He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t apologise. He looks at me with a hunger so raw and obsessive it makes the fifty million dollars feel like pocket change. He looks at me like he’s finally decided that he isn’t just my saviour—he’s the only man who gets to see me burn.
He doesn’t move for a long beat, just stands there framed by the doorway, a predator watching his prize realise she’s still in a cage—only this time, the bars are made of his shadow. The air in the room feels like it’s being sucked out, replaced by the heavy, suffocating scent of his skin and the lingering tang of my own arousal.
He steps inside, the click of the door behind him sounding like a gunshot in the quiet. He doesn’t go for the light. He walks toward the bed with a slow, predatory deliberation that makes my pulse spike until it’s a drumbeat in my ears.
“Didn’t I tell you, darling?” he growls, the sound vibrating deep in his chest. He stops at the edge of the mattress, looming over me, his silhouette blotting out the rest of the world. “I told you your pussy belongs to me. Every inch of you. Every drop of this.”
He reaches down, his hand wrapping around my ankle and dragging me toward him until I’m centered under his gaze. I should be terrified. I should feel the phantom touch of Felix and scream. But looking up at Peter—at the man who butchered his own bloodto find me—all I feel is a terrifying, sickening rush of heat.
“Peter,” I gasp, my voice a wrecked, shimmering thing. My hand is still there, my fingers slick and shaking, but I’m paralysed. “I’m so… I’m so fucking wet. I can’t… I can’t breathe.”
“I see it,” he rasps. He kneels on the bed, his weight shifting the mattress, pinning me into the silk. He reaches down and takes my wrist, slowly pulling my hand away from myself. He doesn’t let go; he brings my fingers to his mouth, tasting the salt and the heat of me, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’ve been trying to find it without me. Trying to drown out the noise.”
“I need it,” I sob, my hips bucking instinctively, searching for the friction of him. “I need you to make me forget. I need… I need it, Peter. Please.”
“You need what?” He leans down, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear, his breath hot and dangerous. He’s not being gentle. There is no ‘soft’ left in him. He’s the monster now, and I’m the thing he’s claiming. “Say it. Tell me who you belong to while you’re shaking like this.”
“I’m yours,” I scream, the words torn from my throat as he slides his hand down, replacing my fingers with his own—stronger, rougher, and more certain. “I’m yours. Just make the dark go away. Please, Peter, just… please.”
He doesn’t waste another second. He moves over me like a mountain, his mouth crashing onto mine to swallow my moans. It’s not a kiss; it’s a reclamation. It’s violent, it’s desperate, and it’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m finally, truly alive.
I don’t just moan; I wail. The sound is raw, ugly, and beautiful all at once as his fingers find the exact rhythm I wasfumbling for. He isn’t being careful with me. He isn’t treating me like a glass doll that’s already been shattered. He’s treating me like his, and the sheer, obsessive weight of that is better than any drug Felix ever forced into my veins.
“Look at me, Wendy,” he commands, his voice a dark rasp against my throat.
I open my eyes, my vision blurred by the heat and the tears, and I see the man I’d pray to every night in the dark. His face is a mask of pure, unadulterated hunger. He looks at me like he wants to devour my soul just to make sure no one else can ever touch it.
“Every time he touched you,” Peter growls, his hand moving with a brutal, relentless speed that has my heels digging into the mattress, “I want you to feel me erasing it. I’m the only one who gets to make you shake. I’m the only one who gets to hear you scream.”
“Peter, please,” I gasp, my legs wrapping around his waist, pulling him into the epicenter of the storm. “Right now. I need you inside me right fucking now. I’m so empty. Fill the hole. Just fill it.”
I’m frantic, clawing at his shirt, my nails dragging over the muscle of his back. I’m chasing the edge, the white-hot peak that’s been denied to me for a lifetime of days. He moves with a sudden, violent grace, stripping out of his trousers without ever breaking eye contact.
When he pushes into me, it’s not a slow entry. It’s a conquest.
A choked-off scream tears from my lungs as he fills me, stretching me, claiming the space that’s been hollow for so long. It’s a shock to my system, a visceral, grounding pain-pleasure that snaps the last of thechemical tethers. For the first time since the cage, I am entirely present. I am in my body, and my body belongs to the monster who loves me.
“You’re so tight,” he groans, his forehead dropping against mine, his sweat dripping onto my skin. “So fucking wet for me. Tell me. Tell me whose you are.”
“I’m yours,” I sob, my hips meeting every one of his brutal, punishing thrusts. “Peter… oh god, Peter. I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.”
He hits a spot deep inside me that makes the world go white. My internal muscles clamp around him in a desperate, rhythmic pulse. I can’t breathe; I can’t think. There is no Felix. There is no cocaine. There is only the friction, the heat, and the man who turned himself into a devil to drag me out of hell.
I break. I break in a way that’s more violent than the seizure, my body arching, my voice failing as the orgasm rips through me like a physical blow. He’s right there with me, his own release hitting with a jagged, guttural roar as he pins me to the bed, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
We’re both shaking, both covered in a slick sheen of sweat and the residue of a war that’s finally, for one brief moment, gone quiet. I’m gasping for air, my fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to me like he’s the only oxygen left in the world.
“Mine,” he whispers against my skin, his voice a vow and a threat. “Mine until we’re both in the ground.”
Wendy
The ceiling of the safe house is white. A flat, sterile, unforgiving white that doesn’t flicker or move. It’s the first thing I see when I wake up, and for a heartbeat, I panic, my lungs seizing as I wait for the chemical rush to hit my brain. I wait for the hum of the neon lights and the click of the lock.
But the only thing I feel is the heavy, dead-weight heat of Peter’s arm draped across my waist.
I’m sore. Not the jagged, hollow ache of withdrawal, but a deep, throbbing reminder that my body is back in my own possession. The scent of him—smoke, salt, and something primal—is everywhere. I turn my head slowly, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. He’s sleeping, his face finally smoothed out of the murderous tension he’s carried since the elevator.
I slide out from under his arm, my feet hitting the cold floor. I’m shaky, my knees buckling for a second before I steady myself against the nightstand. I don’t go for water. I don’t go for the bathroom.
