His fingers dug into my flesh hard enough to bruise as he held me exactly where he wanted me, grinding up into me with short, hard thrusts that hit deeper than before.The swelling made every movement more intense, every stroke dragging against nerves already oversensitized from my orgasm.A sound tore from his throat, more growl than groan, and his eyes blazed amber in the low light.
I couldn’t move.Couldn’t escape.Could only take what he gave me while he pounded into me from below, using his grip on my hips to slam me down onto him again and again.Another orgasm built without warning, sharper than the first, and when it crashed through me I screamed, actually screamed, my whole body seizing around him.
“The pill.”His voice was barely human, a growl torn from somewhere deep in his chest.His hips stuttered, fighting for control.“Are you on the pill?”
“Yes,” I gasped.The same prescription I had been taking since the contract began, protection I had never stopped even when I swore he would never touch me again.
The word unleashed him.
He snarled and slammed up into me, abandoning any pretense of restraint.His fingers dug into my hips hard enough to leave marks for days as he hammered into me from below, chasing his own release with a ferocity that bordered on violence.Each thrust punched the air from my lungs, and I could only hold on, riding the brutal pace until he followed me over with a roar, his hips jerking hard, and I felt every pulse of his release while we stayed locked together, trembling, his fingers still bruising my hips.
I collapsed forward onto his chest with my heart hammering and my thighs shaking and absolutely no idea what had just happened.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.His chest rose and fell under my cheek.His heartbeat was steady now, evening out, and heat radiated from his skin through his ruined shirt.
His hand came up.Brushed my cheek.Gentle.The callused pad of his thumb traced the curve of my cheekbone, and the tenderness of it cracked something open.
I flinched away.“Don’t.”
The softness was worse.The softness was unbearable.I could handle anger, handle lust, handle being used and using in return.I couldn’t handle tenderness from the man I was supposed to hate.
He withdrew his hand.Pain crossed his face.Or resignation.The expression was there and gone in an instant, locked behind the mask he never let slip.
I climbed off him.Found my clothes scattered across his floor, my skirt tangled with his belt, my blouse somewhere near the door.I dressed with my back to him, refusing to look, refusing to acknowledge the weight of his gaze on my skin.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I said.My voice was steadier than my hands.
“I know.”A pause.Then, quieter: “Your mind doesn’t want it to.Your body already knows different.”Not agreeing, exactly.Just acknowledging.Understanding in a way that unsettled me more than anger would have.
I left before I could say something worse.Before the confusion swallowing me whole could spill out into words.
My own room.Door locked.Shower running, hot enough to scald, steam filling the bathroom until I couldn’t see the mirror.I stood under the spray and tried to wash him off my skin, but the feeling of his hands lingered.The impression of his grip on my hips.The way he had let me take and take and take without demanding anything in return.
My body was satisfied.Wrung out.Finally quiet since the fountain.
My mind was chaos.
I changed my sheets.The old ones smelled like sweat and fear and him.I lay in the clean ones and stared at the ceiling and tried to make Clara’s framework fit what had just happened.
I used him.That’s all it was.A transaction.A tool.A way to feel powerful when everything else made me feel weak.
But I hadn’t expected the way he had let me lead without fighting for control.The patient surrender in every line of his body.The way he had held himself back when I knew, I knew, he could have taken over at any moment.The way “I know” had sounded like understanding rather than agreement, like he saw exactly what I was doing and accepted it anyway.
I had gone to him to feel powerful.
Instead I was seen.And that was terrifying.
The manor was quiet around me.Somewhere below, he was still in his room, or maybe back in his study.I could picture him there, sitting in the dark, listening for my footsteps the way I listened for his.The thought shouldn’t have tightened something behind my ribs.
It did anyway.
Tomorrow I would face the hotel.The police investigation.The stalker who wouldn’t stop.Tomorrow I would figure out how to exist in a world where someone wanted to destroy me and the only person who made me feel safe was the same person who had destroyed me first.
But tonight, in the dark, with his scent still lingering in my hair despite the shower, I could admit one thing to myself.
I had gone to him because he was the only place that felt safe.
That was not part of the plan.And I had no idea how to stop it.
