27. Lydia
TWENTY-SEVEN
LYDIA
I didn’t remember the blood until I felt it cooling between my thighs.
Sticky. Warm. Mixed with his cum.
The ache in my core pulses with every step Trip takes, but I don’t say a word. I can’t. My throat is raw, lips cracked from screaming and begging and gasping for him. My body hangs limp in his arms, too spent to move, but my fingers cling to the front of his jacket like instinct.
Patrick is still screaming behind us. The sound grows fainter the further we walk. Muffled by the weight of blood and concrete and whatever Trip has done to him.
I should be afraid. But I’m not.. I’ve never felt safer.
My head drops against Trip’s shoulder, cheek resting against the warmth of his skin. He smells like fire, sweat, and smoke. Like sex. Like blood. Like mine.
I can’t stop shaking. Not from the cold. From everything else.
Adrenaline still courses through me in jagged waves, my heartbeat thudding hard against my ribs. I’m floating inside my own body, disconnected and high, every nerve still singing from what he’s done to me. What I let him do.
God, I want more. His cock. His hands. His mouth.
The sting of his bite is still fresh on my throat, blood dried in a tacky smear down my collarbone. I can feel the throb of the wound, his teeth still embedded in my memory.
And inside me…the deep soreness from the way he fucked me. Relentless. Unapologetic.
His.
Trip doesn’t say a word as he carries me through the dark halls of the factory. The only sounds are our footsteps, the way my breath hitches when he adjusts his grip, the far-off drip of water echoing from cracked walls.
His arms are tight around me– too tight, but I don’t protest. I don’t want space. I don’t want comfort.
I want him to carry me forever. Because if he puts me down, I might break apart.
The jacket he wrapped around me is far too big, swallowing me whole, but I grip it tighter like armor. It smells like him. I bury my face into the collar, breathing him in, letting the scent crawl down my lungs and settle into my blood.
I can still feel his cum leaking out of me. Warm, wet trails down my thighs. Every step he takes jostles it, and I clench involuntarily.
Fucking hell.
I’ve never come like that; it was different. I’ve never bled and begged and shattered all at the same time. And now, I don’t know where I end and he begins.
My wrists burn with every shift of pressure. The ropes had bitten deep. I can feel the raw skin, the swelling. My shoulders throb from pulling too long in unnatural positions. My nipples ache from the friction against my tank top–sweat and blood and sex all drying together.
But none of it matters.
Not the sting. Not the bruises. Not the ugly thoughts still slithering in the back of my skull.
Because Trip came for me. And then he ruined me.
And I want more.
The night air hits us like ice the second we leave the factory. I suck in a sharp breath, and for the first time, my body reacts. My legs twitch. My eyes sting. The cold shocks something back into place inside me.
Reality.
It tries to crawl in. But I don’t let it. I just hold him tighter.
Trip’s steps don’t slow. His grip doesn’t loosen. His heart thuds behind his ribs, fast and hard, matching mine like a war drum.
The longer he holds me, the more it settles in. What he’s done. He’d found me. Tracked me. Branded Patrick with my pain.
LIAR
The word is still burned behind my eyelids.
Trip hadn’t just punished him. He’d turned him into a monument. A canvas. A warning.
It wasn’t just violence. It was art. And it was for me.
That realization sends a tremor through my core so deep I feel it in my toes.
The sex hadn’t been the claim. The tattooing– no, the branding was.
The sex was worship.
Trip’s truck is parked at the edge of the lot, hidden in the shadows. I don’t realize how far he must have carried me until now. His arms are trembling from the weight, but he doesn’t show it.
He would’ve carried me through fire if he had to.
I whimper– just a small sound, but Trip’s jaw ticks when it reaches his ears. His head tilts slightly, eyes flicking down toward me for the first time in minutes. I see something flash across his face. Guilt? Rage? Love?
Whatever it is, it twists my stomach with need.
Words are passing between us, but I can’t comprehend them. All I hear is silence. I don’t know what I’m saying to him, or what he’s saying to me. All I know is peaceful silence.
When the truck door opens, he puts me on the passenger seat like I’m glass that’s going to shatter into a million pieces any second. His hands shake.
I feel the seat beneath me and panic, reaching out, grabbing his wrist before he can close the door.
Don’t go .
I don’t say it. But I don’t have to.
Trip’s other hand cups the side of my face, his thumb dragging gently under my eye. He stares at me like he’s memorizing the damage. Like he’s trying to absorb it.
His knuckles are stained red. So is his throat.
There’s blood in the corner of his mask.
Mine. His. Patrick’s. I don’t care. It’s part of us now.
He doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t speak. He just looks at me like he’ll never stop. Like he can’t.
And then the door shuts.
I watch him through the glass as he moves around the truck, sliding into the driver’s seat without a word.
He doesn’t turn on the radio. Doesn’t say anything.
Just drives
The building fades behind us, its jagged silhouette shrinking in the distance.
The silence between us is thicker than the air had been inside that building. But it isn’t uncomfortable. It’s sacred.
I touch my fingers to my lips. Swollen. Bitten.
I trace the mark on my throat. Still wet.
Trip’s hand is tight on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched, chest rising in hard, shallow pulls.
I know the sound of his breathing. This isn’t calm.
This is the calm before the storm.
And I want to drown in it.
I shift in the seat, trying to ease the pressure between my legs, but it only makes it worse. The jacket rubs against my clit, and my breath hitches again.
Jesus, I’m soaked.
Slick with need, raw with blood, soaked in him.
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper. A moan almost escapes. But I swallow it down.
Trip doesn’t need to know. Not yet. Not until he gets us home. Then, maybe I’ll tell him. Or maybe I’ll show him. That I’m not just his because he saved me. I’m his because I want to be.
I’ll let him ruin me again. And again. And again.
I don’t care if it makes me twisted. Don’t care if Patrick has planted that seed of doubt about Trip, about the other women, about what this really is.
Patrick can rot in that basement. Because Trip came for me . He always will. And I know something now that I haven’t known before–I’m not afraid of becoming his. I’m afraid I already am.
And I like it. The headlights light up the road ahead, slicing through the dark. Trip’s hand twitches once on the wheel, like he wants to reach for me.
He doesn’t, though. Not yet.
But I know when we get home, he’ll touch me like I’m the only thing left in the world that makes sense.
And I’ll let him. Every inch. Every bruise. Every fucking drop. Because I’m not broken anymore. I’m claimed. And I never want to be clean again.