Chapter Thirty-One
Chloe
He didn’t stop to give me any explanation as his firm grip dragged me out of the party.
The SUVs pulled up the second we reached the driveway, as if everything was somehow moving exactly according to Zane’s will without him having to say a word.
He opened the door, shoving me into the backseat like the building was on fire, and I slid over to the other side to make room as he climbed in after me.
His eyes were fixed away from me.
The invisible walls that keep separating us felt once again impenetrable. The intimacy of our dance, long gone.
He looked pissed off but more than that, he looked tormented, and I didn’t know what could have happened to cause that.
Something must have gone wrong. I could feel it. Either his plan had failed, or it had suddenly changed, and whatever the reason was, I’d completely missed it and as much as it pissed him off, I could finally breathe in relief.
All day, I’d been running through worst-case scenarios, scenes of Zane trading me for an alliance or selling me for information. Scenes that only ended with me never seeing him, or Malia, again.
But nothing had happened, and whatever the reason for that was, I was just glad I was safe. Glad the violence and the rain of bullets I was expecting had never come.
Exhausted, I reached down to rub my aching ankles. Although I was used to wearing heels, these new ones had been tormenting me all night.
Zane must’ve seen me struggling because he’d reached down, his fingers wrapping around my ankle, slipping off one shoe, then the other.
The calluses on his fingertips grazed my skin, dragging a shiver straight up my spine.
Then opened the window… and threw them out.
I blinked in shock. “Zane—”
He didn’t even look at me. Just stared out the window as it slid shut.
“They were expensive,” I said, still in shock.
He finally glanced in my way, eyes darker than the space around us. “I don’t care what they fucking cost. If they’re hurting you, they aren’t doing anything for you.”
Suddenly I wasn’t sure if we were still talking about shoes anymore.
He had a strange way of taking care of me while keeping his detachment intact. It was confusing and yet the butterflies in my stomach refused to stop raging.
I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to throw them out, I wanted to thank him all those times he chose to be gentle with me even though I knew it irritated him… but when I opened my mouth, no words came out.
He wasn’t looking at me either so the moment passed.
By the time the mansion’s lights came into view, I was growing impatient. I still kept glancing at him, but his face didn’t give away anything.
The moment the car stopped, and we jumped out, the icy air licked at my bare legs. I gripped the jacket Zane had draped over my shoulders when we’d left the party, pulling it tighter around me as he strode toward the house without waiting for me.
I hurried after him, struggling to keep up, with my bare feet cold and slippery against the cold marble floors as we climbed the grand staircase.
We were almost by his bedroom door when I finally caught enough breath to speak, “Zane, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?”
“Party’s over. Go to your room,” he rasped, pushing open his door.
“Not until you tell me what happened,” I insisted, moving closer, undeterred by his hostile tone.
His hand tightened on the doorknob, his shoulders stiffened. He didn’t turn to me.
Then his voice dropped lower, colder. “Go to your room before I hurt you, Chloe.”
What the hell was this man so scared of? I couldn’t wrap my head around this sudden hostility, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe for a second that he would hurt me.
“No,” I defied.
I was tired of hiding, of lowering my head, and following orders. I wanted him to start seeing me as his equal. Only then would he start to trust me, and I’d get out of here.
His gaze snapped to mine, his icy blue eyes were dark and cruel, reminding me of the night we’d first met.
He closed the distance in two strides, stopping only when he was towering over me. Before I could react, his hand shot out, fingers wrapping around my throat. He shoved me back, pinning me against the wall, squeezing my throat hard, but not as hard as I knew he could.
“Do. Not. Defy. Me.”
His words were venom and his lips almost brushed over mine as he spilled them.
Then he shoved me aside, making me stumble, and stormed into his room, not sparing me another word.
He’d never treated me so despicably before, and after everything… How dare he?!
Without thinking, I shoved the door open before it closed, storming after him. The anger boiling inside me gave me a reckless kind of courage in the worst possible moment.
I charged at him, pounding my fists against his back.
Once. Twice.
He spun around and before I could hit him again, he caught my wrist and tossed me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing at all.
“Put me down!”
I kicked and punched, in a pathetic attempt to get him to drop me but he was already walking, charging outside to the balcony.
With a loud bang, he forced the balcony doors open, glass rattling from the impact. I gasped as the night air hit me like a slap again, ice-cold and merciless.
But he didn’t stop.
Not until we were at the edge.
My stomach dropped.
He dumped me onto the cold stone wall, and before I could catch a breath, he forced my torso down, bending my back awkwardly over the edge of the balcony until the world was upside down. I scrambled for something—anything—to hold onto, my nails scratching the stone as I clung there for dear life.
Forcing my neck up, my eyes widened with panic as they met his unforgiving ones.
He towered over me, his grip the only thing keeping me from plummeting to my death.
His fingers fisted the collar of the very jacket he’d draped over my shoulders to protect me from the cold, now the only thing he used to hold my life in his hands. The way he looked like a beast, muscled and wide, huffing and puffing with vapor evaporating from his body. He looked deadly.
Sweat formed on my skin, my throat turning dry. He was going to let go, I knew he would, and I didn’t want to die, not like this, not at the hands of a man I once again had trusted too much.
“Think you can defy me, Chloe? Think again.” His voice was menacing. Below us, the ground seemed miles away. “Breathe the wrong way once, and I will let you go.”
Time seemed to suspend, along with me. Fear and adrenaline surged through my veins, my heart thundering in terror. He was serious this time. I knew I’d been pushing him over the edge, and this was the final drop.
I gripped his wrist, “Please—”
The word trembled out of me, barely audible, and completely useless.
“Please, Zane, don’t do this—”
I took a shaky breath, and the cold air was no longer biting my lungs. I couldn’t hear anything except for his heavy breathing. Couldn’t feel anything except him.
“There’s only one way out of this now,” he began, his voice dark and vicious, “I’m going to pull you up, and you are going to suck my fucking cock. Then, maybe we can forget this ever happened.”
I swallowed hard, weighing my options, though deep down, I already knew there weren’t any.
I could already imagine him forcing his dripping dick past my lips with no condom, no pause, no mercy. The way he would force me to kneel, bare and humiliated, on that stone floor, completely exposed to any of his men who might walk by.
My knees ached at the thought. My pride shattered in anticipation.
“Okay,” I agreed through clenched teeth, hating the way he took away my choice at that moment.
He let me linger there another long second, just to prove that he could, before starting to pull me up agonizingly slowly.
When my torso was up again, safely over the low barrier, I almost collapsed into him.
Somehow, his jacket slipped off my shoulders and fell, plunging all the way to the ground so far below and watching it fall made my whole body tremble, imagining it could have been me.
His hand squeezed around my throat next, forcing me to look at him. But when his eyes bored into mine, he didn’t look mad. Not anymore. He looked hungry.
“I warned you, Chloe, I told you to go to your room.”
He growled between his teeth, a feral, uncontainable sound, barely constraining inside whatever it was he wanted to unleash on me. His face was so close and so venomous, the words seemed to bite my mouth before evaporating in the few inches of air between us.
My heart thundered, and I wished I could say the burning pumping in my veins was all rage and spite, but it wasn’t. I felt that same hunger too. I tilted my chin and held his eyes, shielding myself for what was coming next, trying to hold onto the last shred of pride I still had in me.
“I hate you.”
He tilted his head, eyes glittering with something far too amused for the situation.
“Say it again,” he dared. “And make sure I believe it this time.”
Cruel! He’s cruel!
He dove in, brushing his lips against my jaw, and I swallowed a moan threatening to escape.
“I hate you,” I repeated, sure that if I said it hard enough, it would make it true.
His eyes met mine again, his whole expression darkening viciously and then his eyes flickered with a clear fuck it.
His mouth claimed mine, bruising and devouring me.
I wanted to push him, to spit in his face, to slap him, curse him. But before I could decide, my hands were already in his hair, my arms locked around his neck, pulling him, surrendering to the kind of kiss I’d been aching all night and so goddamn desperate for it, I could hardly breathe.
His teeth caught my lip before his tongue soothed the sting, deepening the kiss as if he was trying to erase anything my lips had ever touched before.
One of his hands threaded into my hair with possessiveness, the other gripping my waist, pulling me so tight I could no longer tell where I ended, and he began.
I gasped into his mouth as his massive erection pressed against my soaked panties, and he used the moment to deepen our kiss, tongue sliding against mine, demanding complete surrender.
Maybe adrenaline was making me stupid, but I wasn’t thinking when my legs opened wider, wanting more of that maddening friction.
Oh, fuck… that’s big.
He rocked himself around me, using his length that never seemed to end.
My fingers curled, and right when it started to feel too good to survive, the pressure was gone, and he started lowering himself.
His lips broke from mine to trail them along my jaw, then lowering to the hollow of my throat, where he bit down hard enough to rip a breathless sound from deep in me.
The more he trailed his mouth down, the more my back arched, until I felt the edge of the balcony pressing against my spine again.
But this time, I didn’t care if he let me fall as long as he kept going.
I was beyond any point of control, wanting to give everything to him, wanting him to give everything to me. To fuck, to tease, to mark. I wanted everything about it.
He shifted the tail of the dress away before his fingers slid my panties aside, and I gasped when I felt his hot breath hitting my soaked core first.
It was almost poetic the way he spared my life because he’d wanted me to suck him, yet he was the one kneeling between my legs. But if this was a war of egos, he’d still won because my arousal couldn’t be denied or hidden anymore, and all I wanted was to feel this man convulsing inside of me.
With his fingers in a scissor shape, he opened my pussy to him, circling my needy clit before replacing those fingers with his thumb. My head fell back completely with a moan.
“Fuck, you are so fucking wet,” Zane growled, playing with the slickness that had been accumulating since we’d left the party. I was so soaked that his fingers felt incredibly soft, allowing him to reach all my sensitive spots and electrify me whole.
Then he slid what felt like two fingers deep inside me.
He made me gasp for air, the sudden fullness overwhelming me. The hands I’d been using to grip the cold stone wall to prevent me from falling suddenly felt too weak.
My eyes opened for a second, long enough to see the world tilting as my head fell back, everything spinning, upside down. One wrong move, one stroke too harsh, and I’d fall.
But this time, I wasn’t afraid.
The adrenaline running in my veins was transforming the fear into something else. Something wild. Something that made me more alive and aroused than ever before.
Then his mouth closed around my clit, sucking hard, moaning against me as if loving the taste.
“Oh, God, Zane,” I moaned, digging my nails harder into the stone. “That feels—”
I didn’t know where to focus, whether on his tongue that was flicking and circling my clit, licking and tasting me with the same hunger he’d had when kissing my mouth, or the way his fingers were overfilling me with tortuous motions.
The tension building in my stomach suddenly became too much to bear.
I didn’t know what it was. I made myself come a few times, but it was different from this.
I’d never had an orgasm with a man, and sex had never felt like this before.
My legs started to tremble, all my moans turning frantic.
The cold stone beneath my hands a distant sensation now, and I felt myself falling…
He caught me, yanking me up to his chest just in time, holding me there as he fingered me one last time before everything inside me shattered, spilling free.
I was still shaking when his lips brushed softly over mine, leaving a streak of my own wetness across my mouth.
My tongue darted out on instinct, and I tasted myself.
His eyes darkened with satisfaction, though I’d done nothing to reciprocate the pleasure.
I wanted to collapse into him and fall asleep there, but he ripped my panties off, shoving them inside his pocket, then he smirked.
“I’m not done with you yet.”