Chapter 14 Iris
IRIS
The morning after pill sits like lead in my stomach.
I stare at my laptop screen, cursor blinking on line forty-seven of code I’ve rewritten six times. The numbers blur together, meaningless symbols that might as well be hieroglyphics.
My body aches in places I didn’t know could ache.
Every time I shift in my chair, I feel it—the phantom sensation of Alexi inside me, the ghost of his cum dripping down my thighs. I took a forty-minute shower this morning, scrubbing until my skin turned red, but I swear I can still smell him on me.
“Coffee?” Maya appears in my doorway, mug in hand.
I shake my head. The thought of putting anything else in my stomach makes me nauseous.
“Iris—”
“I’m fine.” The lie tastes bitter. “Just tired.”
She doesn’t move, studying me with that therapist look she perfected in grad school. The one that says she knows I’m full of shit.
“Did you take it?”
I don’t have to ask what she means. Maya’s the only person who knows where I went last night, who I was with. I told her about Alexi’s insane breeding fantasy.
“First thing this morning.” I gesture to the empty packet in my trash can. “Washed it down with orange juice at six AM.”
The relief on her face is palpable. “Good. Because that man is—”
“Unhinged?” I finish for her. “Dangerous? Completely fucking psychotic?”
“All of the above.”
But that’s not what makes my hands shake when I try to type. It’s not the fear that keeps replaying last night on a loop in my head.
It’s how turned on I was.
God help me, when Alexi talked about breeding me, about filling me with his baby, about watching my body change with proof of what he’d done—I came so hard I nearly blacked out.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“You need to cut contact,” Maya continues, still hovering in the doorway. “Block him. Ghost him. Whatever it takes.”
“I can’t.” The admission burns. “He’s already in too deep. My systems, my life—”
“Your head.”
I close my laptop, unable to pretend I’m working anymore.
“He’s dangerous, Iris. The Ivanov men don’t just ruin lives—they end them.”
Maya crosses her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “So why don’t you want to cut him out?”
The question hangs between us like smoke.
I could lie. Tell her it’s strategic, that I need to maintain access to the Ivanov systems. That breaking contact now would alert him to how rattled I am.
All perfectly logical reasons.
All complete bullshit.
“Iris?”
My nails dig into my palms. The words stick in my throat, refusing to form. Because saying them out loud makes it real. Makes it something I can’t take back or rationalize away.
“I don’t know,” I manage.
“Liar.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “He’s...” I trail off, searching for words that don’t make me sound insane. “Last night was—”
“Was what?”
The best sex of my life. The most intense pleasure I’ve ever experienced. The only time I’ve completely lost control and didn’t hate myself for it.
I swallow hard. “Complicated.”
“Complicated how? Did he hurt you? Force you?”
“No.” The admission comes too quickly, too defensively. “I mean, it was intense, but I... wanted it.”
The silence stretches.
“All of it?” Maya’s voice drops, careful. “Even the breeding stuff?”
My face burns. I can’t look at her. Can’t admit that when Alexi pinned me against that mirror, when he told me he wanted to watch my stomach swell with his child, when he fucked me raw and came inside me like he owned me—
I loved it.
Every. Fucking. Second.
The shame tastes like acid. What kind of woman gets off on being dominated by a criminal? By a man who’s probably responsible for her parents’ deaths? Who talks about trapping her with a pregnancy like it’s foreplay?
“Iris.” Maya moves closer. “Talk to me.”
But how do I explain that Alexi touched something in me I didn’t know existed? That for those hours in that abandoned building, I wasn’t thinking about my parents or my mission or my careful plans for revenge.
I was just feeling.
“I liked it.” The words spill out before I can stop them. “I like him.”
My face burns with mortification, but if I can’t tell Maya—my best friend in the entire world—who the hell can I tell?
Maya’s eyes widen. Then she whistles, long and low. “Okay. So, you’ve officially lost your mind.”
“Maybe.” I press my palms against my eyes, willing the humiliation to stop. “Probably.”
“Iris.” She sits on the edge of my desk, forcing me to look at her. “His brothers had some kind of hand in your parents’ death. You told me that. You’ve been investigating them for months.”
The guilt hits like a physical blow.
My chest tightens. I can see them—Mom and Dad—in that mangled wreckage the police showed me. The “accident” was anything but. The investigation went nowhere because someone with power made it disappear.
The Ivanov family.
Alexi’s family.
“I know.” My voice cracks. “I know, Maya.”
“Then what are you doing?” No judgment in her tone, just genuine confusion. “You’re supposed to be taking them down. Getting justice. Not...”
“Fucking the youngest brother?” I finish bitterly.
She doesn’t flinch. “Yeah. That.”
I rake my hands through my hair, tugging hard enough to hurt. The pain grounds me, keeps me from spiraling completely.
What am I doing?
Last night, I was supposed to be gathering intel. Using Alexi’s obsession with me to get closer to the family’s secrets. Finding proof of what they did.
Instead, I let him fuck me raw in an abandoned building. Let him whisper filthy things about breeding me, owning me, keeping me. And I came apart in his hands like I’d been waiting my whole life for it.
“They killed them,” I whisper. The words taste like ash. “His family killed my parents, and I just... I let him...”
Nausea churns in my gut. Different from before. Worse.
Because this isn’t fear of pregnancy or morning-after pill side effects.
This is guilt.
Pure, unadulterated shame that cuts deeper than anything Alexi did to my body last night.