West doesn't stop. He works me through it, drawing out the pleasure, milking every last convulsion. His fingers moving with a relentless, expert rhythm that prolongs the agony and the ecstasy. He watches my face with a fierce, possessive intensity. A predator observing its kill, etching the image of my broken surrender into his memory.
As the last tremors subside, leaving me limp and panting, a boneless mess in the hard chair he slowly, deliberately withdraws his fingers. The loss is immediate and jarring. I feel empty, exposed and utterly, terrifyingly conquered.
He brings his glistening fingers to his lips. My breath hitches. I watch, mesmerized and horrified as he tastes me, his tongue darting out to clean my essence from his skin. His eyes are locked on mine, a dark, triumphant fire burning in their depths.
“Perfect,” he murmurs, the word a final, possessive brand. “Every single part of you is perfect for me.”
He straightens up, adjusting my skirt with a casual, proprietary touch that sends a final shiver through me. He looks down at me, a conqueror surveying his spoils. I am a mess, my clothes disheveled, my face flushed, my body humming with the aftershocks of an orgasm I didn't want but couldn't stop.
He reaches out, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear, a gesture so deceptively tender it makes my heart ache. “Now,” he says, his voice returning to its low, dangerous purr. “You're going to pack up your things, and you're going to come with me.”
Thirty Five
Kinsley
The walk out of the library is a blur. I keep my eyes fixed on the floor, but I’m not looking at the polished tiles. I’m replaying the scene in the carrel, but not with shame. With a terrifying, clinical clarity. West didn’t just threaten me, he saw me. He saw my body’s betrayal, the shiver of unwanted desire, and he called it out. He held a mirror up to the part of me I keep locked away, and he didn’t flinch.
The car ride back to the penthouse is silent, but the air is electric. I’m not defeated. I’m… recalibrating. I ran. I made a move, and he came for me. The speed and certainty of his arrival weren't just threatening; they were a validation. A part of me, a dark, secret part I can barely admit to myself, was waiting. I wasn't running to escape, I was running to see if he would chase.
I needed to know if his obsession was as real as mine was becoming.
The click of the penthouse door locking behind us doesn’t sound like a coffin being sealed anymore. It sounds like a world being shut out, leaving just the two of us. The only two people in this game.
I stand in the middle of the living room, my bag slipping from my numb fingers to the floor.
“Go take a shower,” West says, his voice calm, conversational. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll order dinner.”
The casual domesticity of it should be jarring. Instead, it feels…right. The public performance of our “fake” relationship is a joke. This—the commands, the control, the silent understanding—this is what’s real between us.
I walk towards the guest room, but my feet feel like they’re moving through water. I stop. This isn't my room. This isn't where I belong.
In the shower I turn the water on, but I’m not trying to wash him away. I’m trying to understand. I lean my head against the cool tile, letting the water sluice over me. All my life, I have fought to be perfect. The perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect mask of stability over the storm of my own mind. That perfection was a cage, heavier and more suffocating than any penthouse.
West doesn’t want the perfect Kinsley. He wants the storm, he wants the chaos. He wants the flawed, broken, intense creature I’ve spent my life trying to suppress. His obsession isn’t justabout possessing me. It’s about seeing me and in being seen so completely, I feel a terrifying, exhilarating freedom.
His obsession doesn’t just live in him anymore. It has taken root in me.
I am obsessed with the way he looks at me, like I am the only thing in the world worth conquering. I am obsessed with the way he pushes me, testing my limits, forcing me to feel things I’m too scared to think on my own. And I am obsessed with the terrifying safety I feel in the arms of the one man strong enough to handle my storm.
The fight drains out of me, not in a wave of defeat but in a moment of profound, earth-shattering clarity. I am not giving up, I am giving in. I am choosing this, choosing him.
I step out of the shower and wrap myself in a towel as I walk to the master bedroom. To his room.
He’s there, standing by the window, on the phone with his back to me. “I don’t care what it takes. Buy it,” he says, his voice a low command. He hangs up and turns as I enter, his eyes widening slightly in surprise.
I don’t say a word. I just walk to his bed, pull back the covers, and climb in. I lie in the middle of the vast bed, my head propped on his pillows, and watch him. I am not hiding. I am waiting to claim my place.
He slowly walks towards the bed, his gaze locked on mine, searching. He sees the change in my eyes. He sees that the fear has been replaced by something far more dangerous.
“You came for me,” I say, my voice quiet, steady. It’s not an accusation. It’s a statement of fact, a confirmation.
He stops at the edge of the bed, looking down at me. A slow, knowing smile touches his lips. He understands. He understands I wasn’t running away. I was asking a question.
“I will always come for you, Kinsley,” he says, his voice a low, possessive vow.
I hold his gaze, my heart pounding a steady, powerful rhythm. “I know.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, reaching out to brush a damp strand of hair from my cheek. His touch is no longer just a brand; it’s a connection. A current that flows between us.
