And when he finally breaks again, spilling into me with a savage groan, dragging me with him into one last brutal wave—I am unsure if he has claimed me or destroyed me.
Maybe both.
The room smells of sex and sweat and something scorched, like the air itself caught fire. My body’s a trembling wreck, skin raw where his teeth marked me, thighs sticky, wrists aching where he pinned me.
And he’s still inside me.
Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t ease out, doesn’t offer comfort. He just cages me against the desk, chest pressed to my back, breath dragging ragged over the shell of my ear.
“You wanted this,” he mutters, voice low, jagged, dangerous. “Don’t look at me like I’m the monster. You opened your legs, baby girl. You begged for me to take it.”
A shudder runs through me, part fury, part wrecked hunger. I turn my face just enough to catch his reflection in the darkenedwindow across from us. His eyes are feral—like a man who’s lost the fight with himself and decided he doesn’t care.
“I begged because you made me,” I snap, my voice hoarse, trembling. “You get off on breaking me down until I can’t think straight.”
His mouth twists into a grin that isn’t a smile at all. “Exactly. And you love it.”
“I hate it,” I bite out, but it doesn’t land the way I want it to, not when my body’s still quivering around him, not when my nails are still clutching the edge of the desk like I can’t let go.
Dean tilts my head back with one hand in my hair, forcing me to meet his eyes in the glass. “Look at you,” he whispers, and the sound is more dangerous than shouting. “Ruined. Marked. Full of me. And you’re still wet for it.”
A furious tear slips down my cheek, but my body betrays me again, a pulse of heat clenching deep inside.
He laughs, dark and cruelly, kissing the salt off my skin. “Pathetic little liar. You can’t even hate me right.”
I want to claw at him, to spit in his face, to shove him off me. But when he finally pulls out, and the emptiness hits, a broken sound escapes my throat before I can stop it.
Dean catches it—of course he does. His smirk is lethal, satisfied, like he just proved his point without lifting a finger.
“You see?” he says softly, straightening his shirt like he didn’t just destroy me. “You’ll never be done with me, Brooklyn. Not even when I’m done with you.”
And then he leaves me there—bare, shaking, raw—like he knows I’ll come crawling back, no matter how much I swear I won’t.
Return To Club Z
The club breathes around me like a monster.
Heavy bass for a heartbeat, red light for blood, smoke curling like it’s alive. Club Z doesn’t change—same velvet shadows, same stench of liquor and lust, same desperate eyes looking for someone to own them.
I shouldn’t be here.
Not tonight.
Not after the way I left her in the kitchen, plate snatched, shaking for me, hating me for it and loving me all the same.
But here I am anyway, drinking rot-gold whiskey and pretending the air doesn’t taste like her skin.
“Dean Walker,” a voice purrs beside me. Too smooth. Too polished.
I turn, and she’s there—sleek black dress, lips painted the colour of blood. She’s been watching me all night; I felt it. The way predators recognise predators.
“You’ve been gone too long.” She drags a manicured nail down the rim of my glass. “This place missed you.”
I should ignore her. I should get up, walk out. Instead, I let her circle me like she thinks she can catch me.
“You look like you need reminding,” she says, leaning in, perfume heavy and sweet, not like Brooklyn. “What it feels like to take without asking.”
Her hand slides toward my thigh.
