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She caught my wrists, her grip like iron. Her shadows whipped up from the corners of the room and coiled around my captured wrists, pinning me to the couch’s unforgiving frame.

My breath caught, trapped in my chest. “I could break these,” I said, a desperate assertion of a power I no longer felt.

“You could,” she murmured, her lips grazing the sensitive line of my jaw. “But you won’t.”

She was right. And I hated her for it.

Unhurriedly, she slid off my lap and sank to her knees between my thighs. Like a queen descending to her rightful throne. Her shadows flickered around her like living smoke, their sibilant tongues running up my thighs to the zipper of my trousers. They slowly undid the fly.

“Cassia,” I said, my voice tight.

It wasn’t lust that gripped me then. It was something far worse. Worship. Or perhaps ruin.

Her nails, sharp and unforgiving, scraped down my chest as she settled down, and my breath caught again. I was already hard, already aching with a throbbing need. The way she moved—every slow, deliberate inch—was clearly intended to punish me, to break me. Every line of her body, every flicker of her eyes, screamed domination, not seduction.

This wasn’t for my pleasure. This was a lesson.

She curled her fingers around the freed length of me, and her cold fingertips, followed by the sudden heat of her palm, shocked me. She stroked me once, twice, with a slow, almost unbearable cruelty.

I twitched beneath her grip, a helpless, involuntary spasm.

“Still pretending you’re stronger than me, Guardian?” she asked, her voice a silken taunt.

“Cassia—”

But her mouth was already on me.

I choked on my own ragged breath. My hips bucked, a convulsive movement born not of desire but of raw fucking animal instinct. She didn’t ease into it. Didn’t tease or coax. She took me deep, her throat tightening around the head of my cock as she swallowed me whole.

Heat and pressure slammed through my spine, a shockwave that reverberated through every nerve. I shuddered, my arms straining against the shadowy bonds that held me captive. The ancient couch creaked a mournful protest beneath me as I arched back.

“Heavens,” I muttered, but the sound that tore from my throat was not holy. It was the sound of a soul being torn apart.

Her tongue expertly worked under the shaft, mapping every nerve ending. Her lips dragged on the pullback, slick and firm, her breath huffing out through her nose like a possessed creature. Then she sank on me again. Deeper. And deeper still.

My legs trembled, threatening to give out from under me. She moaned a loud, guttural sound, and the vibration of it shot through my balls and straight into my stomach like a bolt of lightning. My jaw clenched tight.

“F-fuck,” I hissed, the word barely audible. My voice, my control—everything was gone.

Her unyielding fingers gripped the sides of my thighs, holding me in place as she set a brutal rhythm. Fast. Ruthless. Messy. Saliva, mixed with my essence, spilled from the corners of her mouth, dripping onto my skin. But she didn’t stop. Didn’t pause. Just worked me, consumed me, as if she was trying to ruin me.

And maybe she was. Perhaps that was the point.

My vision blurred, and my thighs were shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. My wings, those useless celestial appendages, threatened to tear free from my back, their phantom feathers clawing beneath my skin and desperate for a release, for an escape.

Her throat clenched around me again, a devastating pressure.

I saw stars. Not metaphorical ones. Actual pinpricks of light danced at the edge of my vision, and I swore I heard the silver cuffs, still on her wrists, hum with a strange, almost sympathetic celestial heat—as if they too didn’t know whether to stop this desecration or to sanctify it somehow.

My voice broke again into something high and ragged. “Cassia—P-please—”

She pulled back just enough to speak, her mouth glistening. “Not yet.”

I didn’t know when I stopped breathing. I only knew that when she finally pulled off me, her lips were slick and swollen. A thin, silvery line of spit still connected us, a fragile thread. I nearly wept from the sheer brutal emptiness.

The shadows around my wrists coiled tighter, as if mocking my helplessness. I dropped my head back against the cushions with a strangled groan, my chest heaving. My skin felt raw, scoured. Where her hands had gripped my thighs, where her mouth had been, I could feel a dull throbbing heat that wasn’t pleasure. It was a chemical burn.

My light, usually a soothing hum in my veins, was silent, stunned into submission. I looked down at my chest and saw faint gray bruises blossoming where her nails had dug in.