The old floorboards beneath his feet groan in protest, each creak a harbinger of what’s coming, and the sound reverberates through the walls of this gothic prison he’s made for me, through the heavy silence that tastes of dust and expensive cologne and my own shame.
My body moves before my mind catches up, instinct overriding reason in the way prey always bolts when the predator’s scent floods the air.
I scramble off the bed, hand still damp from the shame I swore I wouldn’t feel, legs unsteady as heat pulses between them like a second heartbeat I can’t shut off, can’t ignore, can’t pretend isn’t there.
The lights are still out, but I feel him—the shift in the air, the weight of something unseen curling around my ribs like wire drawn tight. The temperature in the room seems to drop and risesimultaneously, my skin prickling with awareness, every nerve ending screaming that he’s close, that he’s been watching, that he knows exactly what I’ve done.
I reach the door, fingers scrabbling for the handle in the darkness, but it doesn’t budge beneath my grip.
Of course it doesn’t.
I’m trapped in this room with its heavy velvet curtains and antique furniture that costs more than my life, trapped like something precious he’s decided to collect and cage.
I touched myself.
I gave him a show I didn’t even know I was performing, my fingers working between my thighs whilst his cameras—I know there are cameras now, must be cameras—recorded every arch of my spine, every breathy moan, every moment of weakness.
I’m still wet, still aching for something I shouldn’t want, still clenching around an emptiness that feels like punishment and promise all at once.
The lock clicks from the other side with the finality of a judge’s gavel.
A pause follows, heavy and deliberate.
A silence that screams louder than any words could, that fills the space between us with anticipation and dread and something darker that I don’t have a name for yet.
Then the door creaks open on ancient hinges—and he fills the doorway like a shadow swallowing the light, like something biblical and terrible, his silhouette backlit by the dim corridor behind him.
Hook.
His suit jacket is gone, discarded somewhere between wherever he was and here, and his sleeves are rolled up to reveal forearms corded with muscle and intent. His jaw clenches so hard I can see the muscle twitch with every breath he drags through his teeth, and he looks like he’s holding himself back—but not from mercy, never from mercy. From madness, perhaps. From the urge to do things to me that even he knows cross lines he hasn’t yet decided whether to respect.
“I should break your fingers,” he says, voice low and dragging across my skin like gravel wrapped in silk, each word measured and deliberate and dripping with the kind of threat that makes my stomach clench. “For daring to touch something that doesn’t belong to you.”
My chest heaves, ribs expanding and contracting too fast, breath coming in shallow gasps that fog the cool air of this room.
I take a step back, bare feet silent on the Persian rug that probably costs more than everything I’ve ever owned.
He follows, his leather shoes a counterpoint to my retreat, predator tracking prey with the patience of something that knows the hunt is already won.
And suddenly I’m moving again, muscle memory and fear propelling me backwards until my spine hits the wall with a soft thud, breath catching in my throat as he closes the door behind him with a soft click that sounds like a coffin lid sealing.
“But I won’t,” he murmurs, approaching like a storm disguised in satin and expensive tailoring, like violence wrapped in civility. “Because you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You want me to be brutal, want me to lose control, want me to prove that I’m the monster you’ve already decided I am. You think pain is the worst I can give you.”
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body, can smell the dark spice of his cologne mixing with something earthier—sweat, perhaps, or arousal, or both.
Close.
So close I can smell him properly now—dark spice and sin and something uniquely him, the scent of my ruin already burntinto his skin like he’s already been inside me, like he’s already claimed every part of me that matters.
His hook lifts with practised ease, the cold curve of polished silver sliding under my chin with a gentleness that contradicts the violence implicit in the gesture, forcing my head up until our eyes meet in the darkness and I can see the way his pupils have blown wide with want.
“You touched my cunt, Tahlia,” he whispers, and the possessive cuts through me like a blade. “So now I’m going to punish my cunt for misbehaving.”
I tremble—not from fear, not entirely, but from need that coils in my belly like something alive and hungry.
I hate that more than anything, hate that my body betrays me so completely, hate that he knows it and loves it.
“Bed,” he says, the single word a command that brooks no argument.
