He drags me up with a smooth, powerful pull, proving the brute strength under that polished exterior, turns me roughly, and lifts me so my ass perches on the credenza’s edge, the wood cold against my bare skin. It should be graceless; instead, it's primal, efficient.
He kisses me like I've stolen his control and he wants it back with interest, mouth hungry and devouring, teeth nipping my lip until I taste blood mingled with him. His hands shove my thighs apart, dress rucked up like trash, and he lines up, the head of his cock nudging my entrance, slick and ready.
He thrusts home in one brutal stroke, burying himself balls-deep in my cunt, the stretch burning, filling me to thebrink, walls clenching around his girth like a vice. I cry out, muffled against his shoulder, nails scraping his back through his shirt as he starts pounding, raw and relentless, each snap of his hips slamming me against the wood, bruising my ass, the tie chafing my wrists as I grip the edge.
The room smears to nothing—the texture of his shirt rasping my nipples, the cool varnish biting my thighs, his breath hot and ragged at my cheek, grunting with every deep plunge, his cock dragging against my insides, hitting that spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
Something bangs softly in the hallway, then the rattle of a hand testing our doorknob. “Mr. Ward?” a voice calls, muffled but too close, polite intrusion inches away. “They’re ready for you at the dais.”
He doesn’t startle, doesn’t freeze—just locks eyes with me, dark and possessive, and clamps his palm over my mouth, not brute but deliberate, silencing me as his other hand grips my hip hard enough to leave fingerprints, owning me, keeping me safe in this madness. He bends to my ear, cock still buried deep, pulsing inside me. “Stay quiet,” he breathes, each word a hot, filthy thread. “Or they’ll know what a slut you are for me.”
The sound I make is primal, a muffled tremor of heat, the unlocked door igniting me like a live wire, my pulse slamming, cunt clenching reflexively around him in vise-grip pulses. Everything—anger, shame, guilt, need—tips into a shuddering abyss, my orgasm crashing raw and violent, walls milking his cock as I come undone, soaking him, body shaking with the force of it, his hand trapping my screams while entitled voices call his name from the other side.
The hand on the knob stills, then retreats. Footsteps fade. “Mr. Ward?” drifts toward the ballroom as the music surges. He eases his palm from my mouth slowly, thumb dragging my lower lip, smearing my lipstick like erasing his mark. He holds still fora moment, letting the world crawl back into my shattered edges, then slides out of my cunt with cruel control, leaving me empty and dripping. He ties the silk ends into a neat loop around my wrist again, almost a bow, a twisted memento.
I sit there, knees trembling, dress hitched like a whore's, lips swollen and bruised, and my cunt still twitching with aftershocks. He takes the tie back and is already putting it back around his neck in one practiced motion, like we’d discussed budgets instead of him fucking me senseless. He straightens his jacket, slides his cuff into place, then looks at me—not the mess, but me, eyes dark with something unspoken.
“Next time you want to challenge me,” he says, voice silk-smooth again, “do it when I’m not this close.”
I pull the tie free with a small, quick twist he’d shown me and toss it at his chest. “That wasn’t you winning,” I say, and the hoarseness in my voice does the lying for me. “That was a stalemate.”
He catches the tie, smiling with his eyes more than his mouth. “I don’t play for stalemates.”
“Of course you don’t,” I mutter, my breath trying to find its way back into a body that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me anymore.
He touches my cheek once, with two fingers. The gentleness after the hand over my mouth feels like being marked with a second kind of ink. “You okay?” he asks quietly, the tone meant for emergency rooms and stairwells.
I nod, and realize I mean it. The panic that had been building during the speeches, during Caldwell’s smirk, during the word girlfriend has burned off. In its place is a humming thing I am not ready to name, because to name it is to admit how willingly I just stepped further into something I’ve been pretending I’m not already inside.
“Help me,” I ask, and the request isn’t about politics. He smooths the dress down over my thighs, his knuckles grazing my skin like an apology. He fixes a loose pin in my hair and then, with a thumb, cleans a smudge at the corner of my mouth I hadn’t known was there.
“I’m not your doll,” I snap, but it comes out weak, stripped of its teeth.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re my problem.”
He picks up my clutch from where it had slid and places it in my hand. Before we open the door he holds my gaze with a seriousness that cuts through the haze.
“If this ever stops being what you want,” he whispers, “you walk away. No locks. No debts. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I growl. And I do. The consent isn’t a one-time ceremony with him. He keeps asking for it like he knows all the ways I’ve been taught not to have any.
We step back into the hum. The quartet has switched to something light; waiters navigate the marble like dancers; a cluster of donors clap politely as Caldwell says something self-flattering into a microphone. The chandelier light hits my eyes hard. I take one breath, then another, then lift my chin and slide my hand through Cassian’s arm.
Chapter 41 – Cassian
I have always liked this room for the illusion it maintains.
From the gardens it reads as a quiet library with a long table and a view over the lawns; to anyone inside it is a crucible. Glass on three sides, muted film on the panes to dull reflections. A ceiling baffle hum that keeps voices from carrying. A table big enough for eight but never used by more than four at a time. The wall behind my chair is a living feed: twelve small squares from Sanctuaries across the country, audio off, motion highlighted in green; below it, the running ticker of case notes and security flags. At the far end, a carafe of coffee that always goes cold because everyone tries to look as if they don’t need it.
I stand, jacket off, sleeves rolled, as Dr. Navarro lays out the incident from the night shift at the coastal site. She is small and sharp with the kind of tired that comes from watching pain, not from failing to prevent it.
“Flashback at 02:17,” she says, fingertip on the tablet. “Resident L. woke disoriented. Started striking the wall. When Rene tried to ground her, L. swung. She connected—split lip. We contained and got her into the sensory room. She came down at 02:41. She remembers nothing after the first thirty seconds.”
“Medication?” I ask.
“Offered. Declined. We didn’t force it.”
“Good,” I say. “You don’t sedate a storm because it’s loud.” To the security chief on my left: “What did the cameras show?”
