Black walls. Midnight bedspread. This is Elias’s room.
Memories of last night rush back—limbs intertwined, mouths searching, pleasure blurring with pain. His dark voice was a prayer at my throat. The soreness between my thighs sharpens, proof it wasn’t a dream. I had sex with Elias Kent, my husband.
More than once.
After the carnage in the dungeon, he wrapped me in his bloody shirt, tucked me against his chest, and carried me upstairs to his bathroom. He gently washed my body, his eyes remorseful when he saw the scratches, the bite marks, the bruises forming from our rough lovemaking.
I couldn’t reconcile this man—this brutal killer—with the boy I never forgot.
But when the mist cloaked us from the world, I saw it.
The truth.
Elias might be taller, his jaw sharper, his voice deeper—but those eyes never changed. My sweet, beautiful Kian was there all along.
“How did I not recognize you?” I ask.
He rinses the shampoo out of my hair. “Surgery and puberty. I grew half a foot; my voice dropped. I had my jaw shaved, nose altered—just slightly—because I didn’t want to be recognized.”
He pauses, his thumb grazing my lips. “And I stayed away from you.”
Elias refuses to answerany more questions—about what he said in the dungeon, or the accusation that I killed Kian. He only kisses me, clutching me like he can’t believe I exist.
Then he worships me again.
He shuts off the water, wraps me in a towel, and carries me back to his bed. He then spreads my legs and stares at me in that intense way of his.
“Look at you,” he rasps. “These tits, your sweet pussy. I’ve imagined and…”
His words trail off as his hands slide up my body, every graze sending liquid heat through me in shivering waves. He kisses my lips, my jaw, that tender spot at my throat where my pulse beats madly for him.
My mind blanks, soon forgetting the questions, the worries, the puzzle I thought I’d solved just a decoy, the actual bomb still hidden underneath.
Whereas our fucking was raw and brutal in the dungeon, this is gentle and quiet. He kisses every inch of my body, his fingers teasing my slit, then rubbing my swollen nub.
“Shhh,” he hushes, reminding me of the insane moment at the vault when he had a gun pointed at my head.
It’s bizarre, and now, it feels…right.
Slowly, he inserts his finger inside me. I hiss, tender from before, and he softens his ministrations until my body accepts the intrusion. He then curls his finger just right until sharp light bursts behind my eyelids.
“Elias—” I cry, legs trembling.
He groans his approval. When my eyes flicker open, he has his cock tightly fisted, the tip dark red and leaking as he pumps it in a savage motion. A loud growl tears from his throat, and cum shoots out of his tip.
“Fuck me. Shit.” He grunts, his eyes feral. He tugs and tugs, releasing ropes of white on my tits, my stomach, marking me between my legs.
“Mine,” he rasps, and my core pulses, needing him again.
It’s depraved. It’s possession and obsession.
After cleaning me up, he crawls into bed beside me and wraps me in his arms.
“Sleep, Lana,” he commands, his voice rough.
The old me would’ve fought him and told him to mind his tone—the new me?
I melt.
