What? My lips formed the word, but he had stolen the breath from my lungs. His gaze grew sharper, and I felt him, somehow, felt him through the shiver of my body, hot and cold. My hand rose. I tried to stop it, to tell it no, but I wanted this. I wanted it so badly that my bones ached.
My breath came more quickly with a fluttering deep inside that had nothing at all to do with nervousness. I could almost feel his hands on me again, could feel my body tuning to his. My body prickled with heady anticipation, not the fear of harm but the expectation of pleasure.
I reached for the candle that sat between us. A soft sound escaped my lips, and even I didn't know what it meant. I extended one finger, thrusting it into the flame. The fire danced around my fingertip, sending the most exquisite pain up through my arm until I gasped with it, welcoming it, meeting with a wrenching sensation deep in my core that was a very different kind of heat.
In an instant, it was gone. I blinked, panting. The flame was extinguished-his hand, cool and strong, was over my hand, my finger immersed in his water glass. Through the dripping sides of the water goblet, I could see the border of angry red flesh with a white blister in the center.
I watched, stunned, as he lifted my hand from the glass to his mouth. Keeping my gaze with his icy blue eyes, he bent his head until his lips met my blistered finger, sucking the drops of water from it.
My voice was not mine-it moaned, softly. A shudder went through my body, pure pleasure as my heated senses screamed at the touch. I pushed back against my chair without meaning to, my feet bracing against the ground.
He dropped my hand, and I was left reeling, gasping, my finger throbbing to the hammering of my heart.
"What are you doing to me?" The words were half-question, half-plea.
"Nothing but what is in my nature." His expression was full of regret-and hunger.
"I can't-" I stopped. "You can't-"
I stared at my finger. The blister was every bit as real as the flame had been.
"It's not possible. I wouldn't do that," I said, even as I remembered the ecstasy of pain. "I never would."
"But you did," he said.
I did. I did. I remembered it, I felt it, I had wanted it.... The pain and the pleasure all tangling into a mass of sensation so intense that it was like drinking pure life. If he told me to do it again, I would.