Jasper’s vision swam, the world narrowing to the pale curve of a throat against silk. The fairy’s hex was a fire in his veins, a metallic burn in his mouth, demanding. He hadn’t come here for this—just shelter, maybe loot—but the princess sleeping before him was an oasis in a desert of need. His knuckle-scarred hands, capable of brutal efficiency, trembled as they pushed aside the covers. The part of him that would never take a woman was drowned out by the roaring in his blood, the cursed hunger that saw only her body as the answer.
The air in the tower chamber was cold and still. It smelled of stone dust and the faint, sweet ghost of incense. Jasper’s own breath came in ragged, audible pulls. He stood over the bed, a statue of want, his body a live wire of ache. His cock was a hard, painful weight against his trousers, straining the fabric, throbbing with a pulse that matched the fever in his skull. Every rational thought—the plan to search for valuables, the instinct to flee this too-obvious trap—had been scorched away. There was only the bed. The girl. The need.
She was beautiful. That was a clinical fact, even through the haze. Hair the color of dark honey spilled across the pillow. Her face was serene in sleep, lips slightly parted. She wore a thin shift of ivory silk, the neckline loose. The fabric draped over the gentle swell of her breasts, rising and falling with her slow, untroubled breaths. Jasper’s gaze fixed on the hollow of her throat. The skin there looked impossibly soft. Warm.
His hand moved without his command. The calloused pad of his thumb brushed the spot. Her skin was warm. So warm. A shudder ripped through him, violent and total. The contact was a spark on dry tinder. The hex roared, a white-hot command in his marrow: *more*.
The covers were already pushed to her waist. He looked at her body beneath the silk. The shape of her. The dip of her waist, the curve of her hip. The hex didn’t let him appreciate it. It demanded consumption. His fingers hooked into the neckline of her shift. The silk tore. A soft, ripping sound in the silent room. It gave way easily, baring her to the waist.
Her breasts were pale in the dim light. The nipples were a soft pink, pebbled from the chill of the air. Or from his gaze. Jasper’s mouth watered. A low, animal sound escaped him, a groan torn from somewhere deep and desperate. He leaned over her, one hand braced on the mattress beside her head. His other hand hovered, trembling, over her breast. He could feel the heat radiating from her skin. It called to the fire in him.
He touched her. His palm, rough and scarred, covered the soft mound. He squeezed, gently at first, then harder. The flesh yielded under his hand. Her nipple pressed into his palm. The sensation was electric. It shot straight to his cock, which gave a furious, aching throb. Pre-cum soaked the front of his trousers. He was leaking for her. For this sleeping stranger.
“Gods,” he whispered, the word raw. His control was a thin, fraying thread. He bent his head. His nose brushed her skin. He inhaled. She smelled of sleep and clean linen and something uniquely her—a faint, floral scent, like crushed petals. It was innocent. It made the hunger worse.
His mouth found her nipple. He took it in, lips sealing around the peak. He sucked, hard. His tongue lashed the tight bud. The taste of her skin—salt and sweetness—flooded his mouth. The hex sang. *Yes. This.* He suckled like a starving man, one hand gripping her other breast, kneading, his fingers leaving faint red marks on the pale skin. He was marking her. The thought was a dark thrill in the storm of his need.
She stirred.
A soft sigh escaped her lips. Her head turned on the pillow. Her eyelids fluttered. Jasper froze, his mouth still on her breast, his body coiled tight. A sliver of clarity pierced the fog. *Stop. Get off. Run.* But the hex was a vise around his spine. It held him there. His cock ached, a brutal, pleading demand. He couldn’t pull away if he wanted to.
Princess Aveline’s eyes opened.
They were a clear, startling green. Sleepy confusion swam in them for a heartbeat. Then they focused. On the dark head bent to her chest. On the large, unfamiliar hand gripping her breast. On the man in her bed.
Confusion crystallized into shock. Then terror.
Her mouth opened. A scream gathered in her throat.
Jasper moved. It wasn’t thought. It was instinct, honed by a life on the wrong side of the law and supercharged by a magic that needed her quiet, needed her still. He clamped a hand over her mouth. His palm was broad, smothering. The scream became a muffled, frantic sound against his skin.
“Don’t,” he gritted out. His voice was gravel, strained with the effort of holding himself back. Her eyes were wide, wild with panic above his hand. She began to struggle. Her body bucked under his. Her hands came up, small fists beating against his shoulders, his chest. It was like being hit by birds. The movement rocked her body against his, her thigh brushing his tortured cock.
Pleasure-pain lanced through him. A groan was torn from him. “Stop fighting.”
She didn’t stop. She writhed, her strength surprising. The silk of her shift tangled. Her knee came up, aiming blindly. Jasper caught her thigh with his free hand, forcing it back down to the mattress. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her inner thigh. He could feel the heat there. The promise. The hex screamed at him.
He shifted his weight, pinning her more completely. His body was a heavy, unyielding weight atop hers. He was bigger, harder, fueled by a cursed desperation. He got his knees between her legs, spreading them. The ruined shift rode up, baring her to the hips. He looked down between their bodies.
Aveline went utterly still. Her breath hitched in ragged, silent sobs against his palm. Her eyes were huge, glistening with unshed tears. She was staring at his face, seeing him truly for the first time.
Jasper knew what she saw. The sharp angles of a face that had known too much violence. Black eyes, usually cold and assessing, now black with a hunger that wasn’t his own. Dark hair falling across his forehead. A handsome face, they said. A criminal’s face. Infamous. He saw the recognition dawn in her eyes, followed by a deeper, more profound horror. She knew who he was. Jasper Nightshade. And he was in her bed.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, the words harsh in the quiet. It was the only reassurance he could offer. It felt like a lie. He was going to ruin her. He had to. The need was a physical pain now, a cramping, relentless fist in his gut. His balls were tight and heavy. Every second of delay was agony.
He kept his hand over her mouth. With the other, he fumbled with the fastenings of his trousers. His fingers, usually so deft, were clumsy. Shaking. He got them open. The relief of freeing his cock was momentary. It sprang out, thick and flushed dark, the head slick with his own fluid. It bobbed against her bare stomach, leaving a wet streak on her skin.
He saw her eyes dart down. Saw the fresh wave of terror. A tear finally spilled over, tracing a path down her temple into her hair. She squeezed her eyes shut. A surrender. Or an escape.
It was all the invitation the hex needed.
Jasper positioned himself. The broad, slick head of his cock nudged against her. He wasn’t where he needed to be. He was higher, against the soft plane of her lower belly. He adjusted, his breath coming in sharp gasps. He found the heat. The different heat. The heart of her.
He pressed against her entrance. She was dry. Tight. A virgin, his mind supplied, the fact distant and unimportant. The hex didn’t care. It demanded entry. Jasper’s hips gave a shallow, involuntary thrust. The pressure was immense. He wasn’t inside. He was at the gate, and it was barred.
“Please,” he groaned, not sure who he was begging—her, the gods, the fucking fairy who did this to him. He was dripping, his pre-cum mixing with her resistance. He pushed again, a little harder. Her body resisted. Aveline whimpered against his hand, a sound of pure distress.
Spit. He needed lubrication. His mind, fractured and single-minded, grasped the solution. He pulled back. He spat into his own hand, a crude, desperate act. He slicked his cock, the spit cool against his burning skin. Then he guided himself back to her. He pressed the wet head against her once more.
This time, there was a faint give. A slight, yielding slickness. The hex took over. Jasper’s vision tunneled. There was only the point of contact. The impossible tightness. The heat that was about to swallow him.
He thrust.
It was a hard, brutal push. He sheathed himself in a single, tearing stroke. Her body fought him, clenching impossibly tight around the invasion, then yielding with a soft, wet rip. He was inside. Fully seated. Buried in a heat so profound it stole his breath.
Aveline’s body arched under his. A silent scream vibrated against the hand still clamped over her mouth. Her eyes flew open, blind with pain and shock. Her inner muscles fluttered around him, a frantic, pulsing rhythm of violation.
Jasper held still. For one second. Two. His body was screaming at him to move, to fuck, to find release from this glorious, terrible pressure. But the sensation of being inside her—the snug, hot clasp of her virgin cunt—was a shock to his system. Even the hex seemed to pause, savoring the conquest.
He looked down at her face. Tears streamed freely now. Her green eyes were glazed, unseeing. She was here, but she was gone. A beautiful, broken doll beneath him. A part of him—the part that was still Jasper Nightshade, the man who prided himself on his control, who took what he wanted but never like this—recoiled. It was a tiny, drowning voice in a sea of fire.
The hex drowned it out. The need returned, sharper than ever. He was inside. Now he had to move.
He withdrew, slowly. The drag was exquisite. Her tightness clung to him, reluctant to let him go. He pushed back in. A smoother stroke this time. Wetter. He felt the slickness of her blood and his spit and her body’s reluctant awakening. A low, continuous moan built in his chest. He began to move in earnest.
His thrusts were deep, measured, driven by the hex’s relentless rhythm. Each drive buried him to the hilt. The slap of his hips against her thighs was a loud, obscene counterpoint to her muffled cries. He fucked her with a focused, desperate intensity. His world narrowed to the feeling of her cunt around his cock. The heat. The friction. The building, coiling tension in his groin.
He changed his angle, seeking. His next thrust hit something different. A spot inside her that made her jolt. A sharp, choked sound escaped her, even through his hand. Her legs, which had been limp, twitched. Jasper zeroed in on it. He hammered that same spot, again and again. His own pleasure was a cresting wave, threatening to break. He was close. So close.
He chanced it. He moved his hand from her mouth, bracing his weight on both arms now. He needed to see. He needed her to see.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a ragged whisper.
Her eyes, hazy with pain and tears, focused on his. He held her gaze as he drove into her, his thrusts becoming faster, less controlled. “Look at who’s taking you. Remember.”
She was so tight. So hot. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps now, matching his rhythm. Her body was no longer fighting. It was accepting. Taking him. The hex had done its work. She was his oasis, and he was drinking deep.
His orgasm gathered, a tsunami of release. His balls drew up tight. Every muscle in his body corded. He pistoned into her, once, twice, three more times, his rhythm shattering into pure, frantic need.
He came.
It ripped through him with the force of a lightning strike. A raw, guttural shout tore from his throat as he slammed into her one final time, burying himself as deep as he could go. His cock pulsed, jetting his release into her in hot, endless spurts. He emptied himself, the hex’s fire finally, blessedly, quenched in the clenching wet heat of her body. He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his elbows at the last second, his forehead dropping to the mattress beside her head. He was panting, sweating, spent.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The smell of sex and sweat and blood filled the cold air of the tower.
Slowly, the world came back. The stone walls. The dim light. The woman beneath him, soft and warm and ruined.
Jasper’s mind cleared, the feverish haze receding like a tide. What remained was a cold, hollow clarity. And the feel of her. Her body, still wrapped around his softening cock. Her heat. Her life.
He had just raped a princess. The reality of it landed in his gut like a stone.
He began to pull out. The movement made her flinch. A small, broken sound escaped her lips. He looked down at her face. Her eyes were open, staring at the canopy above the bed. The tears had stopped. Her expression was blank. Empty. Aveline was gone, and in her place was a shell.
As he withdrew completely, a strange, tingling warmth began to spread from the center of his chest. It was subtle at first, a gentle heat beneath his sternum. Then it intensified, becoming a palpable pull, a connection that felt like a silken cord drawing taut. It anchored him to her. To the girl in the bed.
Jasper froze, halfway off the mattress. He looked from his own chest, where nothing was visible, to her still form. Understanding, cold and dreadful, dawned. The stories about the cursed princess in the abandoned tower.
He looked at his hands. They were smeared with her blood, with the evidence of what he’d done. The silence in the tower was a physical weight, broken only by the ragged sound of his own breathing and the faint, hitching tremors from the bed. Jasper pushed himself fully off the mattress, his movements stiff. The warmth in his chest—the cursed tether—pulled like a hook behind his sternum, a constant, gentle reminder that he was anchored to the ruin he’d made.
He found a pitcher of water and a basin on a stand across the room. The water was cold. He poured some, wet a cloth. He cleaned himself first, methodically, watching the pale linen darken with pink. The act felt obscene. Sanitizing the weapon. He tossed the cloth aside, found another.
He approached the bed again. Aveline hadn’t moved. Her eyes were open, fixed on the stone ceiling. The blankets were tangled at her feet, her gown torn open, her body exposed and glistening. Jasper sat on the edge of the mattress, the old frame groaning under his weight. He reached out with the damp cloth.
She flinched. A full-body recoil, violent and sudden. Her legs jerked up, her arms crossed over her chest. She scrambled backward against the headboard, pulling the torn silk of her gown to cover herself, her green eyes wide with fresh terror. “Don’t,” she whispered. The word was cracked, barely audible.
Jasper froze, the cloth held in mid-air. The rejection was a cold splash. He dropped his hand. “You’re… a mess,” he said, his voice rough. It wasn’t an apology. It was a fact. He was the cause.
She just stared, shaking. The horror in her eyes was pure, unadulterated. But beneath it, in the flush on her skin, the rapid pulse at her throat, he saw the other thing. The cursed hunger, mirroring the now-dormant heat of the hex that had driven him. It warred with her revulsion, making her breath come in shallow, conflicted gasps.
He stood up. The tether in his chest gave a faint, uncomfortable throb. “I should go,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. This was a disaster. A binding curse with a royal victim. Staying meant a death sentence, either by her guards or by the magical bond itself. He turned, taking a step toward the tower door.
“Wait.”
The sound was so small he almost missed it. He glanced back.
Aveline had uncurled slightly. One hand was outstretched, trembling. Her fingers grasped empty air toward him. The movement seemed to pain her. “Please,” she breathed. “Don’t… leave me here.”
Jasper frowned. “Here is your castle, Princess. You’re safe now.” The lie tasted like ash.
“Safe?” A hysterical little laugh escaped her. It ended in a sob. “This place is my tomb. I haven’t seen the sky in a year. The doors… they wouldn’t open for me. The windows… they might as well have been walls.” She struggled to sit up, wincing, still clutching the fabric to her chest. “You got in. You can get me out. Please. Help me out of this stupid castle.”
He stared at her. The desperation in her voice was real, sharper even than her fear. It cut through the post-violence fog in his head. “A year?”
“Since the curse was laid. The first part. The sleep. The isolation.” Her eyes searched his face, looking for anything to trust. “How did you find me? This land… it’s forgotten. Shielded. No one comes here.”
Jasper’s mind raced. The fairy. The deal gone wrong. The hex that had made him burn, that had driven him blindly through forests and across wasted moors until he’d seen the spire of this tower. He hadn’t been looking for a princess. He’d been looking for relief. “I didn’t find you,” he said finally, the truth blunt and ugly. “I was led. By a mistake.”
He saw the confusion in her eyes, the dawning understanding that her rescuer was just another lost thing. She swallowed hard. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here. And I…” She looked down at herself, at the stains on the sheets. A fresh wave of shame seemed to crash over her. Her voice dropped. “I need to get out. I can’t stay in this room. Not with… the smell.”
Jasper hesitated. Every instinct screamed to run. But the tether pulled, a soft, insistent pressure. And she was right. He couldn’t leave her like this. He nodded, once. “Alright.”
He went back to the basin. This time, he didn’t reach for her. He wrung out the clean cloth and placed it on the mattress beside her hip. “Clean yourself. I’ll find you something to wear.”
He turned his back, giving her a semblance of privacy. He heard the soft, shaky movements behind him, the whisper of cloth on skin. He rummaged through a heavy oak wardrobe, finding simple, sturdy traveling clothes that must have belonged to a servant—woolen trousers, a linen tunic, a thick cloak. He laid them on the foot of the bed.
“Can you dress?”
“I think so.” Her voice was steadier, but thin.
He kept his back turned until he heard the rustling stop. When he glanced over his shoulder, she was standing, leaning heavily against the bedpost. The servant’s clothes hung loose on her slender frame, the trousers rolled at the ankles. She had the cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders, as if cold. Her face was pale, her hair a tangled cascade of gold over the rough wool. She looked like a ghost dressed in a peasant’s skin.
“We go down the stairs,” he said. “Stay close.”
She nodded, taking a tentative step. She stumbled, her legs unsteady. Jasper moved without thinking, catching her elbow. The moment his fingers made contact, a jolt went through him—not the hex, but the curse. A warm, vibrating current flowed from her skin into his, a recognition. He felt her shudder, too.
She didn’t pull away. She leaned into the support. “Thank you,” she whispered, not looking at him.
He led her out of the bedchamber, down the spiral stone staircase. The tower was dark, silent, empty. His own entry had been through a lower window, the iron bars rusted and loose. He helped her through the narrow opening, his hands on her waist, lifting her down to the overgrown courtyard below. Her body was light, fragile in his grasp.
The outside air hit them. It was cool, damp, smelling of moss and decaying leaves. The moon was high, casting silver light over the crumbling walls of the forgotten castle. Aveline stopped dead, her head tilting back. She stared at the sky, at the vast expanse of stars she hadn’t seen in a year. A single tear traced a clean path through the dirt on her cheek. She took a deep, shuddering breath, filling her lungs with free air.
Jasper scanned the tree line. His path was east. To put distance between himself and this catastrophe. He took a step away from her, toward the forest. “You’re out. The road is south, a half-day’s walk. You’ll find a village.”
He took another step. The tether in his chest tightened. Not painfully, but noticeably. A warning pull.
Aveline didn’t move from her spot in the moonlight. She was still looking at the stars. “What’s your name?” she asked softly.
“Jasper.”
“Jasper.” She tested the sound of it. Then she looked at him. The haunted, hungry look was back. “I don’t think I can walk to a village.”
“You’re stronger than you think.” He turned to go, forcing himself to ignore the silken cord binding his heart to hers.
He made it ten paces.
A sharp, seizing pain lanced through his chest. It stole his breath. He gasped, stumbling, a hand flying to his sternum. It wasn’t his pain. It was hers, transmitted through the bond. He whirled around.
Aveline was on her knees in the wet grass, clutching her own chest. Her face was contorted in agony. She was panting, short, desperate gulps of air that weren’t reaching her lungs. Her eyes, wide and terrified, locked onto his across the distance.
“I can’t…” she choked out. “I can’t… breathe.”
The curse. The dependence. It wasn’t metaphorical. It was physiological. The space between them was poison to her.
Jasper ran back to her. The moment he dropped to his knees beside her, the pain in his own chest vanished. Her gasping eased. Color returned to her lips. She swayed, and he caught her shoulders, holding her upright. Her forehead dropped against his collarbone. Her whole body trembled.
“You see?” she whispered into his shirt, her voice raw with despair. “I’m not free. I’m tied to you. The curse… it says the first to wake me binds me. You woke me. Now I can’t be without you.”
Jasper held her there in the cold moonlight, the weight of his crime deepening into a lifelong sentence. He had wanted relief from a hex. He had gained a prisoner. Her arms came up, her hands fisting in the fabric of his tunic, not in passion, but in pure, desperate need. She clung to him as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world. Her breath, now even and warm, brushed against the skin of his neck. The cursed bond hummed between them, a low, constant vibration of forced intimacy. He was her anchor. Her jailer. Her only source of air.
He had no choice. “Alright,” he said again, the word heavy with resignation. He shifted, one arm sliding under her knees, the other around her back. He lifted her. She was no weight at all. She curled into his chest, her face hidden against him, her fingers still twisted tight in his clothes. She didn’t speak.
Jasper Nightshade, infamous thief, walked into the forest carrying the princess he had violated and magically enslaved. The trees closed behind them, swallowing the sight of the tower. The only sound was the crunch of his boots on the forest floor and the soft, hitched rhythm of her breathing, syncing slowly, inevitably, to his own.
The forest gave way to a small clearing, and in it, a simple wooden cabin with a single lit window. Jasper didn’t hesitate. He kicked the door open with a heavy boot, the wood groaning on its hinges, and strode inside.
Aveline gasped as he unceremoniously dumped her onto a narrow cot against the wall. The straw-filled mattress was thin, the frame protesting with a sharp crack. She winced, her body still tender and bruised from the tower, and shot him a glare that could curdle milk.
An old woman stood frozen by a hearth, a wooden spoon in her hand. Her eyes, milky with age, widened at the sight of the infamous Jasper Nightshade filling her doorway, and the disheveled, bleeding princess on her bed.
“Medic,” Jasper stated, not a question. He jerked his chin toward Aveline. “See to her. Clean her. Feed her. I’ll pay.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned his back on both of them, found a stool in the corner, and sat. He drew a long, wicked knife from his belt and a whetstone from a pouch. The sharp, rhythmic scrape of steel on stone filled the small cabin, a sound of cold, focused intent.
Aveline watched him, her chest tight. He was a silhouette against the firelight, all hard lines and shadow. He didn’t look at her. The old woman, after a moment of terrified hesitation, approached the cot. Her hands were gentle, her touch apologetic as she helped Aveline sit up.
“Let’s get you out of these ruined things, dear,” the medic murmured, her voice like dry leaves. She produced a simple linen shift from a chest.
Jasper’s scraping never faltered. Aveline kept her eyes on him as the old woman worked, peeling away the torn silk of her nightgown. The cool air hit her skin, raising goosebumps. She felt exposed, raw. The medic’s hands paused, a soft click of sympathy in her throat as she saw the state of her. The bruises on her thighs. The dried blood.
“I have a salve,” the old woman whispered. “It will sting, then soothe.”
Aveline nodded, biting her lip. She refused to make a sound. Not with him listening. The antiseptic was cold, then a sharp, biting pain that made her eyes water. She stared at Jasper’s back, at the steady rise and fall of his shoulders. His hands never stopped moving. The knife gleamed. The sound was a metronome marking her humiliation.
The medic worked with efficient kindness, cleaning, applying ointment, helping her into the clean shift. It was coarse against her skin, a peasant’s garment. Then came a bowl of thin broth and a hunk of dark bread. Aveline ate ravenously, the simple food the most exquisite thing she’d ever tasted. Through it all, the scraping continued.
When the bowl was empty and the old woman stepped back, Jasper stood. The scraping stopped. The sudden silence was louder than the noise. He tossed a few silver coins onto the medic’s table. They clattered, spinning. “Not a word,” he said, his voice low. The threat hung in the air, colder than the forest outside.
He crossed to the cot. Aveline flinched, but he simply reached down, hooked his hands under her arms, and hauled her upright. He didn’t cradle her this time. He slung her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, one arm banded across the backs of her thighs. The world tilted. The coarse linen of her new shift rode up. The firelight swam.
“Put me down!” she choked out, pounding a fist weakly against his back.
He ignored her. He carried her out of the cabin, back into the moon-dappled forest. The door shut behind them, cutting off the light and the old woman’s fearful gaze. He walked. The rhythm of his stride was jarring, uncomfortable. Her stomach pressed against his hard shoulder. She could feel the muscle moving in his back with each step. She gave up fighting, going limp, a prisoner of his pace and the cursed tether humming between them.
He walked for an hour, maybe two. The forest grew denser, darker. Finally, he stopped near a rocky outcrop. He didn’t lower her gently. He let her slide from his shoulder, her feet hitting the leaf litter, her legs buckling. She caught herself on a mossy stone, glaring up at him.
Jasper didn’t look at her. He leaned against the rock, staring into the black trees. He was thinking. She could see it in the set of his jaw, the distant focus in his black eyes.
“Your family,” he said, the words cutting the quiet. “The Emerald Crown. They’d want you back.”
Aveline went very still. A spark of wild, desperate hope flared in her chest. Home. Her father’s halls. Safety.
Jasper’s tongue touched his lower lip. A slow, contemplative gesture. “A reward,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “A king’s ransom for his only daughter, returned from a cursed sleep.” A faint, ugly smile touched his mouth. It wasn’t warm. It was greedy. Hungry. She saw him picturing it—chests of gold, jewels, land. His breath hitched slightly with the fantasy. He actually drooled, a thin silver thread escaping the corner of his lips. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, his eyes gleaming in the dark.
Then the gleam faded. The smile died. His face settled back into its harsh lines. “Or,” he said, the word a stone dropped into water. “They see the infamous Jasper Nightshade. They see you, tied to me, broken. They hear how I found you. What I did.” He turned his head, and his black eyes finally pinned her. “Would they give me a reward? Or would they give me a headsman’s axe?”
The hope in Aveline’s chest curdled, turning into a cold, heavy sludge. He was right. Her father was a just king. A harsh king. He would see a criminal who had defiled his heir. He would see the violation, not the cursed cause. Jasper would be executed on sight. And she… what would she be? Damaged goods. A princess forever bound to a dead man’s curse. Would the tether even break if he died? Or would she wither and die with him?
“You can’t take me back,” she whispered, the truth a bitter ash on her tongue.
“No,” he agreed, his voice flat. “I can’t.” He pushed off the rock. The fantasy of wealth was gone, replaced by the grim reality of his new life. He had baggage. Living, breathing, cursed baggage that hurt when he dropped it. “Which means you’re worthless to me. Except as a millstone.”
He said it with a brutal, casual honesty. It wasn’t meant to wound; it was a simple calculation. Aveline felt the words like physical blows. Worthless. A millstone.
Jasper sighed, a rough sound of exasperation. “We need distance from this kingdom. Your face is known. Mine is wanted. Together, we’re a beacon.” He walked toward her. She didn’t back away. There was nowhere to go. He stopped a foot from her. The cursed bond vibrated, a low thrum of forced proximity. She could smell the forest on him, the sharp scent of his sweat, the metallic hint of the knife he’d been sharpening.
“Can you walk yet?” he asked, not with concern, but with impatience.
Aveline straightened her spine. The salve had helped. The food had given her a thread of strength. “Yes.”
“Good. We walk until dawn. Find a place to hole up.” He turned and started moving east again, not checking to see if she followed.
She had no choice. The tether in her chest gave a gentle, insistent pull. She took a step. Then another. Her legs were shaky, but they held. She followed the broad, dark shape of him through the trees, her bare feet silent on the damp earth, the coarse shift scratching her with every movement. He was her path. Her prison. Her only compass. And he thought she was worthless.
The night deepened around them, a living thing. And within it, two people walked, bound by violation and magic, their futures collapsed into a single, desperate road.
The silence between them stretched, filled only by the crunch of leaves under his boots and the ragged sound of her breathing. Jasper kept his eyes on the dark path ahead, but the guilt was a cold stone in his gut. It wasn’t remorse for the act—the hex had burned that away, leaving only animal need—but for the aftermath. This consequence. This fragile, cursed weight trailing behind him.
“I’m tired,” Aveline said, her voice small in the vast dark.
Jasper stopped. He didn’t turn. He let out a slow breath, a plume of white in the chill air. “Seriously?”
“My legs… they’re shaking.”
He finally looked back at her. She stood a few paces behind, swaying slightly, her arms wrapped around herself. The medic’s coarse shift was too thin for the forest cold. Moonlight caught the pale length of her throat, the dark hollows under her eyes. Pretty. The word surfaced in his mind, unwanted. She was a beautiful princess, all right. Delicate bones. Skin like milk. The kind of woman painted on tapestries, not dragged through mud and fear.
And he’d ruined her.
The thought was a sharp, clean stab beneath his ribs. He hadn’t chosen it. The fairy’s vengeance had chosen for him. But his hands had done the work. His body had taken hers. He could still feel the phantom heat of her, the shocking tightness, the way she’d been soft and pliant in her cursed sleep. A tool for his need. Now she was awake. And she was his.
“Fine,” he grunted, the word rough.
He walked back to her. She flinched, a tiny recoil he felt in his own chest through the tether. He ignored it. He bent, sliding one arm behind her knees and the other around her back. He lifted her. Cradled her this time, not slung. She was light. Too light. Her head fell against his shoulder, her hair smelling of old incense and forest damp.
He started walking again, his stride adjusting to her weight. She was stiff at first, holding herself away from him. But exhaustion won. Gradually, her body softened, melting into the heat of his chest. Her breath warmed the skin of his neck.
Jasper stared straight ahead, his jaw tight. He was running. From her family’s justice. From his own infamy. From the damn fairy who’d set this trap. And he was running with her. His victim. His burden. His… what? He had no word for it. She was a fact. A condition of his continued breathing.
But as he walked, the facts blurred. The feel of her in his arms was not the feel of a millstone. It was warm. Alive. Her heartbeat thumped a quiet rhythm against him. Her hip bone pressed into his arm through the thin shift. He remembered the curve of that hip under his palm, the silk of her skin in the tower. The memory was not just visual. It was physical. A clench low in his gut. A sudden, unwelcome thickening in his blood.
The hex was gone. The fairy’s fire had burned out, leaving only ash and this binding. So why did he feel…?
He shoved the thought down. Focused on the path. The need for shelter before dawn.
Aveline was drifting, lulled by the rhythm of his walk and the crushing fatigue. Her mind floated in a grey place between terror and numb acceptance. This man’s arms were around her. This criminal. This violator. His chest was solid. His heartbeat steady. She hated the comfort she drew from it. Hated the way her body, traitorously, recognized his scent—pine, sweat, iron—and didn’t recoil. It just… knew him.
“Jasper,” she murmured, half-asleep.
He stiffened. “What.”
“Nothing.” She fell silent, but the sound of his name hung between them. She had never said it before. It felt intimate. Wrong.
He found a place as the sky began to lighten from black to deep grey. A shallow cave behind a waterfall, the sound a constant, rushing hush that would cover any noise. He set her down on a dry patch of sandy earth. “Stay.”
He gathered armfuls of dry fern and moss, making a crude bed. He didn’t look at her as he worked. His movements were efficient, practiced. A man used to surviving in the wild.
“Here,” he said, nodding to the bed.
Aveline crawled onto it. The moss was soft. She curled onto her side, facing the cave wall, drawing her knees up. She heard him moving behind her, the rustle of his pack, the clink of his water skin.
Then silence.
She could feel him standing there, watching her. The awareness prickled over her skin. She held her breath.
He knelt behind her. She tensed, every muscle locking. His hand touched her ankle. She jerked.
“Be still,” he said, his voice low, stripped of anger. It was just tired.
His fingers were warm and rough as they traced up her calf. He was checking the medic’s salve, the fading bruises. His touch was clinical. But it wasn’t. It was the first time he’d touched her skin since the tower without violence or necessity. Her breath hitched. Her skin pebbled under his callused fingertips.
He felt it. The tiny shudder that went through her. His hand stilled on the back of her knee. The cave was cold, but her skin was warm. So warm. He could see the delicate lines of her body in the dim light—the dip of her waist, the swell of her hip, the way the coarse shift clung to the curve of her backside.
The hunger returned. Not the hex. This was quieter. Deeper. A dark, possessive curl in his stomach. She was his. The curse said so. His body remembered hers. And she was right here, fragile and dependent and utterly at his mercy.
His thumb stroked a slow circle on the soft skin behind her knee. Aveline froze. A whimper caught in her throat.
“Please,” she whispered to the wall.
“Please what?” His voice was a rumble, close to her ear. He hadn’t moved closer, but his presence enveloped her.
She didn’t know. Please stop. Please don’t. Or a darker, shameful thread: please make it not hurt this time.
He leaned over her. His shadow fell across her. She could feel the heat of his chest against her back, not touching, but almost. His breath stirred her hair. “Look at me.”
She shook her head, eyes squeezed shut.
“Aveline.”
The use of her name was a shock. It undid her. Slowly, she turned her head, looking back over her shoulder.
His face was inches from hers. In the grey pre-dawn light, his features were stark. Handsome, yes. But carved from hardship and cruelty. His black eyes held hers. There was no hex-madness in them now. Just a deep, unsettling intensity. He was studying her. Seeing the fear. The exhaustion. The lingering tear-tracks on her cheeks.
“I didn’t want this,” he said, the words so quiet they were almost lost in the waterfall’s rush.
“You took it,” she breathed.
“I did.” He didn’t look away. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “And now you’re stuck with me.”
He leaned down. She thought he would kiss her. She braced for it, a fresh wave of terror icing her veins.
But he didn’t. He pressed his lips to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. A dry, closed-mouth kiss. It was not violent. It was a brand. A claim. She felt it in every nerve.
Then he pulled back. He stood up, turning away from her. “Sleep. We move again at dusk.”
He walked to the cave entrance, sitting with his back to her, a dark silhouette against the rushing water. A guard. A warden.
Aveline lay trembling, the ghost of his lips burning on her skin. The place he’d kissed felt more violated than anywhere else he’d touched. Because it was quiet. Because it was chosen. She touched the spot with her own fingers, confused, aching, utterly bound.
And in the growing light, Jasper stared out at the forest, his hands clenched into fists. He could still taste the memory of her skin. Not from his mouth. From his mind. Pretty princess. Frail. His. The guilt was still there, cold and heavy. But beneath it, something else was stirring. Something that had nothing to do with fairy curses and everything to do with the warm, trembling woman asleep behind him. A dangerous, possessive heat that had no name, and wanted none.
Morning came, sharp and intrusive. Grey light filtered through the waterfall’s curtain, painting the cave walls in shifting, liquid patterns. Aveline sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion. Her body felt like one large bruise. She didn’t move.
Jasper watched her from the entrance. He’d been watching for hours. The way she shivered in her sleep. The way her fingers kept drifting to that spot on her shoulder. “You’ll get sick,” he said, his voice rough from disuse. “The damp. That shift is worthless.”
She didn’t answer. Just stared at the cave ceiling.
He stood, his joints protesting. “I’m going to hunt. Don’t leave the cave. You won’t like what happens if you try.” It wasn’t a threat of violence. It was a statement of fact. The curse would drag her back, screaming. He’d seen its work already.
He was gone for what felt like half the day. Aveline listened to the waterfall’s roar, counting the seconds. The emptiness was a relief. The silence, a reprieve. She dozed, fitfully, waking each time her own body twitched in memory.
He returned with no game, but his hands were cupped, holding a small pile of wild berries and two pale, knobby roots. He moved to the cave mouth, letting the waterfall’s spray cleanse the fruit. He ate one berry, testing, then came back to her. He sat an arm’s length away, not looking at her, and placed the food on a flat stone between them.
“Eat,” he said.
She looked at the berries. They looked like drops of blood. Her stomach turned. “I’m not hungry.”
“You are. You’re just too scared to feel it.” He picked up a root, bit into it with a crisp, clean sound. “Eat, or I’ll force it down your throat. Your choice.”
She believed him. Slowly, she reached for a berry. It burst tart and sweet on her tongue. The flavor was a shock. A reminder of a world before this one. She ate another. Then another. The roots were bland, fibrous, but they filled the hollow ache in her belly. They ate in silence, the waterfall their only conversation.
When the last berry was gone, Jasper wiped his hands on his trousers. He looked at her, his black eyes unreadable. “The curse. Tell me.”
Aveline wrapped her arms around her knees. “Why?”
“Because it’s the chain that binds us. I want to know its length.”
She was silent for a long moment. The story felt like ash in her mouth. “A witch,” she began, her voice small. “When I was a baby. She wanted to take me. Said I had a… a brightness. My father refused. He had her banished from the kingdom.”
Jasper listened, still as stone.
“She came back when I was sixteen. An argument. A screaming match in the throne room. She said my father had stolen her destiny. Last year, on my seventeenth birthday, she found me in the gardens. She didn’t scream this time. She just… smiled. And then I was here. In that tower. The door wouldn’t open from the inside. The windows were sheer drops. No one knew where it was. I waited. For a year. I thought I’d die there.” She looked at him, her blue eyes stark. “Then you came.”
Jasper absorbed it. A petty revenge, using a princess as a pawn. He understood that economy of cruelty. “And the dependence? The tether?”
“The first person to wake me from the enchanted sleep,” she whispered, the words tasting of fate. “My life-force would be bound to theirs. A rescuer’s reward. Or a captor’s prize.”
A bitter laugh escaped him. “No knight. Just a thief with a fairy’s itch in his blood.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Why did you come? How did you even find it?”
He looked out at the water. “I was running. The Black Hoods had a contract on me. I stole from the wrong noble. Led them on a chase through the Whisperwood, lost them in a gorge. Found the tower. Thought it was abandoned. Shelter. Maybe something to pawn.” His jaw tightened. “There was a fairy. A glade guardian. I… tricked her. Took a vial of starlight dew she was hoarding. She caught me. Was furious. Hexed me before I could run. Said I’d know a hunger no meal could satisfy.”
He finally looked at her, and the raw honesty in his eyes was more terrifying than any anger. “It hit me like a fever. A metallic burn. My skin felt too tight. My blood was too hot. I wasn’t… myself. I climbed the tower. Saw you sleeping. And it wasn’t a person I saw. It was water in a desert. The only thing that could put the fire out.”
Aveline’s breath caught. She saw it then—the ghost of that madness in the tight lines of his face. Not an excuse. An explanation.
“I didn’t know about the curse,” he said, the words grinding out. “I didn’t know I was binding you to me. I just knew I had to have you or I’d burn alive.” He held her gaze, forcing himself not to look away. “I am sorry. For raping you. For the pain. For this.” He gestured between them, at the invisible tether. “The apology changes nothing. It doesn’t undo it. But it’s true.”
The word hung in the damp air. *Rape*. He’d said it. Named the thing. Aveline felt something crack inside her chest. Not forgiveness. Not relief. A terrible, clarifying cold. He was sorry, but he’d still done it. He was sorry, but she was still bound to him. He was sorry, but his eyes still tracked the movement of her throat when she swallowed.
“Your apology is worthless,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady.
“I know.”
Silence fell again, thicker now. The confession lay between them, another kind of chain.
Jasper shifted, and the movement brought him slightly closer. The space between them hummed. He could smell her—fear-sweat, berry-sweetness, the underlying scent that was just *her*. It was different now, without the hex screaming in his skull. It was subtler. More dangerous.
His eyes fell to her neck, to the pale, unmarked column of it. He remembered the feel of her skin under his lips. The claim. The hunger that followed was his own. “The hex is gone,” he said, almost to himself.
“What?”
“The fairy’s curse. The burn is gone. The hunger left is… mine.” He reached out, slowly, giving her every chance to flinch. His fingers didn’t touch her skin. They hovered a hair’s breadth from the curve of her neck. “Do you understand?”
Aveline understood. The violation in the tower had been a product of magic. Anything that happened now would be a product of him. Of his choice. Her body went rigid. She stopped breathing.
His fingertips finally made contact. A feather-light trace from the shell of her ear down to the hollow of her throat. Her skin pebbled under his touch. A traitorous shiver chased the path of his finger. She hated it. She hated him. She hated the part of her that was awake under his hand.
“You’re still afraid,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Good.” His thumb pressed gently against the frantic pulse in her throat. “You should be.”
He leaned in. This time, he didn’t aim for her shoulder. His lips brushed the sensitive spot just below her ear. Not a kiss. A breath. Warm. Deliberate. Aveline’s eyes fluttered closed. A whimper, soft and broken, escaped her.
“That sound,” he whispered against her skin, his voice a dark caress. “You made that sound in the tower. When I first pushed inside you.”
Tears welled, hot and shameful. “Stop.”
“I can’t.” He said it with a chilling finality. His mouth opened against her neck. The wet heat of his tongue traced the same path his finger had taken. Salt. Skin. Her.
Aveline’s hands came up, pressed weakly against his chest. He was solid as an oak. Unyielding. Her push was nothing. It was acceptance. He caught one of her wrists, his grip firm but not painful. He pulled her hand down, pressing her palm flat against the front of his trousers.
She felt him. Hard. Thick. Aching. The reality of his desire, separate from any hex, was a shock that stole the air from her lungs. He was fully clothed, but the heat of him burned through the fabric. The shape of his cock was unmistakable, straining against her palm.
“That’s me,” he growled, his breath hot in her ear. “That’s my want. For you. Just you.”
She tried to pull her hand away. He held it there, forcing her to feel the rigid length, the twitch of it against her captive palm. A fresh wave of slick heat bloomed between her own legs, a visceral, unwanted answer to his arousal. The betrayal of her own body was a deeper violation than anything he’d done.
Jasper released her wrist. She snatched her hand back as if burned, cradling it to her chest. He didn’t move away. His face was still close to hers, his eyes black pools of intent. He was waiting. Watching the conflict play out across her features—the terror, the shame, the reluctant, awakening awareness.
Slowly, deliberately, he brought his own hand to his belt. The leather creaked. The buckle clinked, a soft, metallic sound that echoed in the cave. He didn’t undo it. He just rested his hand there, over the prominent bulge. A promise. A threat.
“The next time I touch you,” he said, his voice low and absolute, “it won’t be because a fairy made me. It will be because I want to. And you’ll be awake for every second of it.”
He stood up abruptly, breaking the spell. The cold cave air rushed in where his heat had been. Aveline stared up at him, trembling, her neck wet from his mouth, her palm still singing with the memory of his hardness.
Jasper turned and walked back to the cave entrance. He didn’t look back. He stood facing the waterfall, his shoulders tense, his fists clenched at his sides. The silhouette of his desire was still clearly outlined against the dark fabric of his trousers. A flag of ownership. A vow.
Inside, the hunger he’d spoken of coiled, tight and possessive. It had a taste now. It tasted like her fear. And her reluctant, traitorous wetness. And it wanted more.
• • •
The sunrise over the forest was a wash of soft gold and rose, painting the waterfall’s mist in dreamy, shimmering hues. Aveline stood at the cave mouth, the beauty of it a cruel mockery. Her bare feet were cold on the damp stone. Jasper watched her from a few paces away, his expression unreadable in the new light.
She took a hesitant step back. He didn’t move. She took another, then another, her eyes locked on his. He simply stood there, arms crossed, a dark silhouette against the glowing sky. Ten paces. Fifteen. The tether, that invisible cord of cursed magic, didn’t tighten. No pain lanced through her ribs. Only the increasing distance, the chill of the morning air between them.
“It’s the intention,” Jasper said, his voice carrying easily across the clearing. “You’re not trying to leave me. You’re testing. The curse knows the difference.”
Aveline stopped. She was a good twenty paces from him now, farther than they’d ever been apart since the tower. The realization was a cold stone in her gut. “So if I don’t mean to run… I can go anywhere?”
“Seems so.”
“And if I do mean to run?”
“It feels like your ribs are cracking inward. As you recall.”
She glared at him. “So we’re bound to loyalty. Not just proximity.”
“We’re bound to not abandoning each other,” he corrected, a bitter twist to his mouth. He took a step toward her. She instinctively took a step back, maintaining the distance. He mirrored her, step for step, closing the gap she tried to create. It was a silent, maddening dance. “You can’t truly want to be rid of me. And I can’t truly want to be rid of you. The magic makes sure of it.”
“This is absurd,” Aveline grumbled, turning her back on the gorgeous sunrise, on him. She wrapped her arms around herself, the thin, torn silk of her nightdress doing nothing against the dawn chill. “I’m a prisoner in a circle of my own intentions.”
Jasper sighed, a rough, exasperated sound. “We need supplies. You need shoes.” In three long strides he was beside her. Before she could protest, he bent and scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back. She yelped, her hands flying to his shoulders for balance.
“Put me down!”
“You’re barefoot and wearing a beacon of a dress,” he said, already walking, his grip firm and impersonal. “We’re moving faster this way. Don’t squirm.”
He carried her through the forest with a thief’s practiced silence, avoiding main paths, his eyes constantly scanning. Aveline was rigid in his arms, every point of contact a brand. The hard muscle of his chest against her side. The heat of his hand on her thigh. She stared straight ahead, at the passing trees, pretending she was anywhere else.
An hour later, the trees thinned, revealing the thatched roofs and wooden fences of a village bordering the forest. Jasper set her down behind a thicket of hawthorn. “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get us what we need.” His black eyes held hers. “The intention, Princess. Remember it. You’re waiting for me to return.”
Then he was gone, melting into the shadows between a woodcutter’s shed and a tavern with a silence that was unnerving. Aveline crouched, her heart hammering. She watched.
He moved like smoke. A group of three merchants’ guards were lounging by a horse trough, laughing, their packs piled beside them. Jasper didn’t approach them. He circled wide, coming up behind a rain barrel. His hand dipped into the pack of a man who’d stepped away to relieve himself. It was out again in a blink, a small leather purse vanishing into his tunic. Then his fingers worked the buckle on a larger pack. He didn’t rummage. His touch was precise. He pulled out a bundled grey cloak, a pair of sturdy trousers, a woolen tunic, and a wrapped parcel that smelled of bread and cheese. He took a second cloak, this one dark green and heavier.
One of the guards turned, scratching his beard. Jasper froze, becoming part of the shed’s wall. The guard looked right past him, then turned back to his friends. In that moment of diverted attention, Jasper was gone, the stolen goods secured under his arm without a single rustle.
He returned to the thicket as quietly as he’d left. Aveline stared at him. His face was calm, his breathing even. It had taken less than five minutes.
“Here.” He thrust the grey cloak, the trousers, and tunic at her. “Put these on over that. The shoes will have to wait for the market.” He shook out the dark green cloak and swung it around his own shoulders, the fabric settling to obscure his distinctive, scarred hands and the weapons she knew he carried.
Aveline fumbled with the clothes. The trousers were coarse, the tunic scratchy. She felt ridiculous pulling them over her ruined silk, but the covering was a relief. The cloak smelled of woodsmoke and a stranger. Jasper watched her, his gaze analytical, ensuring the disguise worked. He stepped forward and pulled the hood of her cloak up, his fingers briefly brushing her jaw. She flinched. He ignored it, tugging the fabric to shadow her face. “Keep your head down. Your hair is a flag.”
They entered the village not as a cursed princess and her captor, but as a pair of travel-worn commoners. Jasper kept a hand at the small of her back, a proprietary touch that guided and confined. The tether was quiet. Her intention was to follow, to get shoes, to survive. Not to flee.
He paid for things with coins from the stolen purse. He bought her a pair of soft leather boots from a cobbler’s stall, kneeling in the dirt to check the fit himself before nodding. He bought a waxed canvas pack, filling it with hard cheese, dried apples, a waterskin, and a roll of bandages. He bought a cheap but serviceable knife, handing it to her handle-first. “For cutting food. Or whatever you need.” His look said he knew she’d consider other uses. She took it, her fingers curling around the hilt.
As they passed a public well, he stopped. “Drink.” He drew a bucket, the water clear and cold. Aveline cupped her hands and drank greedily. He drank after her, his lips where her hands had been, a simple intimacy that made her face heat. He refilled the waterskin.
They were passing a narrow alley between a chandler and a baker when Jasper suddenly pushed her into the dimness, his body crowding hers against the wooden wall. Her breath hitched, panic flaring. But his attention was on the village square behind them. Over his shoulder, she saw a contingent of guards in her father’s livery—the silver eagle on a field of blue—questioning the cobbler they’d just left.
His body was a wall between her and discovery. She could feel the tense readiness in him, the coiled strength. His scent—leather, forest, and something uniquely, dangerously male—filled the cramped space. His face was inches from hers, his black eyes sharp as he watched the square. Her heart pounded against her ribs, a frantic drum. His gaze flicked down to her mouth, then back to the square. The memory of his lips on her neck in the cave was suddenly vivid, a phantom heat.
The guards moved on. Jasper didn’t pull away. He looked down at her, his breath mingling with hers in the cool, shadowed air. His hand, which had been braced against the wall beside her head, came up. He didn’t touch her. He used a single finger to push her hood back just enough, his knuckle grazing her temple. He studied her face—the fear, the alertness, the lingering shame.
“You see?” he said, his voice low, for her alone. “Your world would cage you just as surely. At least with me, you’re breathing free air.”
“This isn’t freedom,” she whispered.
“It’s more than you had in that tower.” He finally stepped back, letting the sunlight flood in. He adjusted his own cloak. “Come on. We need to keep moving.”
He led her out of the village and back toward the tree line, his pace brisk. Aveline followed, the new boots unfamiliar on her feet, the knife a weight in her pack. The magical tether was silent. Her intention was to follow. For now. But as she watched the broad set of his shoulders ahead of her, the confident, criminal grace of his walk, a new, terrible understanding settled in her bones. He was right. The tower was a gilded cage. Her family’s guards were another kind of chain. Jasper was a different kind of prison altogether—one made of dark desire, stolen cloaks, and a curse that listened to the secrets of her heart. And she had no idea which was worse.
Aveline took a hesitant step back, away from the tree line and the man who led her toward it. The tether tightened immediately, a phantom fist closing around her lungs. She gasped, the air stolen, her vision spotting at the edges. Before she could stumble, Jasper’s hands were on her. He pulled her against him, one arm banding around her waist, the other coming up to rub firm, slow circles between her shoulder blades. “Breathe,” he commanded, his voice a low rumble in her ear. “Just breathe through it.”
She forced a ragged inhale. The pressure eased, leaving a deep, aching hollow in her chest. She kept her face turned away, her eyes burning. She would not cry in front of him. She sniffed, hard, swallowing the sob that threatened.
He sighed, the sound weary. His hand stilled on her back. “Do you want to go back to your family?”
The question hung in the forest air. Aveline’s gaze snapped to his. His black eyes were unreadable, waiting. Her hand flew out, fingers closing around his wrist. She didn’t squeeze. She held on. She knew what would happen. Her father’s fury would be a storm. They would take Jasper. They would execute him. A public spectacle on the castle walls. And when his heart stopped, hers would stop with it. The curse did not differentiate between murder and justice.
“I want to heal this curse,” she mumbled, her voice thick.
“You mean break it,” he corrected, his thumb absently stroking the inside of her wrist where she held him.
She rolled her eyes, a gesture of pure, exhausted frustration. “Heal it. Break it. Make it gone.”
He hummed, a considering sound. He looked from her face to her hand on his wrist, then out into the dense woods. “Okay then,” he said, as if agreeing to a business proposition. “Our new mission is to find someone who can.” He gently pried her fingers loose, but didn’t let go. Instead, he turned her hand over in his, his calloused palm rough against her softer skin. “But until then, Princess, you keep up.”
He led her off the faint path, deeper into the forest where the sunlight fractured into dim, green-gold pieces on the mossy floor. He found a secluded outcrop of flat, grey stone surrounded by ferns and pulled her down to sit. “Eat.” He dug into the waxed pack, pulled out the wrapped cheese and bread, and placed them in her lap. He uncorked the waterskin and set it beside her. Then he leaned back against a birch tree, arms crossed, and watched.
Aveline picked at the hard cheese. She broke off a piece of the dense, dark bread. The flavors were coarse, unfamiliar. She ate slowly, under the weight of his observation. He didn’t just watch; he studied. The way she held the food. The small bites she took. The delicate, almost imperceptible wrinkling of her nose at the sharpness of the cheese. She felt like a strange artifact he was trying to catalog.
“You’ve never eaten like this before,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.
“I’ve never eaten stolen food while sitting on a rock in a forest, no,” she said, not looking at him.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it.”
“What you want has changed.” His voice was flat. Final. He pushed off the tree. “Finish it. We have miles to cover before dark.”
They walked for what felt like hours. The forest floor was uneven, tangled with roots and hidden stones. Aveline’s new boots, though soft, rubbed at her heels. A blister formed. She didn’t complain. She simply walked, her silence a brittle wall. Jasper moved ahead of her, his steps sure and quiet, occasionally holding a branch back so it wouldn’t snap into her face. He didn’t speak.
When her pace began to lag, when the blister broke and she winced with a sharp intake of breath, he stopped. He turned, his gaze dropping to her feet. Without a word, he walked back to her, turned, and crouched. “Get on.”
“I can walk.”
“You’re slowing us down. Get on.”
Her pride warred with the raw, burning pain in her heel. The tether gave a faint, warning pulse. She wasn’t intending to refuse out of defiance; she was intending to refuse out of shame. The curse didn’t care. Swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth, she stepped forward and let him lift her. He hooked his arms under her knees, her chest pressed against his back. He adjusted his grip, his hands firm on her thighs, and started walking again.
This closeness was different. In his arms earlier, she had been rigid, a captive statue. Now, draped on his back, the rhythm of his walk was a steady, lulling motion. The heat of his body seeped through both their cloaks. Her cheek was near the nape of his neck, where his dark hair was cropped short. She could see a faint, pale scar there, a thin line disappearing under his tunic. She could smell him—sweat, leather, the faint evergreen scent of the forest, and underneath it all, that dangerous, masculine warmth that was uniquely Jasper. It was the smell from the alley. The smell that had surrounded her in the tower. Her body remembered it even when her mind screamed to forget.
He carried her for a long time, his breathing even, his strength seemingly inexhaustible. As a born princess of Askeria, the wealthiest land on earth, Aveline had been carried in gilded litters by teams of servants. This was not that. This was raw efficiency. This was a criminal conserving the energy of his cursed asset. The absurdity of it hit her, a wave of dizzying nausea. She, Aveline Emerald, heir to a throne, was a burden on the back of the kingdom’s most wanted thief.
And he, Jasper Nightshade, a man who had evaded the royal guard for a decade, who had broken into the impregnable royal treasury twice, now had a princess permanently tethered to his life. He had to keep her alive. He had to keep her moving. He had to teach her things if he wanted her to keep up with him. The mutual trap was absolute.
“We’ll stop at the stream ahead,” he said, his voice vibrating through his back into her. “Clean that foot. Bandage it.”
He set her down on a smooth rock by the water’s edge. The stream was clear and cold, bubbling over stones. He knelt before her, his movements methodical. “Boot.”
She hesitated, then tugged off the soft leather boot. The sock beneath was stained with a spot of blood. Jasper made a low, disapproving sound in his throat. He took her ankle in one hand, his grip impersonal, and peeled the sock off. His fingers were surprisingly gentle as they examined the raw, broken skin on her heel. His hands were a map of violence—knuckles scarred, a thin white line across his palm—but his touch was careful.
“This will hurt,” he warned, before guiding her foot into the icy water.
The cold was a shock, a sharp bite that made her gasp. Then it was numbness. He held her foot submerged, letting the water cleanse the wound. His thumb stroked over her instep, a absent-minded rhythm. She stared at the crown of his head, at the way the dappled light caught the dark strands of his hair. This intimacy of care was more confusing than the violation. It spliced her fear with something else, something treacherous and warm.
He pulled her foot out, dried it with a corner of his own tunic, and took the roll of bandages from the pack. He wrapped her heel with practiced efficiency, the linen snug but not tight. His focus was complete. This was a problem to be solved. Aveline was a problem to be solved.
“You need to tell me when something is wrong,” he said, not looking up as he secured the bandage. “Not hide it. Pain slows you down. Injury gets you caught. Caught gets us killed.”
“You sound like you’re instructing a recruit,” she whispered.
“I am.” He finally met her eyes. “You’re recruiting into my life now. The rules are different. Lesson one: your comfort is irrelevant. Your function is everything.” He released her ankle and stood. “Put the dry sock on. Not the wet one.”
She did as she was told, the coarse wool scratchy against the bandage. He refilled the waterskin in the stream, drank, and handed it to her. She drank, the water so cold it made her teeth ache. He watched her throat work as she swallowed.
“We’ll make camp soon,” he said, taking the skin back. “Before that, we walk. You need to learn to walk without destroying your feet.” He held out a hand to help her up.
She ignored it, pushing herself up on the rock. A spark of defiance. She took a step. The bandage helped, but the tenderness remained. She took another. He fell in beside her, his pace deliberately slower.
“Watch the ground,” he instructed, his voice low. “Not your feet. The ground three steps ahead. Look for the clear patches. The moss is soft. The leaves can hide holes. Step on the roots, they’re solid. Avoid the loose stone.”
She tried to follow his instructions, her gaze lifting. It was strangely meditative. Step on the root. Avoid the stone. Seek the moss. Her world narrowed to the next three steps. The constant, churning terror in her gut quieted to a background hum. For a few minutes, there was only the forest, the rhythm of her breathing, and the silent, observant presence of the man beside her.
He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “There.” He pointed to a dense thicket of hawthorn and young elm. “Good cover. Dry ground inside.” He led the way, parting the thorny branches with his cloaked arm, holding them for her. Inside was a small, hidden hollow, the earth covered in a carpet of dry, brown pine needles. It smelled of damp earth and resin.
“Gather wood,” he said, shrugging off his pack. “Dry stuff. No thicker than your wrist. Lots of kindling.”
Aveline blinked. “I don’t know how to—”
“You learn by doing.” He was already pulling the stolen knife from her pack and handing it to her, handle-first again. “Snap the branches. Use the knife if you need to cut a vine. Don’t wander out of my sight.”
She took the knife. The task felt monumental. She moved through the trees, picking up fallen sticks, snapping them against her knee. She saw a cluster of dry, brittle ferns and gathered them. Her hands grew dirty. A strand of hair escaped her hood and stuck to her damp cheek. She saw Jasper watching her from the hollow, his expression unreadable. She felt a ridiculous surge of pride when she returned with an armful of usable wood.
He took it without comment and knelt. From a small pouch on his belt, he produced a firesteel and a chunk of charred cloth. In less than a minute, a tiny flame caught in the nest of fern fluff he’d made. He fed it twigs, then larger sticks, his movements economical. The fire grew, pushing back the forest’s deepening shadows, painting his sharp features in flickering gold and black.
He sat back, warming his hands. The firelight danced in his black eyes, making them look like pools of dark water. “Sit,” he said. “Eat the rest of the cheese.”
Aveline sat on the opposite side of the small fire, the heat welcome on her face. She ate. The silence between them was no longer just oppressive; it was filled with the crackle of the fire, the distant call of an owl, the weight of everything unsaid. She was bound to this man. He had raped her. He had saved her from capture. He had bandaged her foot. He was teaching her to survive. The contradictions were a knot in her stomach, tighter and more painful than any curse.
He looked at her across the flames. “Tomorrow, we move northwest. There’s a witch who lives near the Whispering Crags. If anyone knows about curses, it’s her.”
“A witch?” Aveline’s voice was small.
“You wanted it healed.” He poked the fire with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks. “That’s the direction. It’s three days’ hard travel. Harder than today.” His eyes lifted to hers. “You’ll keep up.”
It wasn’t a reassurance. It was a command. A promise. The fire popped between them. In the dancing light, Aveline saw not just the infamous criminal, not just her violator, but the man who was now, irrevocably, the keeper of her breath, her heartbeat, her very life. And she saw the grim resolve in his face. He was stuck with her, too. Their prison had two occupants, and neither had the key.
• • •
“Gratias tibi ago pro auxilio tuo.”
Aveline's gentle voice rings as she dips her head into a polite bow of gratitude.
Jasper blinked, his steps faltering for a second on the forest path. “You speak…?”
“Latin,” Aveline said, her voice flat with exhaustion. She didn’t look at him. “I can speak Latin. That man spoke Latin. I can speak twelve different languages.”
He let out a low, surprised breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. The information settled in his mind, a practical asset in a situation that was otherwise pure liability. “Smartass?” he hummed, a faint, reluctant approval in his tone.
“Bookworm,” she corrected, and the distinction—scholarly, not insolent—made him glance at her profile. Her hood was down now, her dark hair tangled and stuck with bits of leaf. Her face was pale, smudged with dirt. She looked like a lost scholar, not a princess. It was strangely disarming.
They walked. The forest gave way to rocky foothills, then to the outskirts of tilled fields. The sun climbed, burned white-hot, and began to sink again. Jasper’s instructions were constant, terse. Drink now. Eat this. Step here. Rest for five minutes. Aveline obeyed in silence, her body moving on a numb, mechanical will. The bandage on her foot was a dull, constant ache. Her muscles trembled with a deep, unfamiliar fatigue. This wasn’t the tiredness from a long court function. This was her body being used up, consumed by the effort of simply existing outside of stone walls.
By the time they saw the clustered stone roofs of the village nestled in the valley, the sky was bruising purple. Aveline’s vision swam. Every breath was a labor. Jasper’s hand closed around her upper arm, not roughly, but with a firmness that kept her upright. “Not yet,” he muttered. “You can fall down when we have a roof.”
He guided her to the village well, where an old man was drawing water. Jasper stayed back, a shadow in his dark cloak, letting Aveline approach. She smoothed her hair, tried to summon a regal bearing from the ruins of her posture. Her voice, when she spoke, was hoarse but clear. She asked for an inn in the common trade tongue, then, when the man squinted in confusion, repeated the question in the rough local dialect Jasper had heard farmers using in the fields.
The old man’s face cleared. He pointed a gnarled finger down the muddy main track. “The Gilded Finch. Aedificium ultimum. Ianua rubra.”
“Gratias tibi,” Aveline whispered, the Latin thanks automatic, polite.
The man just nodded, eyeing Jasper warily before turning back to his bucket.
The Gilded Finch was a two-story structure of weathered timber and daub, the promised red door faded to a rusty brown. Jasper pushed it open, the warmth of a hearth and the smell of stew and unwashed bodies washing over them. The common room fell silent for a beat, all eyes on the strangers. Aveline felt the weight of the stares, the calculation. A tired, dirty woman and a large, armed man with a dangerous stillness. Jasper’s hand went to the small of her back, a possessive gesture that was also a warning. His touch burned through the wool of her cloak.
He dealt with the innkeeper, a broad woman with shrewd eyes, using clipped phrases and silver coins that appeared and disappeared from his hand like a trick. He asked for a private room, food, and hot water. The woman looked them over once more, then nodded, taking the coins. “Top of the stairs, end of the hall. I’ll send up a basin.”
The room was small, dominated by a wide bed with a straw-stuffed mattress and a single wool blanket. A rough wooden table held a chipped clay pitcher. One narrow window looked out over the darkening village. It was the most beautiful thing Aveline had ever seen.
She stood just inside the door, swaying. Jasper dropped his pack and her satchel with a thud, then bolted the door. The sound of the iron bar sliding home was final. They were locked in. Together.
“Sit,” he said, his voice gravelly with his own weariness. “Before you fall.”
She didn’t need telling. She stumbled to the bed and sat on the edge, her body groaning in relief. She pulled off her boots with clumsy fingers, hissing as the leather brushed her bandaged foot. A knock at the door made her flinch. Jasper opened it a crack, took a large wooden basin of steaming water and a tray with a loaf of dark bread, a wedge of cheese, and two bowls of stew from a serving boy, then shut it again.
He set the basin on the floor and the tray on the table. “Eat. Wash. I don’t care the order.” He went to the window, checking the latch, peering out into the gathering night. His shoulders were tense, the line of his back rigid. He was still on guard. He would always be on guard.
Aveline ate first. The stew was greasy, thick with root vegetables and scraps of mutton. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. She ate until the bowl was clean, tearing the bread with her hands, not caring for manners. The hot food was a solid warmth in her hollow stomach. When she was done, she knelt by the basin. The water was still warm. She untied the bandage on her foot, unwinding the linen. The cut was an angry red line, but it was closed, clean. She washed her foot carefully, the heat seeping into her bones. She washed her hands and face, the grime of the forest coming away in the water, turning it gray.
She felt his eyes on her. She looked up. Jasper was leaning against the wall by the window, watching her. He had shed his cloak and the leather vest beneath. He wore just a thin, sweat-darkened linen shirt, unlaced at the throat, and his trousers. The firelight from the common room below seeped up through the floorboards, painting the room in a dim, amber glow. It caught the sharp angle of his jaw, the dark fall of his hair, the intense black of his eyes. He was incredibly handsome. The knowledge was a cold stone in her gut. It didn’t make him less of a monster. It made the monster harder to look away from.
“Your turn,” she said softly, nodding to the basin.
He pushed off the wall. He didn’t go to the basin. He came to her. He knelt in front of her, his knees brushing hers on the floor. The proximity was a shock. She could smell him—sweat, leather, the cold night air, and beneath it, something uniquely male, uniquely Jasper. Her breath caught.
He took her bare foot in his hand. His touch was callused, warm. He examined the cut, his thumb brushing the skin beside it. A shiver went up her leg, unbidden. “It’s healing,” he said, his voice low. “You’re tougher than you look.”
“I have to be,” she whispered.
His eyes lifted to hers. In the half-light, the black wasn’t empty. It was full of something restless, hungry, guilty. The fairy’s hex was gone. This was him now. This look. This attention. He released her foot, but he didn’t move back. His hands came to rest on his own knees. He was so close she could see the pulse in his throat, the faint scar through his eyebrow.
“The witch is two more days,” he said, as if reminding himself. “We stay here tomorrow. Rest. Your foot needs it.”
A day. A full day without walking. The thought was a profound relief. It also meant a full day and night in this room. With him.
He finally stood, turning away to the basin. He pulled his shirt off over his head in one motion, his back to her. Aveline’s gaze was drawn to the play of muscle under skin, the shift of his shoulder blades, the pale scars that mapped a violent history across his torso. He splashed water on his face and chest, the droplets catching the light as they slid down the hard planes of his stomach, into the waistband of his trousers. He was all brutal, efficient grace. A predator washing off the hunt.
He dried himself with a corner of his cloak, then turned. His chest was still damp. He looked at her, sitting on the bed, her hair damp at the temples, her eyes wide in the dim room. The air between them thickened, charged with everything that had happened and everything that hadn’t. The curse was a live wire connecting them. Her dependence was a physical pull in her chest, a need to be near him that went beyond magic and into something darker, more primal.
He blew out the single tallow candle on the table. The room plunged into near-darkness, lit only by the faint glow from below. The bed creaked as he sat on the far edge, his back to her as he pulled off his boots. The sound of his breathing was loud in the quiet.
Then he lay down, on top of the blanket, putting his body between her and the door. He didn’t speak.
Aveline sat frozen for a long minute. Then, slowly, she lay down on her side, as far to the other edge as she could get. The straw mattress crackled. The wool blanket was scratchy. She could feel the heat of his body radiating across the space between them. She stared at the dark shape of his back, the rise and fall of his breathing. Her own body was a knot of exhaustion and wired tension. Every sense was hyper-alert to him. The scent of him on the pillow. The sound of his breath. The memory of his hands on her skin, both in violence and in care.
Sleep was a distant country. Her mind raced—languages, curses, witches, the cold iron of the tower door, the heat of the hex that wasn’t his fault but was now her reality. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. The movement made her hip brush against his. Even through the layers of their clothes, the contact was electric.
Jasper went utterly still.
She held her breath, waiting for him to pull away. He didn’t. The point of contact burned. The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring.
“I can feel you thinking,” he said into the darkness, his voice a rough scrape. “Stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
She closed her eyes. It didn’t help. All she could see was him. All she could feel was the curse, a tether that seemed to shorten with every heartbeat, pulling her toward the warmth of him. Her body, traitorously, remembered the heat of his skin under her hands when he’d carried her. The solid strength of him. The way his eyes had watched her throat as she drank.
She was cold. The room was chilly, and the single blanket was thin. A tremor ran through her, starting deep in her bones. She tried to stifle it, clenching her jaw.
Another shift on the mattress. Jasper turned onto his back. She could feel his gaze on the ceiling. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
A beat of silence. Then, with a sigh that sounded like surrender to some internal war, he moved. His arm came over her, his hand finding her waist. He pulled her back against him, her spine to his chest, in one decisive motion.
Aveline gasped, stiffening. “Don’t—”
“Be quiet,” he murmured into her hair, his breath hot on her neck. “It’s for warmth. Nothing else.”
But it was everything else. His body was a furnace along the length of hers. Hard, unyielding heat. His arm was heavy across her middle, his hand splayed possessively over her stomach. She was pinned against him, enveloped. The shock of it melted into a deeper, more dangerous sensation. Her body, exhausted and confused, recognized the shelter of his strength. The trembling stopped. A different kind of heat began to pool low in her belly.
She felt him tense behind her. He felt it too. The change in her breathing. The slight, involuntary arch of her back.
“Aveline.” Her name was a warning from his lips.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. The curse wasn’t just a tether. It was an amplifier. Every point of contact sang with awareness. The hard line of his thighs against the backs of hers. The press of his chest against her shoulder blades. The evidence of his own arousal, firm and undeniable against the curve of her backside.
His hand on her stomach flexed. His fingers dug into the soft wool of her tunic. “This is a bad idea,” he growled, but he was pulling her tighter against him, his hips canting forward in a slow, deliberate grind.
A moan caught in her throat. It was shameful. It was inevitable. Her body was awakening, responding to the very thing that had shattered it. Her hand came up, her fingers tangling with his where they rested on her stomach. Not to push him away. To hold him there.
That was the permission he needed. Or the defeat. His other hand came up, his fingers threading into her hair, turning her head so his mouth could find the sensitive skin beneath her ear. His lips were hot. His teeth scraped. “Tell me to stop,” he breathed against her, the words vibrating through her skull.
She couldn’t. The word wouldn’t form. All that came out was a broken, “Jasper.”
He swore, a low, vicious curse. Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t like before. There was no hex-fueled frenzy, no unconscious violation. This was conscious. Deliberate. His lips were demanding, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a claiming hunger that made her head spin. She kissed him back. A sob of confusion and raw need broke from her chest into his mouth. Her hands came up, clutching at his shoulders, his arms, the hard, scarred landscape of his back. He rolled her onto her back, his weight settling over her, caging her in. The blanket was between them, a maddening barrier.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. His black eyes searched her face in the near-darkness. “This changes nothing,” he said, the words gritted out. “I’m still the man who took you. You’re still the princess I’m bound to. This is just… heat. Do you understand?”
She understood. It was a lie they both needed to believe. She nodded, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw. “Just heat.”
He made a sound like a wounded animal and kissed her again, harder. His hands went to the hem of her tunic, pushing it up. The cool air hit her stomach, then the scorching heat of his palms followed. He touched her like he was memorizing her, his hands rough and sure on her ribs, the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts still confined in her thin linen shift. He palmed one breast through the fabric, his thumb circling her nipple until it peaked into a hard, aching point. She arched into his touch, a whimper escaping her.
He pulled back, sitting up on his knees between her legs. In the gloom, she saw him look at her—her tunic rucked up to her armpits, her shift transparent where it was damp with sweat, her hair fanned out on the straw pillow, her lips swollen from his kisses. His gaze was pure, unadulterated hunger. His own desire was a stark ridge straining against the front of his trousers.
“Take it off,” he commanded, his voice thick.
Her hands trembled as she obeyed, pulling the tunic over her head, then lifting her arms so he could draw the shift off as well. The cold air pebbled her skin. Then his warmth was back, his mouth descending to her breast, his tongue laving her nipple before drawing it deep into the heat of his mouth. The sensation was so sharp, so exquisite, it bordered on pain. She cried out, her hands fisting in his hair, holding him to her.
He worshipped her breasts with his mouth and hands, leaving one nipple wet and peaked to attend to the other, until she was writhing beneath him, her hips lifting off the mattress, seeking friction. He let her grind against the hard muscle of his thigh, a low groan rumbling in his chest at the feel of her damp heat through the layers of fabric.
“Please,” she heard herself beg, the word torn from a place of pure, desperate need. She didn’t know what she was asking for. Everything. Nothing.
He kissed a burning trail down her stomach, his tongue dipping into her navel. His hands hooked in the waistband of her trousers and smallclothes, dragging them down her legs in one motion. The cold air hit her bare skin, followed immediately by the heat of his gaze. He knelt between her spread thighs, looking at her. Really looking. In the faint light, she saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
“So fucking beautiful,” he whispered, and it didn’t sound like flattery. It sounded like a curse.
Then he bent his head.
His mouth on her was a revelation. Hot, wet, devastatingly precise. His tongue found her core, licking a slow, torturous stripe through her folds. Aveline jolted, a shocked gasp ripping from her throat. Her hands flew back to his hair, not to push him away, but to anchor herself as the world dissolved into sensation. He licked her like she was something to be savored, his tongue circling her clit, then plunging deep inside her, tasting her. The sounds were obscene—wet, sucking noises, her own ragged moans, his low grunts of approval.
“Ah~ Ah~” The moans tore from her, high and broken, a sound so pure it felt profane in the damp, dark air. Her voice was an angel’s, singing a hymn of ruin. Her fingers clenched in his hair, pulling, holding him to her as his tongue worked her with a devotion that felt like damnation.
She was drowning in it. The wet, slick heat of his mouth, the rough scrape of his stubble against her inner thighs, the obscene, sucking sounds that filled the small space. Her hips lifted off the mattress, seeking more, driving herself against his face. He let her. He encouraged it, his hands sliding under her to grip her backside, tilting her up to give him better access. He drank from her as if she were ambrosia, his tongue lapping at her essence, swallowing every drop of her arousal. It was everywhere. She could feel it soaking the blanket beneath her, could smell her own musk mingling with the scent of straw and his leather and sweat. He could wash in it.
“Jasper—please—” The plea was a ragged sob. Her body was a bowstring pulled taut, every muscle trembling. The cursed bond was a live wire, amplifying every flick of his tongue, every soft groan he made against her flesh. It wasn’t just physical. It was his satisfaction she felt, a dark, possessive pleasure radiating from him as he tasted her desperation. He was savoring her fall.
His mouth focused on her clit, sucking the sensitive bud gently, then harder, his tongue circling in a rhythm that had her seeing stars. The orgasm built, a terrifying wave gathering deep in her belly. She was panting, begging, a litany of “please” and “don’t stop” and his name, always his name. She needed something inside. The emptiness was an ache, a hollow craving only he could fill.
He felt it. He always felt it. As she teetered on the edge, he pulled back, leaving her clit throbbing and exposed to the cool air. A wounded cry escaped her. His face was glistening with her, his black eyes reflecting the faint light as he looked up her body. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze locked on hers. “You want it?” His voice was gravel, raw with his own need.
She could only nod, frantic, her chest heaving.
He moved up her body, his weight settling over her again. He kissed her, deep and filthy, letting her taste herself on his tongue. It was shocking. Intimate. A claiming that went deeper than skin. Her hands scrambled at the laces of his trousers, her fingers clumsy. He batted them away, undoing them himself with swift, efficient tugs. He shoved the fabric down his hips just enough to free himself.
His cock sprang heavy and hot against her stomach. She felt the thick length of it, the velvety skin stretched taut, the bead of moisture at the tip. He was huge. The memory of their first time—a blur of pain and violation—flashed behind her eyes. A flinch she couldn’t suppress traveled through her.
He went still above her. His breathing was harsh. He searched her face, his expression unreadable in the shadows. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice softer now.
She forced her eyes to his. The hard planes of his face were set, but his eyes… they held a tension that wasn’t hunger alone.
“It won’t hurt,” he said, the words a low vow. “Not like that. Never like that again.”
He reached between them, his hand wrapping around his own length, guiding himself to her entrance. The broad head pressed against her, a blunt, insistent pressure. She was so wet, he slid through her folds easily, coating himself in her arousal. He didn’t push. He rocked his hips, letting her feel the shape of him, the promise of the stretch, until her body softened, welcoming, her inner muscles fluttering around nothing.
“Please,” she whispered again, the word a surrender.
He pushed inside. Slowly. An inexorable, breathtaking inch. The stretch was immense, a fullness that stole the air from her lungs. But there was no tearing, no searing pain. Just a deep, aching pressure that bloomed into a shocking, right feeling. Her body opened for him, sheathing him in slick, clinging heat. He groaned, a sound torn from the depths of him, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, trembling with the effort of his control.
“Gods, Aveline,” he choked out against her skin. “You feel…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. She could feel it. The perfect, tight fit. The way her body gripped him. The blinding pleasure that was for him, and through the curse, for her. It was a feedback loop of sensation, his awe feeding hers.
He began to move. Slow. A deep, rolling withdrawal followed by an even slower, penetrating thrust. Each stroke was deliberate, a study in sensation. She felt every ridge, every vein of him as he slid through her. The friction was exquisite, building a heat low in her belly that had her arching to meet him. Her legs came up, wrapping around his hips, pulling him deeper. A broken sound escaped him at that, and his rhythm faltered for a beat.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his hips snapping forward a little harder, a little faster, before he caught himself, forcing the pace back to that devastating slowness. “You’re going to undo me.”
She was unraveling. The slow, deep fucking was unraveling her. With each thrust, he brushed a spot inside her that made her see white. Pleasure coiled, tighter and tighter. Her moans were continuous now, a melody of “yes” and “more” and “Jasper.” His name became a prayer on her lips. He watched her face as he moved, his black eyes consuming every flicker of pleasure, every gasp.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his voice thick with a possessiveness that should have terrified her. It ignited her instead. “Sing for me, princess. Let me hear it.”
He shifted his angle, driving into her with a precision that made her cry out. One of his hands slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, circling in time with his thrusts. The dual assault was too much. The coil snapped.
Her orgasm ripped through her, silent for a heartbeat before the scream tore free. Her body clamped around him, milking his length in rhythmic, pulsing waves. She shook, her vision blurring, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his back. Through the haze, she felt his control shatter.
His thrusts lost their measured pace, turning frantic, deep, and hard. He was chasing his own end, his face buried in her neck, his breaths hot and ragged against her skin. “Aveline,” he growled, a raw, desperate sound. He drove into her one last, brutal time and held, his body rigid above her. A hot flood filled her, pulse after pulse, as he groaned his release into the curve of her shoulder.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the pound of blood in her ears. He was heavy on top of her, his weight a solid, warm anchor. The scent of sex and sweat was overwhelming. Slowly, the world seeped back in. The rough blanket under her back. The chill of the air on her sweat-slicked skin. The steady, slowing beat of his heart against her chest.
He shifted, pulling out of her gently. The loss was acute, a sudden emptiness that felt like a wound. He collapsed onto his back beside her, one arm thrown over his eyes. The silence between them was louder than their moans had been.
Aveline lay still, staring at the dark beams of the ceiling. Her body hummed with satisfaction, a deep, boneless languor that felt like a betrayal. Her mind was a storm of shame and confusion. She had just come apart in the arms of the man who had destroyed her. She had begged for it. She had sung for him.
“Just heat,” Jasper said into the darkness, his voice flat, drained. He was repeating the lie, building the wall back between them brick by brick.
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. His profile was sharp against the gloom, his jaw tight. The fairy’s hex was gone, but something else had taken root. Something more dangerous. She could feel it through the curse—a tangled knot of guilt, possession, and a hunger that had nothing to do with magic.
“Just heat,” she echoed softly, the words ash in her mouth.
He turned his head then, his black eyes finding hers in the dark. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her, and in that look, she saw the horizon of her new world: bound to him, craving him, hating him, needing him. The princess and the criminal. The saved and the violator. The line between them was gone, washed away in sweat and pleasure and curse.
He reached out, his calloused fingers brushing a damp strand of hair from her cheek. The gesture was startling in its tenderness. Then his hand fell away, and he turned onto his side, his back to her. The distance was immediate, a chasm inches wide.
Aveline closed her eyes. The tower was gone, but the prison remained. Its bars were his arms, its lock was the curse, and its warden was the treacherous, awakened thing beating in her own chest.