Chapter 7
Dahlia
T he sheets smell like him.
My first mistake is breathing too deeply. The scent is everywhere—spice and sin and something darker beneath it. I sit up fast, angry at myself for how my thighs clench from the memory alone.
No .
Last night was a game. A calculated push–pull. A mind-fuck wrapped in silk sheets and whispered threats.
And I let him play me.
I swing my legs off the bed and pad across the warm marble floor to the huge glass windows. Manhattan stretches in every direction—morning light casting gold over steel and stone buildings and penthouses I’ve robbed or ruined.
Some of them even voted for their own downfall.
A bitter smirk curls my lips.
I glance around. No visible cameras, but I know better than to believe I’m not being watched. Always assume eyes. It’s rule number one in my playbook. Which makes my mistake last night even more painful to swallow. The fucking app.
I look around for my clothes but they’re gone, whisked away by invisible hands while I slumbered in one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in.
Disgruntled by that, I find a robe draped over a nearby chair—soft, black, obviously his—snatch it up and wrap it around me. It drowns me and I hate how it smells like him too.
But it’s better than nudity. Better than remembering how naked and exposed I felt beneath him.
With a deep breath I walk across the endless expanse of the bedroom and step out.
The penthouse is quiet. Too quiet. Until a door hisses open behind me. ?He steps out of some hidden corridor, already dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, cufflinks and watch glinting like weapons. He looks like a man who’s conquered worlds before breakfast.
And he knows it.
“I want to talk about the heist,” I say, sharp, level. I’m grasping, I know, hanging onto the only thing I can control. Because this man means to take away every other thing.
He walks past me, barely glances at me.
Down one corridor into another, then into a glass-walled terrace where breakfast is laid out. He stands beside one chair, his fingers tapping a beat.
Patient. Silent. Fuck him. Deadly as a gorgeous viper.
I want to test how long a standoff can last, but already a heavy pulse beats in my pussy. My nipples are hard points and fuck, he’ll smell my arousal if my thighs keep clenching and unclenching like a blacksmith’s bellows.
I step forward and take the seat, wondering if his lips just ghosted over my temple or I imagined it.
When I glance over he’s sitting down, pouring espresso from a silver carafe. “There’s time for that.”
“No, there’s not. Thirty days means little if I don’t know what this is about. I want details. Timing. Target. Access points.”
He hands me a second cup, like this is just a normal Tuesday morning and not the aftermath of high-stakes seduction warfare.
I don’t take it.
He sets it down on the counter between us anyway. “Drink. You’ll need the caffeine.”
“Stop pretending this is normal.”
“Why not?” His gaze lifts to mine—calm, unreadable. “You’ve fantasized about this. Shall I recite your naughty little cravings?”
My breath catches.
He leans closer. Not touching. Just close enough to crowd me.
“You play the rebel well, little thief. But you want structure. Boundaries. A leash.” His voice lowers, velvety and dangerous. “And you want me to hold it.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper.
He smiles. Smug and patient. “You will.”
I spin away, hands shaking, furious at myself for how hot my skin feels.
“How many others?” I demand. “How many women have you done this to? Clearly if you used The Club app then you’re on there too.” What the hell is that sensation in my diaphragm? Because it sure as fuck isn’t jealousy!
His pause is deliberate. The glimmer in his eyes, searing. “None like you.”
The words hit harder than they should. I shouldn’t care.
But I do .
Because I don’t know what game he’s playing anymore—and worse, I don’t know if I’m still playing too.
Dante
She thinks she still has a chance of getting out of this.
The way she stood this morning—bare feet braced like she was ready to launch herself at me, eyes full of fire and teeth bared beneath a thin sheen of control—she was magnificent. Terrified. Gorgeous.
And still foolish enough to think this is a game she can win.
That robe she wore? Mine. That espresso she wouldn’t take? Mine. The building? The city view? The air ?
All. Mine.
But the delicious part is that she hasn’t realized yet: I’m not her captor.
I’m her mirror . I will dominate. She will submit.
And I’ve already won. Not because I broke her. Because I’m going to teach her how to want to be broken.
That’s the difference.
God, she’s sexy when she fights. When she tries to negotiate with a blade tucked behind her words, like she hasn’t already handed me every weapon I need.
She doesn’t know it yet, but the real heist started the moment she created that Club profile. That soft confession buried under bravado.
Looking for something real.
Not money. Not sex. Powerlessness , freely given. Craved.
I know what she needs. Because I hacked her preferences, mapped her clicks, read between the lines of every vanilla rejection she swiped left.
I built her cage perfectly.
Thirty days is generous. I could break her in half that time.
But I want it slow. I want her aware . I want her to choose the fall. Because when she finally surrenders, it won’t be desperation.
It’ll be devotion .
I’ll peel her open with words, touches, the kind of pleasure that rewires a woman’s soul. And she’ll beg— beautifully . Because she’s never been worshipped properly.
She’s been surviving. Hustling. Clawing her way through a world built to swallow girls like her.
But Dahlia Wynn doesn’t understand how rare she is.
How exquisitely, dangerously rare. Not just because of her tech skills—which, admittedly, are sharp enough to make her a threat—but because she doesn’t hesitate to get her hands dirty.
She walks into the lion’s den live-streaming herself, wearing her sins and defiance like sequins.
She wants to be seen, even as she hides.
Most hackers, even the best, stay shadows. Ghosts. Digital tricksters behind encrypted walls.
Not her.
My little thief thrives on impact. On justice and judgment.
And now she’s mine.
In the very building she tried to stage her little Robin Hood stand last night, I lean back in my chair, scrolling through the feed she thinks I haven’t found. Her alias account. The poll. The comments.
Her followers are rabid for blood. They eat up her moral grandstanding. Vote on targets like it’s a marginally less bloody Squid Game. Most of them don’t realize she’s actually doing it. The rest? Fanatics.
It would be easy to take her down.
But unfortunately, I need her. Not just for the spectacle and the sublime promise of her surrender I got a taste of last night, but for the access .
She’s the key to something locked up tighter than anything I can buy or bribe my way into. Not because she’s smarter—but because no one’s looking at her. Because the target she doesn’t know I’ve chosen has been planning this longer than she’s been alive.
And there’s a window opening soon—just one shot to reclaim what was stolen from me years ago.
And I need her to get it.
I could’ve forced her. Threatened her father some more. Broken her in the usual ways. But that wouldn’t have ultimately worked.
Because she doesn’t fear pain and I don’t want her furious or anxious. She fears exactly what she needs—relinquishing her power .
Which is why I’ll give her the illusion of control. Let her crawl back toward agency… while I take her apart cell by cell. And when she gets what I need—when she hands me the prize, bleeding from the inside out—I’ll reward her the only way she truly wants.
With her unsullied surrender.
My cock jumps in my pants. Furious. Ready.
Dahlia. At my feet. It’s almost too heady to contain. But contain it I will.
Thirty days. And maybe then… maybe … I’ll let her go.
Or… not? Fuck, even I don’t believe that anymore. But I know under all that rage, she wants to be seen.
Owned.
Kept.
And maybe I will keep her.
I watch her prowl from room to room in my penthouse, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Silent, sexy as the sweetest Belladonna.
One I wanted to consume, wholeheartedly and fatally last night.
In all my years as a Dominant I’ve never come close to calling fuck it and fucking a woman without proper, basic ground rules, the way I did last night.
I grip the erection that hasn’t subsided since I cornered her in this building twelve hours ago.
Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I didn’t expect it to feel like this. Like addiction. Like purpose . Like she’s not just a tool to use against my enemies.
She’s a match, flickering under everything I’ve kept cold for so long.
And something about the way she looked at me—shaking and furious and still wanting—hit deeper than it should have.
I need her for the plan.
But God help me…
I think I want Dahlia for a whole lot more.