“Take your clothes off.”
The command slices through the silence like a blade.
My breath catches. “Damien?—”
He closes the space between us with three controlled steps, grabbing the hem of my shirt and yanking it over my head in one motion. He doesn’t ask again. Doesn’t explain.
His mouth crashes onto mine like he’s trying to wipe away every other man’s existence.
“He thinks he touched you first?” His voice is ragged, torn from somewhere deeper than rage. “Then let me show you what it means to be owned.”
His hands are everywhere—urgent, rough, trembling with something more than lust. It’s possession. Worship. Warning.
He kisses down my neck, bites into my shoulder, and then licks the bruise like he’s proud of it. “I would burn down this city for you,” he murmurs, dragging his teeth over my throat. “I would rip out the lungs of every man who ever looked at you like you were free to take. I’d wear their screams like a fucking crown if it made you feel safe.”
His hands grip my thighs and lift me—hard. He drops me onto the table, yanks my pants down, and falls to his knees like he’s praying. His mouth is fire, his fingers bruising, and I can’t speak because I’m already coming apart—already unravelling from the sheer force of how much he needs to claim me.
“Let them watch,” he growls against my skin. “Let them see how you break for me. Let him know who she really belongs to.”
I don’t get a second to breathe. He doesn’t give me one. He’s fucking me like a storm, like the answer to every threat that’s ever dared to exist. His hands tangle in my hair as he leans over me, forehead pressed to mine.
His voice drops—barely more than a breath. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved that didn’t come with a body count.”
And when I look into his eyes—I know that’s a promise he’ll shatter.
Because after tonight?
The count starts for real.
“You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved that didn’t come with a body count.”
He says it like a confession. Like a threat.
And then he fucking breaks me.
He grabs my face in both hands, kisses me deep—so deep I can’t breathe without him—and then he spins me around, bending me over the table like I weigh nothing. His chest presses against my back, his breath heavy against my ear.
“Say it.” His voice is now cracked open—hoarse and desperate. “Say you’re mine. Say you’ll let me protect you. That you’ll let me fucking destroy for you.”
I can barely get the words out. “I’m yours.”
“Louder.” He grinds against me, letting me feel exactly how hard he is, how much he’s losing it for me.
“I’m yours, Damien. I’m fucking yours?—”
He growls—a low, primal sound that vibrates through me—and yanks my panties down, tearing them at the seam like they were nothing. One hand fists in my hair, the other wraps around my throat, pulling me back so I’m arched for him, helpless and exposed.
He doesn’t ease into me.
He shoves in hard, filling me in one brutal, possessive thrust that punches the air from my lungs.
“This—” he snarls, slamming into me again, “is what that message just cost him.”
Each thrust is rougher, deeper. His hips slap against me with the kind of desperation that tastes like vengeance.
“He thought he touched you first? He thought he could threaten what’s mine?”
He buries his hard throbbing cock deep in my pussy, and I scream his name, fingers clawing at the table, legs shaking from the force of it. But he doesn’t stop.
