She tries to pull her hand back, tugging against my grip.
I don’t let her, fingers tightening around the delicate bones.
I drag her across the console by her wrist, until she’s half in my lap, twisted and breathless and furious, body contorted awkwardly in the confined space.
Her knee hits my thigh hard enough to bruise. Her other hand goes to push at my chest, nails scraping. She’s spitting venom, all fangs and fire, words tumbling out in a stream of curses—but I don’t hear any of them clearly because her body is already betraying her intentions.
Her breath is catching in her throat.
Her pulse is thundering visibly in her neck.
And when I press my hook against the inside of her thigh, not sharp enough to cut, just there—just present as a reminder of what I could do—she goes still as stone.
I bring my mouth close to hers, so close she can feel the heat of me radiating across the millimetre of space between us, the restraint it takes not to bite.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” I say, and it’s not a lie.
She opens her mouth, lips parting but nothing comes out, no words, no refusal.
Her lip trembles with the weight of what she’s not saying.
And that’s when I know with absolute certainty.
She doesn’t want me to stop.
She wants me to force her to admit it, to take the choice away so she doesn’t have to own this moment.
So I tighten my grip just a little more, just enough.
“Say it,” I breathe, voice like steel dragging over silk. “Say you don’t want this.”
But she can’t speak the lie.
She won’t give me the words that would end this because her pupils are blown wide and dark, swallowing the colour.
Her thighs are shaking against mine.
The fight’s still in her—but it’s turning inward now, warring with the part of her that already belongs to me whether she’s admitted it yet or not.
She still doesn’t say it, doesn’t speak the magic words that would make me stop.
Not “no.”
Not “stop.”
Not don’t, not please, not any of the things that would end this.
Her mouth opens like she’s about to bite again, teeth bared, but I see it—right there at the edge of her rage like a fault line—desperation bleeding through.
The kind that tastes like shame when you swallow it. The kind that floods the body before the mind can catch up and construct defences. The kind that makes you press your thighs together even as your lips keep lying.
So I drag her further across the console, not slowly, not carefully—just deliberately, with purpose. One knee wedged between mine, her body twisted and contorted to fit exactly where I want her, exactly how I need her positioned.
She hits me again, tries to. Her palm catches my chest with no real weight behind it, like her strength is already shifting to survival mode—but not the kind that runs away.
The kind that begs to be conquered.
She shoves against me.
