Elemental Desire by Denise Tompkins

full. Every way he moved made the anal beads shift and roll, brushing and rubbing his prostate. He rocked his hips. The heavy weight of his building erection pulled toward the floor and he involuntarily groaned. Tightening his butt cheeks made things worse. Or better. It just depended on how one looked at it, he supposed. Either way, sensations intensified. He fought the urge to beg her to touch him, to let him take her. Something. Anything.
    As if she’d read his mind, she gripped his balls and gently pulled down.
    Tender strokes along his rigid length countered firmer tugs on his scrotum.
    His eyes rolled back in his head. Gods, this felt so damn good.
    He moved to reach for her, needed to touch her. Now. His arms wouldn’t move.
    Seth jolted hard enough to rattle the restraints.
His
restraints.
Restraints.
Panic began to build deep in his chest, chilling and spreading, his blood turning to slush, his heart crystalizing. He had no control, couldn’t stop what was happening to him. Biting his cheek hard enough to draw blood, he tried to count out his breathing. It didn’t help. Anahita’s voice rose from the graveyard of old memories to shriek at him for killing her. He shouted a denial, losing himself in the feel of cuffs around his wrists once again. No matter that these were fur-lined, versus iron hammered in Osiris’s forge. Without his element, he was as weak as a human. He still struggled. The cuffs still held.
    Soft words that didn’t belong with the memory reached him. Promises of pleasure, rewards for giving her what she wanted, more tender touching—they all accompanied the sultry timbre of that voice.
The witch
.
    “Please.” The choked cry ripped open every old wound. He experienced one rolling emotion after another, every evil ever held in Pandora’s box bleeding through damage that had never properly heeled. He purged old regrets, older hatreds and, oldest of all, anger. On and on it went, his cries answered every time with a touch. Soft, persistent forgiveness he could no more deny than he could go back and change the road that led him here.
    “Come back to me, Seth.”
    He heard her but couldn’t articulate anything more than a grunt, couldn’t drag himself up from the lake of darkness he thought might drown him.
    Metal clinked and his feet were free.
    Soft buzzing began to fill his head.
    Sounding farther away, more clinks. His wrists were free.
    “I want you, Seth. Need you to lose yourself in me.” Gentle fingers untied his blindfold. “Come to me, Seth Setekhis. Love me. Take what’s never been mine to keep.”
    He spun on her, confused. Then his eyes focused, found her—the hope that truly remained. “Eden.”
    * * *
    She froze. He’d called her by name. Not witch. Not Red.
Eden
. Stepping close to him, she traced her fingertips over the marks left by the blindfold. “Seth.”
    Carnal hunger that had simmered on a slow burn now flashed out of control. She leapt at him.
    He met her halfway.
    Mouths tangled together. His tongue thrust against hers, both giving and taking. She nipped his bottom lip and swallowed the resulting growl. Her sex ached, the throb of anticipation driving her higher. Hiking a leg around his thigh, she reveled in his strength as he picked her up and drove her, back first, into the nearest wall. His cock ground against her clit. There was nothing tender in the moment. White-hot need fueled shared desires that raged out of control.
    Power surged through her. A faint wind whispered against her skin.
Notnownotnownotnow.
Bearing down, she wrangled control of the swirling elements. Merriam-Webster would undoubtedly choke at her definition of control, but it was the best she could do.
    Seth thrust against her.
    She arched into him, seeking consummation. “Take me, Seth.”
    Pinning her to the wall with his chest, he reached between them and angled the head of his cock.
    “Do it,” she screamed as her tenuous grip over her power slipped.
    He gripped her hips and