Chapter 40
Ivy
A familiar pain wakes me in the middle of the night. Low, cramping, the kind of pain my body has been delivering monthly since I was thirteen. I slide out of bed carefully, trying not to disturb the man whose arm is draped over my waist like a claim even in sleep.
I barely take three steps.
“Where are you going?” His voice is raspy, barely awake but already alert.
“Bathroom. Go back to sleep.”
I close the door and sit on the toilet. I stare at the small blood stain on my underwear, and the relief is immediate and total.
I’m not pregnant. We’ve been reckless — no protection, no plan, no conversation about it.
I’ve been in such a haze every time he fucks me that basic biology stopped being a consideration.
We’re running from a psychopath, planning an assault on a compound, living in a desert safehouse with no future past next week. A pregnancy would be catastrophic.
I’m relieved. I am relieved.
I’ve never thought about children. My mind was always occupied with escape plans and anatomy and the Ledger. I’m twenty-two. Time is on my side. And even if it weren’t, bringing a child into the world I inhabit would be insane.
So why is my hand on my stomach?
I pull it away shaking my head. The relief is real. The flicker underneath it — the thing that feels suspiciously like loss for something I never had — is just hormones. Biology doing what biology does.
“Ivy?”
“I’m fine. Go away.”
“You’ve been in there for ten minutes.”
“I’m fine, Killian.”
The door opens because Killian is Killian and closed doors are suggestions he doesn’t take. I press my thighs together, feeling absurdly mortified.
“What the fuck?!”
“You’re not fine.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the door frame. His eyes are scanning me like he’s looking for something to neutralize. “What’s wrong?”
The laugh that comes out of me is involuntary. This man has seen me covered in blood. He let me carve a moth into his chest and watched from his knees while I carved his initial into my skin. He’s fucked my throat until I cried. And I’m embarrassed about my period.
“Nothing’s wrong. I started my period. It’s fine.”
He doesn’t move. “And?”
“And I’d like some privacy?”
“Since when?”
Fair point.
He watches me with that patient expression. The one that means he’s waiting for me to catch up with something he already knows.
The realization hits like a brick — this man has been coming inside me for days.
Every time. Without discussion, without protection, without once mentioning it.
And he’s always aware of everything. He tracks my sleep patterns, my eating habits, my moods.
There is no way he hasn’t been tracking this too.
“Killian.”
“Yes, Ivy?”
“You’ve been coming inside me.”
“Yes.” Not a flinch. “Four days. Five, counting tonight.” He tilts his head with the audacity of a man who genuinely doesn’t understand the problem. “Is there an issue?”
“Is there a —” I stand up. “You could have gotten me pregnant. I could have been ovulating, Killian.”
“But you’re not.”
“But I could have been.”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t —” Deep breath. “Birth control. Plan B. Anything. You just —”
“Came inside you every chance I got. I know. I was there.”
He smirks. The audacity.
“Did you do it on purpose?”
His silence is the answer.
“You did.” I don’t know if I’m horrified or about to commit homicide. “You’ve been trying to —”
“Get you pregnant?” He pushes off the door frame and steps into the bathroom. “Yes.”
He’s in front of me, so close that I have to tilt my head to meet his eyes. The bathroom is small and his body fills it.
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
“We’re in the middle of a war. Silas is hunting us. We don’t know if we’ll live to see next month. And you’ve been trying to breed me?”
Something dark and hungry flickers in his eyes at the word. “Yes.”
“Why?”
His hand cups my jaw. His thumb traces my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicts everything he’s just confessed.
“Because I want you full of me, Ivy.” His voice is low. “Not just when I’m inside you. After. Always. I want you marked in a way no one can undo. Not a scar. Not a carving. Something alive.”
My mouth is dry.
“I want to watch your body change because of me. I want to see my child growing inside you. I want something that exists because we chose it. Not Silas. Not Malachi. Something that belongs to us and no one can take.” He pauses.
“I’ve never had anything that was mine, Ivy.
Not a family. Not a home.” His thumb traces my lower lip.
“You’re mine. But a child — a child would be proof that something good can come from two people like us.
That the monsters can make something that isn’t a monster. ”
My chest tightens so hard I can’t breathe — not from the words, but from the way my body is responding to them.
What the fuck is wrong with you, Ivy?
“That’s… unhinged.”
“Yes.”
“Reckless. Insane.”
“Yes, and yes.”
“We could die tomorrow.”
“I’ll die knowing I tried.” His thumb presses against my lower lip. “Tell me you don’t want it, Ivy.”
The word gets stuck somewhere between my brain and my mouth. Because my brain is saying no — screaming it, actually — and my body is saying something else entirely. I’m disturbed by myself.
“You know what I think?” My eyes lock on his.
“I think you’re scared. You know you’re planning to leave me.
You know I know you’re lying about doing this together.
And you want to leave something behind. A piece of you I can’t throw away.
” His jaw tightens and guild flickers in his eyes.
“That’s your way of being noble. Making sure I never move on.
Making sure that even if you’re dead, I’m still carrying you.
” I pause. “This isn’t about wanting a family.
It’s about control. You want to make sure I’m yours even if you’re not around to —”
His hand wraps around my hair, yanking my head back. His other hand slaps over my mouth.
“That mouth.” His voice is a quiet threat. “Is going to get you in trouble.”
I try to speak, but he pulls my hair harder.
“You want to talk? Talk when I’m done with you.”
But even as my scalp burns and my heart rate spikes, I’m not sure I’m right.
The guilt in his eyes when I said control was real.
But so was the rawness when he said he’s never had anything that was his.
Maybe it’s both. Maybe he wants to anchor me and love me and control me and claim me and he doesn’t know where one motive ends and the other begins.
Maybe neither do I. Because my body is soaking and my mind is screaming and I can’t tell if I’m furious or turned on and the inability to separate the two is becoming a permanent condition.
He releases my mouth to pick up the underwear I kicked off.
“What are you —”
He shoves them in my mouth. My eyes widen. The humiliation of it sends a pulse through me so hard my knees nearly buckle. He watches my reaction and smirks.
“Better.” He squeezes my jaw to keep the fabric in place. His other hand finds the medical tape above the sink, wrapping it around my head twice, sealing the gag. “Much better.”
He walks me backward out of the bathroom. My muffled protests are ignored and when my knees hit the mattress I fall back.
I want to kill him but I also I want him to never stop.
“Spread your legs.”
I shake my head and mumble something defiant against the gag.
His hands grip my thighs and force them apart. “I said spread.”
I know what he’s going to do. And despite everything we’ve already done, this feels more vulnerable than any of it. I shake my head, pointing downward, trying to remind this psychopath that I’m bleeding.
He looks down and the exposure makes me squeeze my eyes shut.
“I know.” He kneels at the edge of the bed, pulling my hips toward him until my legs are over his shoulders. “I just don’t care.”
His tongue drags through me slowly and I scream against the gag.
The sensation is different — everything is swollen, hypersensitive, the hormonal surge turning every nerve ending into a live wire.
His tongue moves through my folds tasting blood and arousal mixed together and the sound he makes against me — a low, guttural groan of satisfaction — vibrates directly against my clit.
“Fuck. You taste like mine.”
He eats me out like he’s starving. His tongue is pushing inside me, licking through the blood, his lips pulling at my swollen flesh with a possessiveness that borders on worship. When he pulls back to breathe his mouth is red and he doesn’t wipe it, just dives back in.
I’m sobbing behind the gag. My hands are fisting in his hair, pulling him closer even as my brain screams at me to push him away. The orgasm builds fast — too fast, the oversensitivity making every touch exponentially more intense. His tongue circles my clit, sucks, and I shatter.
The scream into the gag is animalistic. My thighs clamp around his head as my entire body seizes. He licks me through every pulse until I’m shuddering, oversensitive, pushing at his head.
He lifts his face. His mouth and chin are smeared red, and his eyes are pitch black. The contrast rewires my entire being.
“Did I say you could come?”
Oh no.
He stands and reaches for his belt slowly. I squirm, trying to close my legs, but he catches my ankle.
“You know the rules.” He wraps the belt around his fist. “You come when I tell you. Not before.”
I shake my head, mumbling excuses against the gag. I’m extra sensitive from the hormones. I couldn’t help it.
“I don’t care.”
The belt comes down on my inner thigh. The sting spreads like fire. I yelp, jerking, and before I can process what is happening, his belt comes down again, on my other thigh. By the fifth, my thighs are welted and I’m crying behind the tape, tears running down my temples.
“Look at you.” He drops the belt and runs his fingers through my folds. “Dripping from being punished.” He pulls his hand away before I can push against it. “Not yet.”
He strips, stroking himself slowly. “You want this?” I nod frantically. “You want me to fill you up again? Even though you’re bleeding? Even though you know what I’m trying to do?”
I nod. I’m nodding and I’m horrified at myself for nodding, but my body doesn’t care about my horror.
“Ask nicely.”
I scream against the gag in frustration.
He laughs satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”
He slams into me with one brutal thrust that fills me completely and the scream that tears through the gag is raw. His hand finds my throat.
“Feel that?” He pulls out and slams back. “That’s where my cum belongs.” Another thrust that hits the end of me. “That’s where my baby belongs.”
The words should repulse me, but my walls clench around him harder than ever.
What is wrong with me?
He fucks me with intent. Every thrust is deliberate, every word is filthy, and every movement is designed to fill me as deeply as possible.
“I’m going to keep doing this, Ivy. Every night.
Every morning. Until it takes.” His hand tightens around my throat.
“Until you’re so full of me there’s no room left for anyone else. ”
I’m so close. Every nerve inside me is burning. His thumb finds my clit and starts circling it. My eyes roll into the back of my head as the orgasm builds.
“Don’t.” His hand cuts my air. “Don’t you dare, Ivy.”
I can’t hold it. The orgasm rips through me violently, making my vision white out. My walls are clenching around him in spasms I can’t control.
His hand lands between my legs. The slap on my swollen, oversensitive flesh sends a shock through my entire body that fuses pain and pleasure into something that has no name.
“That’s two. You’re going to pay for that.”
He flips me face down, pressing my head into the mattress. His cock enters me from behind and the angle hits something that makes my brain go blank. Each thrust drives me into the mattress, the gag muffling sounds I didn’t know I could make.
“You’re going to hold it this time.” His voice is ragged. “You’re going to wait until I’m filling you up. Until my cum is inside you while you bleed on my cock. That’s when you can come. Not before.”
The pleasure is unbearable. I’m biting down on the gag, tears soaking the mattress, hands fisting the sheets.
He’s close. I can feel him swelling inside me.
“Fuck. Your tight cunt, bleeding for me, taking the cock you were made for —” He slams deep. “Now.”
I shatter. My world narrows to just him. His cock pulsing, filling me, the hot rush inside me mixing with the blood. He grinds against me, making sure nothing escapes.
“Ivy.” My name in his mouth sounds like worship and ownership fused into one sound. “Take it. Take all of it.”
He stays inside me for a long moment, breathing and holding me still. When he pulls out, I can feel everything dripping. The sound is filthy.
“Look at that.” His voice is reverent. He spreads me open, watching his work. “Beautiful.” He scoops what’s escaping and pushes it back inside with two fingers. “Can’t waste it.” He adds a third finger. “Every drop stays inside. Where it belongs.”
He reaches for the tape, peeling it carefully, avoiding my hair, and pulling the fabric from my mouth.
I gasp for air. “You —” My voice is wrecked. “— absolute psychopath.”
“Yes.” He kisses me. “Your psychopath.”
I lie on my back with him beside me. We’re covered in blood and sweat. The sheets are destroyed. Again.
He’s on one elbow, looking at me like I’m something holy. His hand comes to rest on my lower belly.
I should set boundaries. Discuss the insanity of what he just confessed.
Make a plan for birth control. Establish that I’m twenty-two and we’re in a war and this is not the time.
But I’m lying here with his palm warm on my skin and the ache between my legs is satisfaction and soreness blended into one sensation, and his words are still inside me.
He wants to make something that can’t be taken away.
“I’ll try every chance I get until it takes.”
I should argue, but I just turn my head and meet his eyes. “I know.”
His smile is feral. The smile of a man who’s gotten what he wanted.
“Good girl.” His hand presses harder on my stomach. “Next time, this won’t be empty.”
“Then stop talking about it and make sure it does.”
His smile widens.