The bed shook underneath them as Tifa fought his grip, but his arm may as well have been one of the bars on the Nalbinan cell from which he'd freed her friend. Vayne poured himself into the focus. He leaned in with the rest of his body, bearing down upon her with every ounce of lean muscle on his tapering torso clenched tight as wyrmscale. His free hand darted up to close around her right wrist, and with a surge of strength, he pried it from his forearm and pinned it over her head with an authoritative slap of flesh on flesh.

And now he was close enough that his hair draped over one shoulder, falling to the bed like a curtain at the close of a drama, as though to hide her face from the moon beyond the window.

Vayne lowered his head, close enough that his nose nearly brushed hers and he could feel the breathless gasps from her parted lips and now his fury crested into a dark, charged triumph. His arm rolled a hair up her throat, bracing under her soft curve of jaw to trap Tifa's face eye-to-eye with him.

"Yield," he said in a tone of iron command. "Yield to me, Tifa."