he is to me.

The ribbons at my wrists pulse with that eerie blue light, and I want to scream. Want to tear them off, even though I know it’s impossible. Want to storm back into the gallery and... What? Demand he acknowledge what just happened? Beg him to do it again?

God. What’s wrong with me?

I slam my palm against the windowsill, welcoming the sharp sting of pain. Better that than remembering how his hands felt on my skin, how his lips...

No.

My legs are still shaking, and I tell myself it’s from kneeling on the marble for so long. Not from the memory of his touch. Not from the way he made me feel, the sounds he drew from my throat, the way I arched into his hands like I was made for him.

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