Page 176 of Safe Word

And him.

THIRTY-TWO

It spread like wildfire.

Recognition. Undeniable. Violent.

My eyes stayed pinned to that sparrow inked along the delicate underside of her arm, curved so fucking perfectly near the small notch of her wrist.

The wrist where I’d gripped Scarlett as I drove into her – again and again.

Where the skin had bloomed red beneath my palms, or beneath the cold bite of shackle when I’d bound her before I sunk balls-deep into her.

That same pulse now beat beneath Paula’s skin.

Helpless… mine.

Fuck, the memory of her slick tightness wringing me dry…

Was she? Now? Wet?

My gaze dropped to her bare knee crossed over the other, shielding the secret I’d already memorised – a cruel flashback that reminded me how little room I had left in these jeans.

That sparrow stood stark against the pale skin.

It stared back at me.

Paula. Scarlett.

Two names. One body. A single, brutal truth.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or roar when it finally hit, but the force of it split me open from the inside.

Everything I’d wanted, feared, and destroyed had been standing in front of me the whole damn time.

She was here. Real.

Jesus… she always had been.

Every breath she’d taken beneath that mask had been mine – every sound I’d worshipped blind.

All the restraint I’d shown around Paula, all the obsession I’d harboured for Scarlett – the burn in my bones, the way her submission ruined me—

It had always been the same woman.

There was no separating them now. No masks. No titles.

No. Fucking. Rules.

No. Fucking. Contracts.

Whatever line we thought we were toeing was obliterated the second I saw that ink.

That tiny bird, the symbols on my arms… they carried the weight of our entire sin.

I’d been feeding her my past in slow, measured drops, thinking I’d been in control. Hoping she wouldn’t run.

But she’d already sunk her teeth into me, swallowed chunks of me.