Chapter 4: The Claiming Part One

**Dominic**

I had touched women before.

Plenty of them. In rooms like this and rooms nothing like this, in arrangements far less complicated than the one currently standing in front of me in white lace, trying very hard to look like she wasn't terrified.

This should have been simple.

"Undress slowly," I said.

My voice came out the same way it always did. Low. Even. No room in it for anything she could push back against.

I didn't move. I watched. This was how I operated, at a distance, with full visibility, in complete control of whatever room I stood in. That had never once been a problem.

She reached for the buttons on her blouse.

Her fingers shook.

Good. She was listening.

One button at a time, slow like I'd asked. The fabric parted. Smooth skin, the edge of lace. I kept my face still and my body exactly where it was and let the silence do the work. Heat built low in my gut. I noted it the way I noted everything, catalogued it, set it aside.

She pushed the blouse off her shoulders. It hit the floor.

The skirt followed. She slid it down her hips and stepped out of it carefully, and my eyes traced every line of her without hurry. There was no reason to hurry. She was mine for the night. That had already been decided.

"Keep going," I said.

Her hands went to her bra. She unhooked it. The straps slipped down.

I stepped closer.

The air between us changed.

I reached out. My fingers brushed her collarbone.

And everything stopped.

---

I don't know how else to describe it.

One second I was in control of the room, of myself, of every variable that mattered. The next, something I had no name for crashed through me like a current finding a live wire. Heat surged through my chest. My heart slammed once, hard, against my ribs. Every nerve ending I had woke up simultaneously, which was not a thing that happened to me, which was not a thing I had ever allowed.

My hand stayed where it was. My face stayed still.

But inside, I was scrambling.

*What the hell.*

I locked it down fast. Hidden. Filed away behind the same wall I'd built young and reinforced every year since. No one saw me break. That was not a rule I'd ever come close to violating.

I continued.

My hand moved lower. Cupped her breast. The weight of it in my palm sent another wave through me, warm and soft and wrong in the sense that I didn't understand why my skin was reacting like this. Her nipple hardened under my thumb as I brushed it. She gasped. The sound went somewhere it wasn't supposed to.

I pulled her in.

Her bare skin pressed against my shirt, and the heat of it soaked straight through the fabric. She arched into me. My control strained in a way it had absolutely no business straining. That same alive feeling kept flooding back, worse with every point of contact, better in a way that made it dangerous.

I turned her around.

Her back against my front. One arm banded around her middle, holding her exactly where I put her. My free hand found her breast again, rolled the nipple slowly between my fingers, and she leaned into me with her breathing already fast and shallow.

My hand slid lower. Down her stomach. Further.

She was soaked.

The slick heat on my fingers hit me like a second current. I circled her slowly. Her hips jerked. A low sound left her throat, involuntary, and my whole body responded to it in ways I was actively refusing to acknowledge.

I increased the pressure.

She trembled against me. Her head fell back. Her breathing came in pieces. I could feel her getting close, feel it in the way her body started to tighten and her weight shifted into my arm, relying on me to hold her up.

I stopped.

Stepped back. Let her go.

---

She turned fast.

Her eyes were wide and dazed, still somewhere between here and where I'd just had her. Lips parted. She looked at me like she was waiting for something. Like she thought I'd made a mistake.

I hadn't.

I kept my face exactly where it needed to be. Blank. Certain. The storm underneath it was mine and no one was ever going to see it, least of all her.

"This is only part one," I said.

My voice was steady.

"You'll learn exactly who owns you tonight."

She stared at me, naked and still trembling, and the hunger in her eyes was plain and unmistakable.

What she couldn't see was that on the inside, I still felt it. The aftershocks. The current. The thing that had hit me the second my skin found hers and had not fully let go since.

I had touched women before.

But not like this. Never once like this.

I didn't know what that meant yet.

I intended to find out.