I taste iron. I bite back. I want to scar him.
And I know he wants me to.
His hold on my wrists is absolute, but my body riots forward. His thigh between mine. His mouth pulling a sound from my throat that isn’t rage, isn’t surrender.
Something worse. Desire, pure and corrosive.
I hate him so much, I want to fuck him standing up, right here, with Dante’s file digging into my spine. He releases one wrist, only to slide his hand up to my jaw, thumb splitting my lips.
The pleasure is bladed. Sharp. I can’t breathe right. I can’t remember what I meant to say.
“You think I want to erase you,” he says, voice low, “when all I want to do is unleash myself on you.”
I hear my moan bounce off the drywall, so raw it barely sounds human. My body arcs involuntarily, trying to fuse us together.
Anger is just a pretense now, paper-thin and burning at the edges.
He grinds against me, one pant leg against my inner thigh, rocking slow and strong enough to make me see stars. I want to destroy him, and I want him to violate me in every way that word can mean.
Somewhere in the blood haze, logic fires back: if this is what he wanted, why let me in here in the first place? Why let me find the file? But then his hand is on my throat, and the question falls away.
I can taste his intent on my tongue. I’m only now realizing how much I want it.
“Say you want me,” Alessandro murmurs.
It isn’t a request. It’s a command built into the bone of his voice, the vibration of it resonating down my spine. His fingersflex at my throat, not closing, just heavy enough to make it clear who’s in command.
I can’t speak, not with his thumb prying open my jaw, his mouth bruising mine every time I try to retake control. I want to spit in his face, but I want to sink to my knees even more. I hate him for knowing that.
He pulls back, a hair’s width, enough to give air but not distance. Those black eyes pin me open, like light through a magnifying glass, ready to set everything beneath it on fire.
“Say it,” Alessandro growls, jaw rigid and perfectly still. The mask is gone. Underneath, the animal is not even trying to hide. “Say. It.”
My pulse is in my teeth. I want to make him bleed, want to see that calm crack in half.
“You want to see what I’m capable of?” I hiss, and fight him, really fight, not to break free but to battle for breath, friction, air. “Show me, then. Show me you’re more than a system. That you can break, too.”
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t even flinch. His hand clamps down, thumb pressing against the violent flutter of my pulse. I want to see black, want to see stars, want to see him lose control so fully that no one could ever contain him again. The other hand skims down my chest, finds the sharp edge of my ribs, and then lower, catching the soft crease at my waist just under my shirt.
Fabric tears—no accident. The shirt, my favorite, ripped up the center by authority and hunger. I arch forward into him, hips grinding, need boiling over and shoving everything else out of me. My wrists are pinned. My throat is caged by his weight, by his will. I could suffocate on him and call it living.
He releases my throat for a heartbeat, a reprieve so sharp I nearly sob.
“If you want me to stop, say it.” His mouth is at my ear, breath all spice and acid sweetness. “Otherwise, you’re mine until I decide otherwise.”
It’s not a safe word. Not a boundary. It’s what I want: a dare with no takebacks.
My voice comes out little more than a strangled whisper. “I don’t want you to stop.”
His lips graze my neck, stubble scraping raw. His hand ghosts the curve of my breast, palm rough, fingers precise as a surgeon’s. I shudder, heat crackling under my destroyed shirt, nipples tight and aching against the air. He pinches, hard. I yelp, then grind harder against his thigh.
He likes that—fucking loves it—so he does it again, even harder, then uses his thigh to force me up, my back arching in a perfect curve of surrender and defiance. I’m panting, blood thrumming at my wrists and between my legs, a riot of sensation hurling me toward the edge.
He pivots us, wrenching me off the wall and spinning me so my ass slams against the desk. The impact scatters files, one falling open to a page scrawled with my father’s initials. I see it, the fact of it, the artifact of everything he cost us, but it smears out of focus behind the heat in my head. Alessandro’s palm finds my jaw again, holding me steady while he kicks my knees apart with precise, practiced violence.
“You know who you are now?” His breath is fire at my temple. “You’re a fucking force of nature. I’ve wanted to see it, wanted to taste your brutality. Give it to me.”
I buck up, teeth snapping at his lips. “Show me all of you.”
