“That’s it.” Dom stalks closer, pressing a delicate glass figurine into my trembling hands. “Break everything. Breakme.” His eyes are fever-bright. “I can take it. I can take anything except your fucking pity.”
The figurine joins its shattered siblings on the floor. My palm burns as it strikes his chest, yet he remains still, letting me leave marks, letting me hurt him. Pain has become the only languagebetween us. My nails carve crescents into his skin, and still he doesn’t flinch.
“Fight back,” I snarl, shoving him again. The impact should hurt, but he takes it as if he’s been waiting for this, needing the punishment as much as I need to deliver it. “Stop standing there like you deserve this.”
He laughs. That empty, echoing sound ricochets through the ruins of his office. “Maybe I do,” he says quietly. “Maybe this is all I am.”
He catches my wrist before I can grab another weapon, spinning me until my back crashes into the wall. His body boxes me in, heartbeat thudding against my palm.
“Did it help? Did breaking everything make it easier to swallow?”
The wall chills my spine while his breath sears my neck, and the last space between us disappears. Destruction pulses through our veins, a poison we keep choosing. Glass shatters beneath our feet while the air reeks of violence.
“I hate you,” I gasp, twisting my fingers in his shirt and yanking him closer. The lie coats my tongue with copper. “You’re letting him win. You believe you deserve this.”
His laugh ghosts across my skin. “That’s not true,” he breathes. Then his mouth crashes into me. “You hate that you want this. Still wantme.” His hands tear at my dress as mine claw at his shirt, and I can’t tell if we’re trying to destroy each other or salvage something that refuses to die. “Even knowing what I am, what I’ve done, you still love me.”
“Shut up,” I growl against his lips, sinking my teeth into his bottom lip until I taste copper. The metallic tang floods my mouth. “Just shut up and fuck me.”
The words break whatever restraint he had left. His eyes go black, pupils swallowing the grey completely, and I can see the exact moment he stops thinking and starts taking. Dom’s mouth slams back into mine, pain shooting through my jaw from the force. Everytouch is an attempt to brand the moment into memory, already mourning what he thinks he’s about to lose.
Dom’s hands aren’t gentle when they grab my dress. The silk gives way with a violent rip that echoes through the destroyed office. Cool air hits my thighs as he shoves the fabric up to my waist. He doesn’t bother removing anything, just tears it out of his way like an animal. One hand fists in the ruined fabric at my waist while the other shoves between my legs, yanking my panties aside so roughly I feel the lace tear.
When his fingers thrust inside me, my body betrays how much I need this by the wet sounds. The invasion burns, two thick fingers stretching me with zero preparation.
“You should run,” he rasps. “You should hate me. You should want me dead for what I’ve done—what I’ll keep doing.”
“I don’t hate you,” I growl, dragging him closer, scoring my nails down his back. His muscles tense beneath my touch. “But I do hate that you let him carve you down to this. That you think being broken is how you protect me.”
We’ve always been this way, too rough and too desperate to ever touch gently. Dom leaves marks because he doesn’t know any other way, and I crave them because pain is the only proof he’s mine. When words fail, this is how we understand each other.
His clothes become collateral as buttons pop and fabric tears. The expensive shirt splits down the center, exposing the hard planes of his chest. He slams me into the desk, scattering what little dignity the room has left as papers spill to the floor.
Dom’s belt rips loose, leather scraping through the loops before the buckle crashes against the floor. He pushes his pants down far enough for his cock to spring free, heavy and rigid, and already glistening at the tip.
I should be afraid of this hunger, afraid ofhim, but fear never comes. I only reach for him, starving to be filled, to drown myself in the one thing that feels real.
He drags the head of his length through my slick folds, a snarl breaking out of him before he thrusts in hard. The stretch is savage, heat and pressure flooding me until my breath rips free in a broken gasp. My nails carve into his shoulders as he buries himself deep, forcing me to take every inch whether I’m ready or not. It’s too much and still not enough, every plunge setting a brutal rhythm that has my body trembling to keep up. His hand slides to the small of my back, supporting me even as he destroys me.
“I can’t protect you anymore,” he grits out against my skin. “Every time I try, I make it worse. But I can’t—fuck, I can’t let you go.”
“Then don’t,” I whisper, broken against his mouth. My legs lock tighter around him, pulling him deeper until the desk groans under our weight. “Stay. I’ve been yours since the moment you first saw me. I’m already ruined for anyone else.”
His laugh cracks in his throat. “You don’t understand. If I fight him—if I even try to break free—he’ll kill you. He’ll make me watch and I’ll let him, because I’m too fucking weak to—”
I kiss him hard enough to steal the words from his mouth. “You’re mine. And I’m not leaving.”
His grip bruises my hips, holding me down as he drives deeper. “You think this is noble? Romantic?” The words scrape raw, torn straight from his chest. “I’m poison, Aria. Everything I touch turns to ash. And you,” his teeth drag along my throat, forcing a moan from me as he thrusts harder. “You’re the only good thing I have left. The only thing that still makes me feel human.”
“Then take all of me,” I whisper. Every kiss, every thrust, every gasp is us dragging the broken pieces together and bleeding on what’s left.
Dom’s teeth sink into my throat and heat floods where he marks me, the sting deepening into something I can’t pull away from. My body twists on the edge of pain and need, and all I can do is take it.
He’s brutal but his hands betray him. Even as his hips drive into me with punishing force, his fingertips trace my skin with reverence. They glide across my ribs, up to my breasts, cupping their weightwith a gentleness that feels obscene against the backdrop of our violence. Goosebumps spread across my skin in the wake of his fingers. My eyes flutter closed and I arch into his touch, desperate for more of this contradiction.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I force my eyes open. His gaze is darkness incarnate, grief and lust and rage choking behind his pupils.
