“I’ll ruin that fantasy for him,” I went on, voice dropping lower, darker. “If you go with him, if you so much as let him think he matters, I’ll end it. I’ll make sure he never forgets what he can’t have. And I’ll remind you who the fuck you belong to. I’ll claim you until no one else can touch you without tasting me. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll forget your own name. You’ll remember my hands, my fingers inside you, my mouth on your skin, the way I say your name when I’m buried deep inside you, making you scream for more.”
Her body went still, completely still, but her breathing gave her away. It was shallow, erratic, trembling on the edge of fear and want, both tearing through her with equal force.
“You belong to me,” I said, the words guttural, carved from something I didn’t have a name for anymore.
She looked at me, eyes wide, pupils blown, defiance and confusion warring in the same breath. “Tell me you won’t go with him,” I said, my tone softening but never easing. “Say it, Edwina. Say the goddamn words.”
Her lips parted, trembling. She didn’t look away. Couldn’t. Her breath shuddered between us, warm and uneven. Then she whispered, barely audible, “Fine. I won’t go.”
Good girl.
Her voice broke around the words, but I didn’t care. It was enough. It was surrender. The sound of it hit me harder than anything else had. It loosened something in me and coiled something else tighter.
She turned, her hand fumbling for the door handle, her movements jerky, unsteady. Her hair was tousled, falling over her face in waves, her sweater slipped off one shoulder, exposingflushed skin I hadn’t even touched yet. Every detail screamed of something we couldn’t take back.
I watched her go, every step dragging her further away and still not far enough. She moved quickly, but her body betrayed her, hips swaying, breath uneven, the faint tremor in her hands giving her away. She was running from me, but she was running from herself too.
She didn’t look back. The proof of what I’d done to her was written all over her, the uneven pace of her retreat, the way her body couldn’t quite remember how to belong to itself anymore.
A low laugh slipped from me, rough and dark, scraping against the back of my throat. It wasn’t amusement, it was satisfaction twisted into something filthier, something that bordered on cruel. I could still taste her. Still see the flash of her eyes, wide and uncertain, the flush of her cheeks, the parting of her lips before that kiss had devoured her composure.
She ran because she thought distance could save her, that space would somehow cleanse the sin from her veins. But she was already marked.
I leaned back against the door, the weight of what just happened pressing down on me, my pulse hammering. I dragged a hand through my hair, then lower, palm pressing against the hard line straining beneath my jeans. My cock throbbed, angry and unsatisfied, still aching for what I hadn’t finished, what I wasn’t fucking done with.
I could still smell her on me, still feel the ghost of her breath on my skin. Every nerve in my body screamed for more. Watching her run, watching her try to hold herself together, only made it worse.
She was a mess—my mess—and she could pretend to hate it all she wanted, but her body had already told the truth.
This wasn’t over. Not even close.
No, Edwina.
This was only the fucking beginning.
Chapter Seventeen
Edwina
Thehallwascolderthan I remembered. Maybe it wasn’t the hall at all, maybe it was me, overheated and trembling beneath my clothes, every nerve frayed and raw, my skin still trying to remember how to contain me after unraveling beneath his touch. I moved quickly, barely aware of the creak beneath my boots or the hush of wind curling under the windowpanes. The air clung to me, thin and biting, yet it couldn’t compare to the weight of what I’d left behind, his mouth, his voice, his fingers, the restrained power in his body as it surrounded mine without ever crossing the line, and still, every inch of me felt claimed. My lips still tingled. Not from the cold. From him.
I descended the stairs slower than I should have, willing the quiet to stretch a little longer, but the moment I turned thecorner toward the breakfast lounge, reality met me head-on. Aster looked up first, her brows drawn in suspicion.
“Where the hell have you been?”
I blinked, scrambling to gather my thoughts into something that could pass for a lie. “I just, needed some air.”
She frowned, her spoon tapping against the rim of her mug. “That took more than twenty minutes, Edwina. You were just going upstairs to grab your gloves or something. You okay?”
I nodded too fast, then corrected myself with a slower one. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
Her gaze swept over me, landing on my sweater, slightly rumpled, clinging to places it hadn’t before. I saw the exact moment curiosity shifted into something sharper, but she didn’t press. Not yet.
Instead, she gestured toward the chair beside her. “Sit. You’re gonna need something hot. You look…flushed.”
I sat carefully, each movement measured, as if the wrong shift might shake loose the echo of his voice still carved into me, roughened by control, deep with something that claimed and burned straight through my spine.
He said I was his. That I belonged to him.
