Chapter 11 - Wren #2
He leans back, crossing his arms. “I know exactly what you want. You want to surrender. You want to be ruined by someone you can’t outsmart or shake off. You want to see how close you can get to the edge before you fall.”
I feel it then, how brutally he’s read me. It’s not even the words themselves; it’s the certainty in his voice, the unshakable conviction that leaves no room for denial. My whole body feels exposed, as if he’s pressed his hands under my skin and found the place where I am softest and most ashamed.
I try to laugh, but it’s brittle. “That’s a lot of projection for someone who spends all his time controlling people.”
He shrugs, as if to say, so what. “You’re not mad because I broke his hand. You’re mad because I made you watch me do it.”
It’s true. I am mad. But the anger is only a cover for the thing underneath, which is hunger, which is terror, which is the sick thrill of knowing I belong to something much bigger and meaner than myself.
He sees it all on my face, and his eyes go black with satisfaction.
He leans in, close enough that I feel his breath against my ear: “You will never sleep with another man again,” he says.
A chill rakes through me, the kind I always felt as a kid when a dog would lock eyes with me through a fence and I knew it would bite if the chain ever broke.
I try to swallow it down, but my body is already reacting; my thighs clench, my nipples stiffen, and I can’t decide if I want to slap him or slide under the table and let him do whatever he wants to me.
I force myself to stand. It takes effort, like moving through water, but I do it, forcing my chair back over the plush carpet. “You’re joking, right? That wasn’t part of our agreement.” I spit the word at him, like I want him to gag on it.
He stands too, so fast the chair nearly topples. He’s at my side in a blink, one hand at my wrist, and the contact is electric, a live wire pressed to my skin. I freeze.
“If you let another man touch you,” he whispers, low and calm, “I will flay him in front of you. Then I will fuck you while you cry over his corpse.”
Suddenly, I remember how this man is nothing like the controlled mask he wears, and his promises, his conditions, mean nothing to him. He made it sexual. He might make it painful and permanent too.
I should be scared. I am scared. But I’m also—God help me—wet, my body’s reaction tripping over itself to get to the end of that sentence. My heart is pounding in my throat.
“Last time you threatened me, you said you would kill me. So I suppose this is an improvement.”
He sees it in my eyes, the storm of wanting and terror.
His mouth twists, not quite a smile. He sits in the velvet chair I just abandoned, then pulls me down across his lap in a single movement—twisting me so I have no choice but to straddle him, my knees pressed tight to the outside of his thighs, my dress riding up and the silk clinging to the heat of my skin.
His erection is hard and insistent, digging into the soft place between my legs. My nipples are so stiff they ache, and I am so close to him I can see the faint scar along his jawline, the one that disappears into his hair.
“I won’t kill you, victim,” he murmurs, the word like a cut, “but I will set you down on that sweet ass of yours at the side of my mattress, rip off your panties, and use my tongue to edge you until you can’t see. If you’re really bad, I won’t ever let you come.”
I dig my nails into his shoulders. I want to scream at him, but instead, a soft whimper escapes me. His cock jumps at the sound. I’m so wet I can feel the seam of my underwear sticking to me, but I refuse to let him see how much I want it.
He’s trying to scare me. Not arouse me.
The problem is, he’s doing both.
The building materializes out of the dark and he pulls up to the entrance and kills the engine and for a moment neither of us moves.
Then he gets out. I get out. He walks me to the elevator like it's a thing he decided somewhere on the drive over, some small courtesy or some extension of the night that isn't finished yet. His hands are in his pockets. His shoulder is six inches from mine.
He presses the button.
The doors open.
He doesn't cross the threshold.
I turn to look at him. He hasn't taken his eyes off me since we stopped walking. I feel it like I've been feeling everything tonight — in my actual body, measurable, real. His hands are still in his pockets. He's very still, as usual.
Everything that happened tonight is charged in that look, sitting there unspoken between us.
"I'll see you soon," he says.
His voice is level. Controlled. Of course.
I nod. Step into the elevator. The doors close between us.
I rise through the floors alone — thirty, thirty-five, forty — suspended in the mirrored box with his violence still warm in my blood and my body still aching with need, and Isa's dismissal still pressed into my chest like a debt I'll have to pay slowly, and the image of Gunner crossing that floor, and the strange ache of an artist who woke up tonight for the first time in five years.
The doors open to the penthouse.
I walk in. The bay is out there, dark and silver and immense. I kick off my heels, and the marble is cold under my feet. The silence closes around me, and I stand in the middle of it and let the night settle.
He'll come back. I don't know when. He'll come through that elevator and uproot my life again. And I will be here when he does.
I press my thumb to my pulse. Beating. Fast and real.