The Wolf's Captive by Chloe Cox Page A

long, was enough to startle her into sputtering little spasms, her legs shaking, her stomach contracting. Not enough to sate her; no, Lucia needed more, was suddenly desperate for simply more. She bucked back against his hand and looked over her shoulder helplessly.
    He put his giant hand flat on her back.
    “Stop,” he said. She groaned. He moved his finger around inside her, in and out, around and around, and she dropped her head, panting. Even his finger felt large.
    “Have you ever known a man?”
    She closed her eyes. Why was this so difficult to admit? Because she prided herself on her competence, on her confidence? Because she was far too old to be a virgin in a city like J’Amel, to have never fully celebrated the Bacchanal? She didn’t want to explain all the years she had spent helping her father in the distillery, she didn’t want to try to explain that she was not really a pariah, not really frigid, just wary of the demands that men made after sex. She didn’t want to explain her grandmother’s warnings. She’d never told anyone about that.
    She didn’t want to have to explain her life. She didn’t want to have to think about it. If she did, the fear might return. This isolated room, deep below the heart of J’Amel, with this man who was larger than life—this was what she wanted, right now.
    “Please,” she said. Her voice was deep and hoarse. She closed her muscles around his finger, and willed him farther in. Instead, he pulled it partially out.
    “Tell me,” he ordered.
    She started to stand upright, pushing herself up from the table—with what wild, angry intent, she didn’t know—but his hand on her back slammed her back down onto the table, her breasts pressed against the cold metal plate, her chin inches from the bottle of amberwine.
    “I did not say you could get up,” he said. His tone was hard. “ Tell me , Lucia. This is our agreement.”
    She wriggled under him, furious and frustrated. His finger still burned in her, still made conscious, rational thought difficult. She clung to the feeling that it was important to keep the private things about her private, but he didn’t just ask for her physical vulnerability; he wanted all of her to be vulnerable. He wanted everything.
    Complete submission.
    Even as the thought repelled her, it attracted her, too. For the first time she considered what it might be like for someone to know those secret parts of her—her ambition, her pride, her intelligence, her strangeness—and love her for them.
    “Lucia,” Lord Cesare growled. And then he began to move his finger, and rational thought became impossible.
    He fucked her with his finger in short, rapid strokes, moving in ever widening circles, stretching her out. He grabbed her hip, and braced his leg against hers.
    “You will tell me.”
    Her mind dissolved into swirls of sensation, following the swirls of his finger. She bit her lip, sure that she drew blood, and felt the tension begin to build, felt everything in her being tighten around the pulsing point where he penetrated her.
    She resisted until he began to twist a knuckle inside her, and then stopped.
    “Yes!” she screamed, banging a fist on the ruined table. “I am a virgin! Please…”
    He was stretching her out in preparation. She could hardly wait so long. It burned, it stung, when he stretched her, and she wanted it even more. She wanted to feel completely full of him.
    “Why?” he asked, and slipped another finger in. She would need to answer his questions if she wanted to be rewarded. It was torture.
    “I didn’t want anyone…that I…could have…”
    “Keep going.”
    “I wanted…Severille…”
    Lucia couldn’t believe she’d admitted that, that she’d said it out loud, but then she felt his erection hard and huge against her own leg, even through his trousers, and knew she would admit much more for the chance to feel it inside her. She would debase herself, if he asked, she would throw herself at his