He takes my wineglass from me, scoops me into his arms, and strips us both down before he tucks me beneath his heavenly sheets, climbs in beside me, and tips my face to look at him in the silvery moonlight. “I want nothing more than to have you stand beside me. But I need you to promise me that if things get hard, if there’s something confusing or painful, we approach it together. You come to me first. Because you know nothing would come before you.”
Nothing would come before me.I think we both know that is a bold statement. He’s still hiding things, and not even I know who I work for or what I could be facing.
But even the notion of him viewing me as a partner warms me, so I offer honesty with a positive slant. “I’ll try.”
His sapphire eyes shimmer like a moonlit ocean, daunting with enigmatic depths, but still swirling with hope. “We could practice. In a more exciting way, have some fun. If you’re open to it, I’d like to play, to cram our days with so much anticipation that it radiates from us.”
My core tightens with the type of anticipation he’s suggesting. “I want that too,” I whisper. “Like what you described in the conference room.”
He keeps his face impassive, aside from the feral set of his jaw. “You do?”
Propping myself up on my elbow, I ruminate on how much I crave something that isn’t life or death, that frees me and clutches me in the same breath. “I’ve been lonely for a long time. Lost. But with you, even with how screwed up everything is, I feel desired, like I have a purpose. So, yes. I want that—not only because you want it. I like submitting, being led. It’s … freeing.”
His answer is a kiss, savage and sultry and pleased. “You are so desired, and you won’t be alone ever again. We’ll discuss more specifics tomorrow. Tonight, you need rest.” He pulls my body flush against his, but his steel-rod dick prods my abdomen, andmy nipples harden, and his chest rumbles with a growl. “You’ll rest soon. But I need you once more, darling.”
That’s all the warning I’m given.
Flipping me onto my stomach so I’m lying straight with a leather pillow wedged beneath my clit—the one he used the first night I was here—he crosses my ankles and plunges inside me. He fucks me deep and slow, goading me to chase that friction. And it’s that small detail that has me exploding in minutes—the indecency of grinding myself against a pillow. Finding gratification in something tinged with shame is a feat I can’t manage in the rest of my life.
But Axel knows. He just knows what I need. And he forces me to take it.
We spend the rest of the night levitating between sleep and ecstasy, nightmares and fantasies. Maybe it can’t last, and maybe I can’t be his in public, but for now, I’m alive. I’m his.
And until I have to fight for my freedom, I want to be owned by the Noire king.
ZARA
My mother and I once saw a flower sprouting through a crack in the asphalt. We’d gone shopping, just the two of us, and it was nearing sunset when we trudged through the empty parking lot toward our car.
It doesn’t sound that astounding—a flower in the asphalt. It might have been a weed—the pretty kind that are only labeled as such because of some scientific classification or their unfortunate location. But to the untrained eye, it was a brilliant bloom, impressive whether in a garden or a parking lot.
It was alone though, surrounded by stark black and rough ground, industrial inventions and materialistic gluttony, which only made its beauty more prominent.
My mother and I spotted it at the same time—this spiky burst of green and purple, standing tall and tilted in defiance toward the sun.
Maybe it was aware that it could be chopped down at any minute. It didn’t belong there, and many weeds were invasive. I knew that because my mother loved flowers. And this one, no matter what others tagged it, had spirit.
“Resilience,” was all she said at first, but it caught in her throat.
I smiled, wondering what was going through her mind. She wasn’t complicated, not like my father, who seemed to have another world inside his head. My mother embraced her emotions, spoke what she felt, prioritized her family. But there was a loneliness there, the kind most overlooked, but that was transparent enough to be gathered by the unfiltered perspective of a child.
And I realized she viewed herself like that gorgeous weed, which nearly broke my heart. Because she wasn’t alone. She was holding my hand. My brother and father were waiting at home. And we had friends and a church and a town that adored her. Our life wasn’t desolate.
But then she turned and brushed her fingers over my cheek, as if exploring the texture of my skin for the first time. “I’m not a fighter. But you are. No matter how boxed in you find yourself, Penn, you’ll still manage to grow. Promise me.”
I promised, though I had no idea what I was promising. No idea that she’d be dead within the month. No idea that her words would become a sort of prophecy that I recounted time and time again.
Today, I feel every bit of that beautiful, defiant, resilient weed that is certain someone is lurking around the corner, intent on chopping me down. And yet still, even sensing that murky future looming in front of me, there is nothing like the sun on my face—or the king lighting my way in the shadows.
The last several days have been busy. Axel’s been preoccupied by the quickly approaching Prohibition Ball and by other work matters. He hasn’t elaborated on what we are or what we can be, and I haven’t pressed the issue. The fact that he hasn’t interrogated me or used this heightened connection between usto garner answers about my mission is unsettling because I can sense the questions lurking.
The thing is, I’m not sure I will share it because it would only further muddy the waters. I’ve been trying to figure out how to enjoy this time with him and unspool myself from the tangled web with my father and the client. I’d like to know who sent Shep and why I was deemed a failure so quickly. The more I think about it, the more I realize that something isn’t adding up. This was designed to be a long-term mission. I was sent early because Tripp and I were trying to circumvent my father’s interference. So, why, after only a month, would my inability to produce answers mean that I needed to be neutralized?
That often happens in short-term missions, but failure is obvious there. I’m not certain how I’ve failed at La Lune Noire. Other than Axel being suspicious. But I’m working for him and reporting on employees and members, so that shouldn’t matter now. I’ve obviously used it to my advantage. I can’t even truly factor in Axel killing Keller because that occurred after Shep showed up.
It makes me curious if I stumbled upon something I wasn’t supposed to. Uncovering what that could possibly be is an absurd challenge after over a month of files created on countless people here. Regardless, maybe I’m not due to be neutralized because of what I didn’t find. Maybe it’s because of what I did.
If I ignore the anxiety building there, I can bask in all the ways that Axel dotes on me. The morning after our first night together, he had me fill out a sheet, marking my sexual limits and interests. He also provided me with his test results, showing that he was clean. I am, too, but those are harder to obtain without creating a trail that could lead to my father, so I got tested in the La Lune Noire medical facility even though Axel said he believed me.
