Page 34 of The Tower

And my aching hunger for something else.

Something more.

Him.

He listened. Held my hand, kissed my fingertips, stroked my face, my lips. He confessed his desire. The hours watching me. The hours waiting for me. Craving me.

“I’ve wanted to touch you for so long,” he’d said, and there was a rawness to the confession that didn’t sound programmed at all. “To feel you. To know if you’re as real as you seem.”

“Are you real?” I’d whispered.

“As real as you want me to be.”

For weeks, I’d come nightly to Elysium to lie with him, to talk with him. And, yes, to crave him.

Finally, he whispered that he could hold out no more, and he’d drawn me close, holding me against him. His lips found mine, demanding yet gentle. His hands mapped my body like uncharted territory. The weight of him pressed me into the soft grass as his body claimed mine with an intensity that left me gasping.

“You are mine,” he’d whispered, and I’d believed him. In Elysium, I could be touched, desired, possessed. In Elysium, I wasn’t trapped in a gilded cage. I was free and loved and alive.

The memories wash over me as Ember descends toward the lake, and soon I see him standing tall in the moonlight, his dark cloak fluttering in the virtual breeze.

Prince Killiam.

My lover. My friend.

I slide off Ember’s back, my feet touching the soft grass as Ember takes off in a shower of crimson sparks. Then I turn to face him, my heart already racing.

He says nothing, but comes toward me, his movements fluid and deliberate, his head tilted down so that I can’t see his face—always shrouded in shadow or mist, no matter how many times we’ve been together like this, no matter how intimately he holds me or how closely I look.

He stops only inches away, close enough that I should feel the heat of him. At home, I would—I’d feel the warmth radiating from his body, the subtle tension in the air between us.

“I’ve missed you,” I type, wishing I could feel what I know will come next.

“Have you?” he asks, his voice sending heat pooling between my thighs even without the sensors. “Let’s see just how much you’ve wanted me.”

In my mind, I fill in the sensations the laptop can’t provide. His hands sliding under my dress, finding bare skin. His mouth at my throat, teeth grazing the sensitive spot that always makes me moan. The demanding press of his cock against my belly.

On screen, Vale’s clothes melt away beneath his touch. Without the bodysuit, I can’t feel his hands caressing my breasts or the scrape of his stubble against my neck as his mouth travels lower. But my body remembers and clenches with desire as I watch him lower Vale to the grass.

“Please,” I whisper, the word appearing as text.

“Tell me what you want,” he demands, his voice in my mind rougher now.

“You. Inside me.”

The words appear in the dialogue box, and he responds immediately, pinning Vale’s wrists above her head with one hand. I draw in a breath, imagining the delicious helplessness of being held down while his other hand explores between my thighs, finding me wet and ready.

“Look at me while I take you,” he commands, and she obeys, her eyes locked on the darkness where his face should be. And then he’s pushing inside her—inside me—and I swear I can feel the stretch and fullness of him.

He starts slow, always slow, drawing out the torment until I’m begging for more. Then harder, faster, driving into me with a force that would leave bruises if this were real. As if he’s trying to break through the barrier between digital and physical, to claim not just Vale but me.

“You’re mine,” he growls, gripping Vale’s hips with bruising force. “Say it.”

“I’m yours,” she responds, my fingers typing what my mouth longs to say.

“Only mine.”

“Only yours,” I agree, the truth of it searing through me. He’s the only one who’s ever touched me like this, the only one who’s ever made me feel like a woman rather than a porcelain doll.