My fingers trace the soft stubble on his jaw. “I love you.”
“Fuck,” he grits, forehead pressed to mine as my walls clamp around him. His hand brushes a strand of hair from my face. “You’re everything I don’t deserve.”
My nails drag down his back, leaving bloody lines in his skin. “Harder,” I hiss.
“You want pain?” he growls, but there’s anguish beneath the rage. “You want to feel as broken as I am?”
I nod, tears spilling down my cheeks. None of this makes sense, and it’s the only thing that does.
“You think I like this?” he snaps, dragging me to the edge of the desk. “Think I want to be the monster who hurts you? Who watches you bleed and can’t stop it?”
“You’re mine. You’ve always been mine,” I gasp.
“Everything I did—every fucking bone I crushed—it was to keep you safe. To keep you alive.” His voice breaks on the last word, fingers digging into my skin as though he can hold us together by force. “I’d watch the whole world burn if it meant protecting you, and that terrifies me because he knows it. He sees how much I love you, and he’ll use it to destroy us both.”
Then he flips me, my chest slamming against the desk as he spreads me open and drives back in with one brutal thrust, buried to the base. His lips find my shoulder blade, soft, almost mournful, and it’s that tenderness that undoes me.
“I need you,” I moan.
Dom’s hand finds my throat again, pulling me upright against his chest. His breath scorches my neck as his rhythm stutters. Wetness smears across my skin that might be sweat or tears.
“Say it,” he demands. “Say you’re mine. Say you’ll stay.”
“Always,” I breathe, reaching back to tangle my fingers in his hair. “I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. I promise.”
His fingers slip between my thighs, circling my clit in sharp, frantic motions that send my body lurching toward release.
“I don’t deserve you,” he breathes against my ear. “I never have.”
“You deserve everything,” I choke. “You deserve love. You deserve peace. You deserve to be free of him.”
The climax rips through me like grief, sharp and violent. My body seizes around him, holding him inside, and his groan breaks low in my ear. The rhythm falters, then he drives deep one last time, spilling into me as though he can empty out every part of himself and still never be free.
We collapse onto the floor, tangled and breathless, as if dragged through a battlefield. And then the real tears come. Not the silent kind, but ugly, gut-wrenching sobs that tear free from my chest, ripping past my teeth as though they’ve been buried for years. Dom pulls me into his lap, holding me tight, as if his arms alone can keep my pieces from scattering across the room.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair. “So fucking sorry. For ever walking into your life. For not staying away when I should have.” His arms tremble as they tighten around me. “I tried not to fall for you, but I couldn’t stop it. And now look what that love has done to you.”
I cry until my throat is raw and my lungs ache. When I press my palm to his chest, his heartbeat drums against it, fast and terrified. His hands smooth over my back and into my hair, like he’s trying to memorize every part of me.
“Sometimes,” he breathes against my temple. “I wake up terrified I’ve dreamed you. That you’re something my mind made up to torture me with what I can never have. But I open my eyes and thereyou are, and that’s so much worse. Because our love? It’s a fucking death wish waiting to happen.”
“Stop,” I choke out, fisting my hands in his shirt. “Just stop. You’re all I have left. I don’t want safe. I want you.”
“You shouldn’t. There are worse things than death, Aria. And Kian knows every single one of them.”
I pull back enough to see his face, to trace the hollow of his cheeks, the tension in his jaw. His eyes are still wild with the aftershock, but beneath that rage is something softer.
“Do you know what he wants with me? Why me?”
“I don’t,” he whispers. “Even if I could tell you everything, I still don’t get why it has to be you or why he’s so fucking obsessed. He refuses to explain, won’t say what makes you so special to whatever fucked-up game we’re playing.”
The silence stretches, broken only by the ragged pull of our breathing. My mind scrambles to assemble the fragments. The Scorpid’s twisted magic, Luna positioned neatly at Alexander’s side, my parents’ research still continuing after their deaths. Contracts and secrets tangled into one another, every thread and path winding back to me.
“I need to see Kian,” I whisper against Dom’s chest.
“No.” His whole body goes rigid. “Absolutely not.”
“Dom—”
