Page 197 of Ashen Torment

I grip the cloth harder, my gaze fixed elsewhere, but my heart betrays the hot blood coursing through my veins.

“You are quite egocentric, Viscount. Don’t you find?”

“No,” he replies. “You said it yourself earlier... that you touched yourself thinking of me.”

I feel my cheeks burn, the cloth twisting between my fingers as I struggle to control myself.

Damn it, why did I reveal that?

My thumb brushes his hip bone. It shouldn’t, it serves no purpose.

He closes his eyes for an instant, just barely. He opens them again, and something has cracked, subtle, almost imperceptible, but it pierces through my gut. I swallow, feeling the saliva go down my throat. I move the cloth and dry him slowly.

“You are all control, Lord Dorian,” he hums, his voice thick with defiance. “But it’s written in your eyes. You are just a man incapable of managing his own desire.”

I feel my cock pulse, and I ignore it with effort.

“Tell me,” I say, my voice steady, controlled, “why do you persist in provoking me so, if I disgust you so much?”

“I imagine we have something in common.”

“Which would be?”

“Perhaps,” he breathes, “we both like to see others fall.”

“A sadist, then.”

“You are,” he counters, without fear.

“I like to see them fall of their own accord.”

My hand slides over Evander’s side. A mole catches my eye. I barely brush it, but it’s enough to make him stiffen, to make his body tremble beneath me. His breath breaks in his throat.

“You seem accustomed to doing these things.”

I slide off his undergarments as well, short drawers of fine linen, leaving his legs bared. I move slowly down the inner thigh.

Another mole—hidden, secret, forbidden—reveals itself to the touch.

“Do not make me feel even filthier.”

“You are not filthy, Viscount.”

What I desire is his surrender without shame.

I can no longer pretend.

I don’t want to pretend.

I want him completely.

Body, mind, soul.

Every goddamn inch.

He lifts his hips. “Do you like what you see?”

You little shit.