Even now, I want her.
I lean back in the chair, my hand sliding down the front of my trousers. My breath comes heavier as I stroke slowly, eyes locked on the screen.
She runs her fingers over her arm. The gesture shouldn’t be erotic, but it is: a woman bound, unaware of the eyes on her, touching herself in that absent way that makes me imagine what her fingers would feel like somewhere else.
I let out a low groan, stroking harder, my pulse thick in my ears.
She moves across the bed, gathering the sheets up around her like she’s building a shield, tucking herself against the pillows. The motion pushes her breasts higher under the fabric, dampness darkening the blouse where it presses against her.
My jaw clenches, pleasure sharp and hot at the base of my spine.
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t look broken. She stares at the ceiling, lips parted, her chest rising fast. She looks alive, restless, unbroken despite the chain that holds her.
It makes me ache. It makes me furious.
My strokes turn harder, sharper, as I imagine being in that room, tearing the damp fabric from her skin, pinning her wrists higher than the cuff already does. I imagine the heat of her thighs, the sound of her breath when I press into her, the moment her defiance would finally collapse into something else entirely.
I close my eyes for a moment, letting the picture drown me: her hair spread wet across my pillow, her voice low and sharp, then breaking, then begging.
When I open them again, she’s still on the screen, still beautiful, still untouchable except for this.
The orgasm rips through me sudden and violent, spilling into my hand as I growl her name under my breath.
I sag back against the chair, chest heaving, the monitors still glowing with her image.
Even now, even after release, I can’t look away.
Killing her would be clean. Final. Watching her like this, wanting her like this, I know the truth: killing her isn’t what I want. Not yet.
I want to own her. Body. Secrets. Soul.
I wipe my hand clean with a handkerchief from my pocket, tossing it carelessly onto the desk. My chest still rises sharply, breath refusing to settle, but my eyes never leave the screen.
She shifts again on the bed, restless. Her knees draw up slightly, the blouse riding higher until a strip of bare thigh gleams against the sheets. She doesn’t even notice, or maybe she does and doesn’t care. Either way, it feeds the fire already coiled tight inside me.
I light a cigarette, dragging smoke deep into my lungs. The ritual steadies me, but only barely. Each exhale fogs the glow of the monitors, curling into the air like the thoughts I can’t burn away.
She has me caught between two hungers: one for truth, one for her body. Both are tangled now, impossible to separate.
I should be strategizing, hunting her co-conspirators, planning the cleanup of the convoy disaster. Instead, I sit here in the dark, watching her breathe, watching her shift under the weight of chains that make her mine, whether she knows it yet or not.
Dimitri’s warning echoes faintly in my head:“She’s in your thoughts too much.”He’s right, but it doesn’t matter. She got inside, and now I can’t cut her out.
On the screen, she closes her eyes, lips parting as if in a sigh. My cigarette burns lower, ash dropping soundless into the tray.
I whisper into the smoke, into the silence of the room, words meant only for me.
“You’ll break for me. Eventually.”
The thought fills me with something dangerous, something even a bullet couldn’t erase.
Chapter Thirteen - Vivienne
The estate is a palace, but it feels like a coffin.
Everywhere I turn there’s velvet, gilt, chandeliers… luxury laid on thick like lacquer. The curtains are too heavy, the carpets too soft, the mirrors too polished. At first it seemed absurd, being locked away in a room fit for royalty, but now the opulence mocks me.
Every glass of wine delivered on a silver tray, every delicate meal pushed through the door, is a reminder: I’m a prisoner wrapped in silk.
