And I hate him for it.
I hate the way my body responds to his voice before my mind can catch up and mount defences.
I hate the way my pulse flutters when he takes a single step forward, like my heart knows something my head refuses to accept.
I hate the way part of me wants him to cross that line again, just so I don’t have to keep pretending I didn’t already step over it myself.
“You want me broken,” I say, not a question, but a war cry thrown into the void.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
The silence between us says everything that words can’t. It’s not made of absence—it’s made of intent, thick and tangible. Every breath he takes feels like a blade slowly dragging across my skin, marking me in ways no one will ever see but him, invisible scars that map his ownership.
I stand slowly, carefully. Careful not to show the tremble in my knees that threatens to betray me.
“If you want me on my knees, Hook,” I hiss, forcing steel into my voice, “you’re going to have to knock me the fuck down.”
His expression doesn’t change at the challenge.
But his eyes?—
God, those eyes?—
They burn like lit fuses wrapped in silk, like something combustible barely contained and that’s when I realise something awful, something that makes my stomach drop.
He doesn’t want me obedient and broken.
He wants me burning, still fighting.
His eyes drag over me like a match across petrol, searching for the spark.
There’s something coiled in his posture now—tight, waiting, violent in its restraint, like a predator deciding whether to pounce. And when I take one step towards him, chin lifted, defiant in the worst kind of way, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t blink.
He smiles.
“You think I won’t touch you when you’re like this?” he says, voice a threadbare whisper soaked in filth. “You think I’ll wait until you behave?”
I don’t answer because the heat rolling off him is already peeling the strength from my spine, melting my resolve.
Part of me is daring him to try, wants to see what happens.
And I know he sees it. Knows it. Smells it in the air between us.
“You’re trembling,” he murmurs, taking one deliberate step forward. “You want to run, but your thighs are pressed together like you’re afraid I’ll see how badly you want the opposite.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper, even though it doesn’t have teeth anymore, even though the words sound hollow.
Even though I’m the one who should be afraid—but all I feel is the fire consuming me from the inside.
Hook tilts his head, and for a breath, everything slows to a crawl. His smile cuts sharper across his face. Crueller, more knowing.
“Say please, and I’ll ruin you right.”
I shouldn’t respond but my breath catches on a moan that betrays me anyway, slipping out before I can stop it because his words are poison spreading through my veins.
And I’m so goddamn tired of pretending I’m immune to the toxin.
“Please,” I choke, the word scraped raw from somewhere I shouldn’t reach for, somewhere vulnerable.
