I bound him myself. Ropes carving red welts into his wrists under the torch's hungry flicker, his body thrashing like a storm-tossed sea against the canvas walls. Defiance poured from him, sarcasm sharp as a dagger's edge, every snarled curse a vow of unbreaking loyalty to his fallen king. He was my enemy. My prize from the blood-soaked field. And yet, the moment I pinned him down, something feral cracked open inside me - a hunger that had no place in a knight's cold code.

He hates me. Hates the hand that peels away his blood-crusted bandages, exposing flesh that's too soft for a soldier's scars. Hates the way I force water to his cracked lips, my thumb lingering on his jaw. But his body betrays him. Arches into the rough drag of my calluses. Whimpers when I press close in the tent's suffocating heat, sweat sealing us skin to slick skin. I see it now, that buried fracture in his reckless pride - the craving to shatter, to yield everything to a man who should be his ruin.

This is madness. A captor nursing tenderness for the captive who could slit my throat in the dark. Every stolen clash twists loathing into need, his oaths to kin and crown fraying under my mouth, my grip demanding he break. I should end it. Chain him tighter, march him to the gallows at dawn. But what if his surrender unmakes me first? What if I crave his teeth on my throat as much as he craves my dominion?

Loyalty or lust. Honor or the exquisite ruin of giving in. One wrong breath, and we both burn.