“You don’t cry over him,” I growl, my lips scraping the corner of her jaw. “You don’t waste a single goddamn tear on a man who doesn’t get to breathe your name. Do you understand?”
Her answer is a trembling whisper. “Dean…”
“Say it,” I cut her off, my hand sliding from her wrists to the delicate column of her throat, pressing just enough that her words faltered, caught between breath and silence. “Say. You. Belong.”
Her tears streak hot down her cheeks, and she fights me even as her body arches into mine, traitorous, hungry. “You’ll destroy me.”
I snap then, fully, completely. My grip tightens, my mouth crushes hers in a bruising kiss that tastes like salt and fury and desperate possession. My control shreds to ribbons, and what’s left is the feral truth I’ve buried too long.
“I’ll ruin you,” I snarl against her lips, dragging her skirt up, ripping the barrier away like it offends me. “I’ll tear apart every excuse, every lie you tell yourself about why you shouldn’t want this, and then I’ll fuck the fight out of you until the only word you remember is my name.”
Her sob turns into a gasp as I slam her back harder into the fridge, my mouth claiming every sound she makes, swallowing them whole.
She’s trembling beneath me, but her thighs part when my knee presses, instinct giving me what her words won’t.
And I lose myself.
I broke every rule I swore I’d keep with her. No patience. No control. Just a savage need to stamp out Rafe’s ghost, to etch myself so deep into her body that no threat, no warning, no man will ever come close to touching what’s mine.
Every thrust is a brand. Every bite, a vow. Every filthy word against her ear is another nail sealing her to me.
“Cry for me,” I rasp, tasting her tears as my pace turns merciless. “Cry because you belong to the monster, not the knight. Cry because you’ll never escape me.”
And when she breaks—really breaks, sobbing and begging and clinging to me like I’m the very air she needs to breathe—I finally know it.
Rafe might have tightened the net. He might circle in the dark, waiting to strike.
But she’s already caught.
And she’s never leaving my web.
Her body is limp against mine when I finally let her wrists go. They fall uselessly to her sides, palms still twitching like they forgot how to move without my grip to command them.
The fridge hums low behind her back, the entire kitchen smelling of sweat, sex, and something sharp and metallic, like blood from where my teeth split her skin.
She doesn’t look at me at first. She can’t. Her lashes are stuck together with tears, her mouth red and swollen, a sound caught in her throat that’s not quite a sob and not quite a moan.
I lean in, cage her with my palms on either side of her head, and force her chin up with one finger until her eyes—glass-bright, wrecked—finally drag to mine.
“Look at you,” I whisper, and the words taste like reverence and damnation in equal measure. “Ruined. Just how I wanted.”
Her lips part, her chest shudders, and I swear she tries to speak—tries to find her voice through the wreckage I’ve left her in—but all that comes out is a broken, breathless whimper.
I tilt my head, studying her like she’s both the weapon aimed at my throat and the salvation I’ll never deserve.
“Do you think he could’ve given you this?” My voice is low, gravel and poison. “Do you think Rafe could’ve carved you open like this, left you crying for a man you claim to hate?”
Her eyes flutter shut, and I grip her jaw tighter, forcing her back into the raw, dangerous blue of my stare.
“Don’t close your eyes. Not with me. Not when I’m the one who owns every single tear.”
She swallows, a broken tremor racing down her throat, and finally—finally—she whispers: “You scare me.”
I laugh then, harsh and ragged, pressing my forehead to hers. My sweat slicks into her hair, my breath scorching her lips.
“Good,” I snarl. “Because fear keeps you honest. And it keeps you mine.”
She shakes her head weakly, but her hands—traitorous, trembling—fist in my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away.
