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I don’t want this to go too far. I don’t need him in my life. I don’t want to get attached and suffer. Again. But he kisses me once more, softer this time. Releases my hair, takes both of my hands and places them around his wide neck, pressing them there.

“If you truly don’t want this,” he says, “just kill me.”

He cannot be serious. I stare at my hands on his neck. I could. We both know it. I could let death bloom through my palms and crawl into his veins. I could blacken every artery of his until his heart gives out beneath my touch. I don’t move my hands; I just feel the warmth of his body.

He doesn’t wait for me and slides my underwear down. With one hand he takes himself out. His dick is proportionate to the rest of him. Thick, hard and flushed, with veins running the length of him. Nero spits into his palm and strokes himself, watching my face the whole time.

No foreplay. No romance. No soft buildup.

My fingers tighten around his throat.

“I’ll give you pain,” he says. “But you have control over it. It’s yours to take.”

He guides himself into me. The head of his cock presses inside, stretching me, and just when my body is closing around the first inch, he grabs my hips and drives into me with everything he has.

I scream. But the music outside is louder.

“Good. Scream. Cry. Let it out,” he whispers to me.

He doesn’t stop. He fucks me hard, deep, relentless. With every thrust, I feel more of him. Every stroke splits me open, drags me out of the nightmares and slams me into my own skin. Memories disappear. There is only him. His body. His heat. The desk beneath me. The pain and pleasure combined. I grip his neck so tight I’m afraid I might choke him. Though that’s probably impossible. He doesn’t care. Maybe he likes it.

I think about everything I’ve been through. About all the times I was hurt, betrayed, abandoned. Shadows crawl from my hands and tighten around his neck. Nero lets out a muffled hiss. I let go of him instinctively.

“No.” He catches my wrists and puts my hands back on him. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Nero.”

“Give me all you have,” he demands. “Give me your sorrow. Give me your grief.”

The words undo something in me. I grab the back of his neck again and hold on tightly.

He slows, just enough to make me feel every inch as he slams back in. Then his thumb finds my clit. He starts circling it in time with his thrusts, and my body gives in. I know well how good he is with his hands. My nipples ache. I’m shaking, and I can feel every nerve ending I thought the stardust had buried. I squeeze his throat harder, and don’t think about whether he can breathe or not.

Nero lifts his deep blue eyes to mine, removes his hand from between my legs, and grips my ass with both hands. Then he slams into me harder. Faster. Deeper. Each thrust drives me closer to the edge until my legs tremble, my eyes roll back, and my whole body gives up fighting the wave.

I come with a broken cry. There is nothing pretty in this, nothing romantic. It tears through me. Not clean pleasure. Not a simple release. Something darker, heavier, grief ripping loose from places I buried too deep. I shake uncontrollably in his arms and cry against his chest while my body closes around him. I’m not thinking about Nero anymore. I can barely see him through the tears. I feel everything that is mine, all the pain I tried to hide, and it spills out of me in sobs I can’t stop.

Nero holds me through it.

He stays inside me, still hard, breathing against my hair.

When the crying finally quiets, I lift my head. He’s still buried in me. Still hard. Still waiting.

I stare at him, confused with my face wet from tears.

“You didn’t come.”

His face softens in a way that scares me more than what we just did.

“It wasn’t about me tonight,” he says. “It was about you.”

He pulls out slowly, and I almost faint from the loss of pressure. He tucks himself back into his pants. I sit on the desk, unable to move, watching him drop to one knee in front of me and thread my underwear back up my legs, kissing my knee before he stands. The gesture is so soft it doesn’t match what he was doing to me just moments before. It feels as if there are two different people living inside him.

I sit there on the desk, ruined, breathless and staring at the wolf prince who just dragged me back from the edge without asking for anything in return. For now.

He grabs a large, oversized leather jacket from the back of a chair and puts it around my shoulders. I can’t walk. My legs tremble too badly. Nero texts someone, then lifts me into his arms like I weigh nothing. He carries me through the back exit of Moon, the same place where I saw him for the first time when I was running from vampires. Outside, a black G-Wagon waits by the curb. Nero nods to the driver, opens the rear door with one hand and sets me on the back seat.

I don’t let go of his forearm. He looks at my palm on his arm with hesitation, then gets in beside me. He pulls me onto his lap and settles me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me until the city feels farther away.