Her eyes squeeze shut, tears spilling fast, her silence torn between fury and despair.
I smile against her skin, slow, merciless. “And when you finally admit you love me—when you choke it out through blood and tears—I’ll open the door.”
Her eyes snap open, wet, wide, wild. Hope flickers—dangerous, fragile.
I press deeper, cock grinding into her, hook resting heavy over her heart, and murmur, “But you’ll never step through it. Because by then, you won’t want to.”
Her scream rips free, raw and ragged, filling the room.
And I know she understands.
Tahlia
His words hang in the air like chains I can’t shake off. You’ll never leave me. Not alive. Not whole. Not even in death.
The cage is my grave. My temple. My home.
Forever.
I can still feel the press of the hook over my heart, the sting where he dragged steel across my skin. My body aches everywhere—cuts, bruises, the deep burn between my thighs—and yet none of it hurts as much as what he left me with.
Hope.
That single spark he dangled before snuffing it out with his vow. When you finally admit you love me, I’ll open the door.
I want to laugh. I want to spit in his face.
But my throat closes instead, my chest seizing, because the thought coils sharp inside me—what if that’s the only way out?
My wrists still ache from his grip. My skin burns where his mouth sealed the scars he carved. And my cunt throbs, traitorous, remembering how he broke me apart until I confessed what my body already knew.
I curl onto my side after he finally leaves, the sheets ruined with blood and spit and him. The walls feel closer, heavier, as if they’re leaning in to whisper the same thing he did: Forever.
I should hate him more. Hate should be enough to keep me sharp, to keep me alive, to keep me, me.
When I close my eyes, I see the cut on his throat from when I held the shard to him. I see the way his blood slid down, the way his lips curved when I pressed it deeper. And the fire that sparked in his eyes when I straddled him, when I fought him, when I nearly cut him open.
I thought I saw fear.
It wasn’t fear.
It was love.
And now I’m terrified—because some twisted part of me wants to see it again.
The room smells like iron and sweat, like the inside of a wound that never closes. My blood is on the sheets, his seed inside me, my breath still ragged and uneven. I drag the blanket up around me, but it doesn’t cover anything—not the cuts, not the bruises, not the heat low in my belly that makes me sick with shame.
I stare at the door.
The one he swore would only open when I said it.
Love.
My stomach knots. My throat burns. Because what if he’s right? What if he’s carved me down so far there’s nothing left to fight with? What if the only way out of here isn’t escape—it’s surrender?
My hands curl into fists. The glass in the sheets cuts my palms again, reopening wounds that never had time to close. Pain grounds me. Pain is the only thing I know is mine.
I press harder, blood slicking my fingers, letting it drip down my wrist, onto the pages scattered around me. His contracts. His proof. His cage written in ink and signed in blood.
