Oh, I’ll give you potentials, you overgrown, overbearing, over-entitled dominating dickweed,she seethed silently.Potential for me to yeet myself out of the window.Potential for me to “accidentally” set your favorite crop on fire.Potential for me to find a voodoo priestess and commission a doll of you that I can stab with a thousand tiny pins while screaming, “THIS IS FOR THE SIMILAR SKILLS COMMENT.”
“XIA!Get back here!”
She ignored his apoplectic bellowing with the practiced ease of a woman who’d spent years perfecting the art of selective deafness—right up there with eye-rolling, sighing dramatically, and pretending to mishear the word “no.”She hit the stairs at a sprint, his increasingly unhinged commands chasing her like a particularly aggressive swarm of bees.
“I need a fucking drink,” she muttered, already mentally cataloging the contents of the club’s liquor stash.“A fucking triple-strong martini.No, a quadruple.With a side of arsenic and a chaser of ‘go fuck yourself, Master R’.”
He had the audacity—the sheer, unmitigated gall—to imply that some other sub could “equal” what she’d just done?Oh, honey.No.She’d just rewired his nervous system with her tongue, and he was acting like she’d given him a mediocre hand job in a broom closet.
Well, fine.If he wanted to play “Let’s Find Xia a Replacement”, then she’d play “Let’s Make Master R Regret Every Life Choice That Led to This Moment”.Good fucking luck finding similar skills like mine, asshat.
Because sure, why not?Let him shop for subs like they were fucking IKEA furniture—oh, this one’s got a nice “obedient” veneer, but does she come with “emotional depth” or just “easy assembly required”?Let him find out the hard way that similar skills also meant capable of forcing him to feel emotions he didn’t want to name.
It was time Rex Oliver started to realize his reactions—physical, emotional, and the way his pulse jumped when she walked into a room or the way his voice dropped an octave when he was pissed at her, not to mention the way he forgot to breathe when she smiled at him just right—all those weren’t just about sexual gratification.
They were about something worse, for him at least.It meant something permanent, like...a foundation...a future, and yes...a fucking wife.
“Mark my words,” she muttered as her fingers dug into the banister hard enough to shoot pain through her brain.“He’s going to know that before I leave for Hawaii.If he doesn’t...”Her throat tightened.“Well then...fuck a duck.”
The words tasted like ash and shouted of bad decisions.Because if he didn’t figure it out?If he let her walk onto that plane without stopping her?If he looked at her like she was just another submissive in a long line of them, just another body to train, or another mouth to use, and another heart to break—
Then she had lost.
And the worst part?She’d let herself hope.
That despondency settled on her shoulders like a wet cloak.Suddenly, she wanted to curl into a ball and scream into a pillow or burn down a city block, whichever came first.She could still feel the ghost of his hands on her skin, the phantom press of his lips against her temple, and the echo of his voice in her ear, “You’re mine, Xia.”
Yeah.For now.Until he found someone similar.
She swallowed hard, blinking back the stupid, traitorous burn behind her eyes.
Fuck you, Rex Oliver.Fuck this.Fuck everything!
Purely because misery loved company—and because she was nothing if not petty—she pulled out her phone and texted Cheri, hoping she wasn’t already in a scene.
Xia
“Emergency.Join me at the bar for tequila.And
bring a flame thrower.I need to burn something...
or rather...someone.”
