“Sometimes I forget how very different your existence is from mine,” Moira says with a soft voice. “You’ve acclimated here so well, that I forget how hard it must be for you to live a life here while your entire character is built from those experiences.”

Her words slam into me in a calming wave of validation because gone now is the censure and misunderstanding. She may not agree with my tribes’ need for revenge and justice, or even my own personal need to assuage my anger of wrongdoings. But she understands at a very basic level that the way I led my life was perfectly normal… at least for me.

“I know you think me ignorant of your ways, Moira, but I’m not. I’ve seen enough—read enough—to know right from wrong in this culture. It doesn’t mean that I’ll abide by your right, though.”

Moira nods, despite the way I’m still gripping her by her neck. “But promise me you won’t do anything like that again. Please don’t put yourself in jeopardy like that.”

I give her a lethal smile, tempered with just a tiny bit of understanding for her plea, because although I understand her position, I can’t agree to it. “I’ll agree to nothing of the sort, Moira. I’ll never let anyone… in particular, or a society in general… control my actions. It’s one of the main reasons I want to return to my village… because I have absolute freedom to do as I wish.”

Moira opens her mouth to argue against that, but I pull her in the rest of the way, until her entire body falls into mine. Leaning forward, I place my lips at her temple and graze them there briefly. In a low, rumbling voice, I tell her, “In fact, I would love to drag you back with me, so you’d be available to my whim whenever I wanted you. I’d never let you wear a stitch of clothing again, and your knees and your pu**y would be so sore from the working I’d give them every day. But then I’d put my tongue back between your legs and soothe away every bit of the sting I had left behind.”

A rush of breath pours out from Moira’s mouth and fans across my collarbone, even as a tiny shiver courses through her body. She’s as turned on by the image I just painted as I am by having created it.

I feel her body melting, her resistance only hanging on by a thread. I could have her about ten different ways to Sunday, but there is only one way in which I want her now. I press forward.

“Get on your knees,” I demand, because I know that she wants me to force her at this point. It’s what she wants, I’m sure of it.

“No,” she whispers, and I smile on the inside. Her tone says otherwise.

I give her neck a soft squeeze again to remind her that she’s standing here pushed up against me only because I demand it so.

“Don’t ever say ‘no’ to me again,” I growl at her. Using my grip on her neck, I pull her back from my body and turn her away from me. Giving a slight push, I urge her downward and almost want to cry out in victory when she gives me not an ounce of fight as she starts to lower herself.

I let my knees bend and lower myself down to the floor with her. Her knees hit first, then my mine, and I continue pushing her forward until her cheek rests against the carpet and her ass hovers just in front of my restrained cock.

“You remember the first time you saw me?” I whisper as I squeeze her neck again gently.

“Yes.”

“It turned you on, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted me to f**k you that way, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You want it now?”

“God yes,” she moans, and victory and lust surge through me. My cock, which has been getting progressively harder, now pushes brutally rigid against the tight denim covering my crotch.

“Tell me then,” I command her, completely enjoying the way her resolve is unraveling before me.

“Tell you what?” she asks on a stuttering breath.

“Tell me all about the first time you saw me. Tell me a story, sweet Moira, and then I’ll decide whether to give you what you want.”

Moira tells me then, in a rush of capitulated words, how she watched me across the firelight, f**king Tukaba and wishing it was her body underneath me. She tells me her blood was on fire, and she could scarcely breathe because the way I was staring at her was sucking the oxygen from her body. In a low moan, she tells me she could actually feel my c**k between her legs and she whispers with no shame, only regret, that she could feel my orgasm as my body shuddered in release.

“That’s a good story, Moira,” I tell her, trying to keep my words confident and true, so she doesn’t know just how close I am to losing control with her.

“It’s how I remember it,” she says with a burst of boldness and, even though I’m aiming for her surrender, I find I like that Moira isn’t going down without at least a little fight in her.

“You wanted me then, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispers softly.

“Just as you want me now?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly the same way.”

“Exactly the same,” she says with assurance and I know, at this moment, she’s mine.

I bring my free hand up and grasp the bottom of her dress, dragging it up the backs of her thighs and over the rounded firmness of her ass. Slowly, I reveal the loveliest, sexiest pair of white lace underwear I could have ever imagined on a woman. Another new favorite word enters my repertoire—lingerie.