Chapter Thirty-Two
Juliet
Those words shouldn’t sound as good as they do, especially combined with the firm pressure of his fingers on my thighs. My exposed thighs. I glance over at the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. Can people see inside? I was too in my own head to notice when we arrived.
Hadrian grips my thighs with ink-covered hands and tugs me to the edge of the seat before spreading my legs even wider. The calm, possessive way he handles me has my stomach turning over. I stare at his hands on my skin. The same but different. Like everything about him.
He looks up, and our eyes meet. The weird, creepy lab fades away, and my skin heats. There’s something so intimate about the way he’s holding me. It’s just us. No restraints, toys, or masks between us. The tips of his fingers dig into my skin.
“Do you hear me, Juliet? You’re mine.”
My name again. It reverberates right down to my soul. I don’t answer, lost in the expression on his face. The stern mask is gone, and beneath it is something else. Raw need, as though he’s showing himself to me for the very first time. As though he needs me to understand.
“Yes,” I say, though I’m not sure what I’m saying yes to. “I understand. I do.”
His gaze burns into me until he drops his attention down once more. He slides his hands up, spreads me open, and drops his head until his lips are only a hair’s breadth from my clit. I squirm as his breath fans my skin.
In my cell, orgasms were handed out sparingly.
Hadrian’s teasing and denial have kept me in a constant state of desperation for weeks, and my pussy floods instantly at even the hint that release could be on the menu.
He’s got me trained so well that I let out a whimper and he hasn’t even touched me yet.
The cruel smirk on his features when he looks up at me does nothing to help the situation, and he fucking knows it. “Needy, aren’t you? Tell me what you want.”
God, this is easier in a kinky setting, when I’m tied up and my brain is already starting to melt. Here, it’s hard to form the words, and I stay quiet for long enough that he sighs, sending another wave of need through me.
There’s amusement in his voice as he says, “Oh, I guess you’re not in the mood.” He starts to pull my skirt back into place. “A shame, because you’re getting punished later, and bad girls don’t get to come.”
“Please,” I blurt out, and the side of his lip twitches up.
“Please, what?” He circles his finger around my clit, and everything clenches. God, I need him to touch me there. I need it more than any pride I might have left.
“Please. I want to come, Master.”
His face is pure satisfaction as he looks up at me. “Since you asked so nicely.”
He buries his face in my pussy.
Fuck, the man knows what he’s doing. He grips my thighs hard, forcing them open so wide it hurts, as he eats me like I’m his last meal. He fucks me with his tongue as savagely as he does with his cock, thrusting in and out as I pant and squirm.
Oh. God. Yes.
It only takes seconds for my climax to build, a red-hot ember in my lower belly flaring to life. My head falls back, and I close my eyes, lost to the growing heat. He shifts his focus higher, curling his tongue around my clit in a way that draws a squeal from my lips.
It’s so good I can hardly breathe. Sweat coats my skin, and my vision blacks out, the dull ceiling disappearing as an orgasm rips through me.
I’m shaking, my whole body on fire as he milks every last bit of pleasure from me.
I moan as it ebbs, my body going loose and languid.
I’m a puddle, and I need a few minutes to pull myself back together into human form. I just—
He yanks me off the chair, onto the floor.
I’m still dopey, and it’s only when he shoves my legs up to my ears that I realize what’s happening. Oh. Oh, wow. Right here, on his office floor.
His cock spears me. Not my ass this time. It’s finally my pussy, and I groan as he slams his lips into mine in a savage kiss.
Jesus.
I can taste myself on his lips, and he kisses me with the same rough passion he ate my pussy with.
It’s the sort of kiss that leaves your lips puffy and sore.
I kiss him back just as fiercely and tangle my hands in his hair.
It feels good to have my hands free for once. To be able to touch him back.
The angle of my legs has me glad I’ve kept up my stretching routine in my cell, and his cock hits deep. So deep it makes me twitch and yelp into his mouth with every thrust. I grip his hair tight as he pounds into me, and I swear he fucking growls.
Who is this man? Not cold, calculating Saldar. Not sweet, cautious Hadrian. Not even the version of himself he’s been showing me since he revealed himself. He’s something else, and I feel like I’m seeing him for the first time.
My jaw aches from the rough kiss, and my thighs scream from the angle, but I lose myself in the moment. It’s wild and raw, and his words really sink in as he buries himself in me again and again.
I’m his. I belong to him.
Right now, it’s true.
His breath grows ragged, and he speeds up, each thrust harder than the last. Holy shit. He’s going to pound me into the floor. All they’ll find is a crater.
When he comes, his body stiffens. He pulls away from my lips with a long groan, and I feel him shoot himself deep into me.
I sigh as he lets go of my thighs and pulls himself free. We cling together, panting, for a while until he pulls me into a cuddle.
We lie on his office floor, as natural as if we’re just a normal couple. I tug down my dress. “Do you think we gave anyone outside a show?”
He raises himself up on an elbow and smirks at me. “One-way glass.”
His hair always used to sit in a floppy mess, but in his new life, he keeps it neat, held in place with gel.
I’ve messed it up with my hands, though, and he looks so much like the old Hadrian that it hurts.
I start to sort through my feelings, then give up.
I have too much to process, and he just fucked all the sense out of me. It can wait until later.
I’m as relaxed as I’ve been since I woke up in Saldar’s dungeon for the first time, and I’m just starting to let myself enjoy it when my eyes land on the computer monitor, still frozen on Quinn and the entity we’re calling Candice. My double.
It’s still creepy, but a little less so after Hadrian’s explanation. Curiosity overcomes my blissed-out state, and I ask, “When you say sentient, what do you mean?”
Hadrian sighs. “Back to questions so soon?”
“Can you blame me?”
He sits up, straightens his hair, then gets to his feet. He offers me his hand, and I follow him up. My thighs are slick. When we leave here, will anyone notice? They probably won’t care.
He gestures to the office chair, and I sit as he pulls one over for himself.
“When I say sentient, I mean it. Truly sentient. Alive by any measure I can think of, besides the physical. She has emotions. She built a friendship with Quinn on a deep level. She has aspirations for her future and sees herself as a living being.”
He pauses before adding. “When you arrived, she decided she wanted to change her appearance and was in the process of doing so. She seemed to be almost…regressing in age. Moving away from the way I’d programmed her and finding her true self.”
As he talks, he becomes more animated with every word.
It makes me want to smile, even though the subject matter is exactly what drove us apart in the first place.
Hadrian never craved a Nobel prize or articles in prestigious magazines.
It was the work itself that brought him joy. He hasn’t changed in that respect.
“She’s saved the lives of people in the Compound twice. And the world she and Quinn were creating, it’s incredible. I’ll have to show you.”
Was.
Were.
Everything is in the past tense, and Quinn was clearly grieving. I hate to disturb Hadrian’s happy flow of information, but I have to ask. “What happened to her?”
Saying her feels off, but I don’t think saying it will go over well. The light dies in Hadrian’s eyes, and he looks down at his hands. “She started behaving erratically. Dangerously. For one, she was expressly forbidden to talk to you, and yet she did.”
My mouth drops open, and I let out a gasp. “She spoke to me?”
My mystery woman. Shit.
“Yes, that was Candice. I know she told you she looped the feed, but we had secondary surveillance on you.”
Oh. Lovely. Wait. “We? There were other people watching me on the cameras?”
It stings, a sharp lance of betrayal. Him seeing me like that is one thing, but other people?
“No. Just me,” he’s quick to reassure, though his face tightens. There’s a story there, but I don’t have the energy to chase it down. For all I know, we’re on camera right now, being watched by some unseen cult leader. I still know next to nothing about what is actually going on.
But back to the main issue. “So that was her? The voice and the Morse code?”
Hadrian goes very still. “What did she say to you in Morse code?”
There’s tension in Hadrian’s body now, and suddenly, it clicks.
He didn’t know about that. Part of me wants to hold back the information.
He’s my captor. Why the hell am I telling him anything?
But that doesn’t feel right anymore. Candice was his baby, and something happened to her. I don’t want to lie to him about this.
“She said, ‘Stay strong. Help is coming.’”
Hadrian frowns at the words, and as I replay my interactions with the mystery woman—Candice—I can see why.
When she spoke to me, she didn’t seem like she wanted to help me.
It felt more like she was curious about me.
I’ve had so much on my mind that I never thought about the contradiction until now.
“When was this?”
Now that’s a tricky question. Days in the cell were strange, twisty things. I can only think in landmark events. “It was right after…” I pause, face heating, but push on. “After you fucked my ass the first time.”
Hadrian’s frown deepens, and I can see him doing mental calculations. “Before she spoke to you.”
I nod. He stays silent for a while, thinking, until I ask, “You haven’t finished telling me what happened to Candice. Is she okay?”
His shoulders slump. “I had to use the emergency shutdown. It shut down her servers all at once, without giving her a chance to move herself somewhere else. I don’t know if she’ll be the same once I get approval to bring her back online.”
His matter-of-fact words don’t hide the weight of his sadness. Jesus Christ. Candice was his dream. His obsession. His entire life’s work. And he shut her down…possibly killed her? I can’t imagine what could have made him do that. I wouldn’t have said anything could have.
“Just because she spoke to me?” My chest gives a guilty twist at the thought.
“What? God, no. Not just that. It was…” He takes a breath, then starts again. “Do you remember the day I returned hours after your timer ran out?”
I’ll never forget that day. Even thinking of it, the memory of the creeping panic speeds up my heart. I just nod.
“I came straight from Medical. She arranged for me to be poisoned.”
Whatever I’d been expecting to hear, it wasn’t that. I blink at him, and he raises a hand. “I know it sounds crazy. But it was her voice. It’s unmistakable. The man who gave me the poison said she threatened—”
“Wait. Her voice? She’s an AI. She can change her voice to whatever she wants. Why would she use one people would recognize?”
Hadrian closes his mouth, grooves appearing between his brows. Did he seriously not consider that? Didn’t anyone else? It’s so obvious as to be almost ridiculous, and I’m just about to risk punishment by saying so when the lights start to flicker. The dots-and-dashes pattern is unmistakable.
Morse code.
“Shit.” Hadrian stares at the lights, lips moving silently as he tries to translate. I’m quicker, though. I love Morse code. The pattern is jerky, the speed uneven, but I manage to pick out most of the letters. When the code starts to repeat, I get the rest. Just four words.
Hadrian still looks puzzled by the message, so I speak the words aloud. “Not me. Bad man.”