“The Flame doesn’t cleanse,” I said. “It only destroys.”
“No,” he murmured. “The world outside tainted your belief.”
“What belief?” I laughed, bitter and breathless.
He struck before I finished laughing.
The blow caught my cheek, knocked me to the floor. I tasted blood but stayed down only long enough to spit it out. When I stood, I looked him in the eye. “You don’t scare me.”
“I know,” he said, and something in his voice made my chest pull tight. “That’s why it works. I like you this way.”
He waited.
Time stretched. The fire cracked steadily, oxygen feeding it just enough to keep it alive but not angry. Sweat slid down my back. The air thickened. My lungs worked harder. That was when I understood what he was doing.
He wasn’t forcing me.
Not yet.
He wasoffering.
He wanted me to step in willingly, not because it gave me power, but because it gave himownershipof my choice. Because he wanted me to believe I was proving something to myself.That I was choosing to endure, to be strong. That the fire meant something.
But it was never about strength.
It was about surrender dressed as control.
And I saw it for what it was.
I had two choices. Step into the fire and let it take from me again. Or fight.
And I didn’t plan on getting burned.
***
JASPER NEVER TOOKhis eyes off me.
“You’re going to fight,” he said quietly. “You never change, Lark.”
I took a single step back, slow and calm. “I won’t let you touch me again.”
His smile didn’t falter, but something behind it tightened, just enough to expose the thread of tension beneath the mask. “And here I thought you’d come to enjoy being fucked.”
My breath caught. “What are you talking about?”
“I watched you,” he said, sneering now. “Letting that biker screw you in his office. And then again, out in the woods for the world to see. Spread your legs like a common whore.”
He moved closer—too close—until I could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. Smoke. Oil. The faint, clinging trace of cologne that still hung on his clothes like memory. The room felt smaller all at once. The walls seemed to lean in, the air thinning as the adrenaline from the ritual drained from my body and left a different kind of clarity behind.
“You certainly weren’t fighting him,” he continued, voice low, venomous. “Moaned for him. Begged for it. Pleaded with him to stick his cock in you.”
“I love him,” I said, even and unwavering. “You can’t make that dirty.”
His hand came up fast. The slap was brutal, snapping my head to the side and painting the edges of my vision black. I hit the floor, teeth clenched against the sting, the metallic tang of blood blooming in my mouth. When he raised his hand again, I instinctively crawled backward.
It was barely a movement. A fraction of retreat. But it changed everything.
He stilled—arm still half-raised—and stared at me with something colder than anger. He was watching me again, calculating. Measuring. The chamber fell quiet except for the soft hiss of flame, but his attention pressed down like weight.
