Damon’s POV
Her bath-warmed skin slid against my palms as I pulled her into my lap, the scent of her damp hair mingling with the wine on the table. She laughed soft, low, as though she thought this was only play. As though I hadn’t been half feral since the moment she walked back in the room with nothing but silk clinging to her body.
I bent to her neck, teeth grazing the place where her pulse hammered. “Training went well?” I asked against her skin, though the question was little more than smoke.
“It went,” she said, and I felt the tension she tried to mask. But when my tongue swept along her throat, she shivered, her hand clutching at my shoulder. “Damon-”
The sound of my name like that - pleading, breaking - split something loose in me.
“You’ve been carrying the weight of the world
