Without apology.
16
CLOE
The city groanedagainst the glass. Lights flickered. Sirens whispered. Somewhere, a horn wailed into the dying night. But inside the penthouse—it was silent.
Painfully silent.
I stayed kneeling. Bare knees pressed to cold marble. Silk twisted damply around my hips. The collar heavy against the hollow of my throat. Every part of my body screamed. Thighs cramping. Knees burning. Spine bowed too long.
Wolfe buttoned his cuffs with slow precision. Each click of the clasp sliding into its hole was a death sentence measured in fabric and time.
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t need to. His expectation wrapped around my ribs tighter than the collar ever could.
Royal lounged behind him. A smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. One hand dangling a glass he hadn’t really touched all night. Loyal stayed near the windows. Hands clenched. Eyes hollow. The leash at my throat pooled between us.
Steel and chain gleaming faint under the pale wash of city lights. Not abandoned. Not forgotten. Just waiting. Waiting for Wolfe to pull. Waiting for me to fall deeper. Waiting for survival to finish being survival—and become worship.
Wolfe’s boot nudged the leash once. A whisper against the marble. The chain slithered across the floor like a live thing. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look up. I didn’t dare.
“Up.”
It wasn’t permission. It was scripture. A holy word from the only mouth I still believed. One word. Soft. Final.
I moved. Slow. Deliberate. Pain bloomed up my legs like fire licking bone. The leash tugged tight against the base of my throat. A reminder. A brand. I rose. Head bowed. Knees trembling. Breath caught tight in my lungs. Because even standing felt like betrayal now.
The silk dress whispered against my bruised skin. The chain kissed the back of my neck.
Wolfe wound the leash once around his fist. Tight. Sharp. The chain pulled my body closer to his.
I felt the leash bite. Not cruelly. Not carelessly. Ritually. As if the act of pulling me forward was part of something older. Something sacred. I followed the pull without thought. Without resistance. Because even the pain of obedience was safer now than the memory of running free. Because there was no dignity outside this leash.
No survival outside this chain. Only breath—and it belonged to him.
Royal chuckled low behind Wolfe.
“She’s learning,” he said.
A lazy drawl.
Amused.
But I heard the edge under it. The hunger. The warning. The knowledge that something this beautiful—this broken—could be stripped even further if Wolfe allowed it.
Royal wasn’t laughing because he found me pathetic. He was laughing because he found me inevitable.
The car waited downstairs. Polished black. Breathing heat against the pavement. Wolfe didn’t pause. Didn’t glance at me.
He walked. And I followed. Because there was nothing else left to do. Not because he yanked the leash hard.
Not yet.
But because the leash lived inside my body now. Inside my lungs. Inside my blood.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside after Wolfe. The chain slack between us. But it didn’t matter.
Because even if he dropped the leash—even if he unclipped it—even if he told me to run—I would kneel.
