Chapter 24
T he river loft had its own weather. Morning light slanted off the water in sheets, painting the walls gold. The hum of the tide slipped through the old windows, and every creak of the wooden floor felt alive. It should have been peace. It wasn’t.
I woke with his weight still on my skin.
The memory of his mouth, his hand closing over my throat, the way he had stripped me until fear itself turned to fire.
My thighs ached in a way that made me blush even lying still.
My chest felt raw from how many times he’d pulled sound out of me, relentless, until I had nothing left to hide.
I should have been terrified. In some ways, I was. What scared me wasn’t what he had done, but how I had met him there. How much I had wanted it. How much my body wanted more.
Atticus came out of the shower in nothing but a towel slung low. He carried himself like a man who knew he was dangerous and didn’t need to prove it. His eyes caught mine, sharp, already reading me.
“Lady.” His voice was rough silk. “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”
“Maybe I am.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, hand curling around my ankle. His thumb dragged slow across the inside, a move so simple it burned. “Tell me.”
I swallowed. The words wouldn’t form. So instead I asked, “What happens if you lose control?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “With you?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down, mouth close to my ear. “I won’t.”
But the air around him said he could. Easily. It was the balance that both steadied me and kept me awake at night.
Before I could press, his phone vibrated on the counter. He glanced at the screen, jaw flexing. He stood, answering with a curt, “Talk.” His voice dropped lower, clipped, words too sharp to catch. Then: “No. She doesn’t leave. Handle it.”
His gaze cut back to me when he hung up. The look was unreadable.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“That’s exactly what makes me worry.”
His mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Then let me distract you.”
He dropped the towel and came back to me naked, heavy, already hard. Possession lived in the way he kissed me, pressing me back into the mattress, stealing every coherent thought until I was gasping under him.
He spread me wide, hands pinning mine to the mattress. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I’m yours. I mean it.”
His thrust made me cry out. He took me hard, rough, his mouth at my ear murmuring filth and praise in equal measure. “Good girl. Look at me. Take me. That’s it.”
It scared me how much I liked it. How much I needed the way he used me until I wasn’t thinking about birth charts, invoices, or my mother’s voice in my head.
Only him. Only now.
When I shattered, it felt like falling and being caught at once. He followed, groaning into my throat, holding me down like the world could break apart and we’d still be locked here.
After, when I could breathe again, I whispered, “You terrify me.”
His hand smoothed over my ribs, steady. “And?”
“And I don’t want you to stop.”
The corner of his mouth tipped. He kissed the top of my head like it was a promise.
Later, he let me doze while he took a call on the balcony. I watched him through the glass—barefoot, phone to his ear, the tattoo at his neck dark against the light. His stance was calm, but the air bent around him. Whoever was on the other end had their world rearranged in a few sentences.
A knock at the door snapped me upright. Atticus was inside before the second one. He pressed a finger to my lips.
Silent.
He opened the door to a man with a split lip and panic in his eyes. The man’s words tumbled out fast, too quiet for me to hear, but I caught the fear. Atticus’s face went still. He stepped into the hall, door closing sharp behind him.
I sat frozen on the bed, heart pounding. I told myself not to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it. I pressed my ear to the door. Muffled voices, Atticus low and even, the other man pleading. Then the sound of something—flesh hitting wall, a grunt. My body went cold.
The silence after was worse.
When the door opened, Atticus stood there, expression unreadable, blood on his knuckles. My stomach lurched.
He saw the way I looked at him. He stepped forward, slow, like I was a skittish animal he refused to chase. “It’s handled.”
“What was that?” My voice cracked.
“Noise,” he said. His gaze softened, but it didn’t hide the steel underneath. “Not your burden.”
“You hit him.”
“I reminded him,” Atticus said. “There’s a difference.”
I shook my head, breath shaky. “Do you even hear yourself?”
His hand cupped my face, thumb stroking slow across my cheek. “I hear you. That’s why I’ll never let it touch you.”
The words steadied me and scared me more at once.
This was becoming too much.
That night, lying in his arms with the river breathing outside, I couldn’t stop thinking about the mothers I worked with.
Women in labor, their faces lit with exhaustion and triumph.
The little boys I’d watched draw their first breaths, red fists clenched, already fighting.
Did their mothers hope they’d grow into men like Atticus—men who could hold the world still with one hand, who inspired both terror and devotion?
And the little girls. Would their mothers want them to grow into women like me? Women who built something with their bare hands, then handed pieces of themselves over to a man who could darken a room just by standing in it?
The questions gnawed at me.
Atticus stirred, hand sliding over my stomach. “What are you thinking, Lady?”
“That I’m not sure I’m the woman mothers want their daughters to be.”
His mouth brushed my temple. “You’re exactly the woman I want you to be.”
“And if that’s not enough?”
“Then they don’t matter,” he said. “Only you do.”
But I wasn’t so sure. Doubt was creeping in.
In the early hours, another knock came. This one louder. Atticus moved fast, gun in hand before I could blink. My blood ran cold.
I hadn’t even known he had a gun. It made sense, I guess. I just hadn’t thought about it.
He cracked the door. Two men stood there, shoulders squared, eyes hard. Words hissed between them, low and urgent. One of the men looked past him, saw me in the shadows, and smiled—a sharp, wrong thing.
Atticus shifted instantly, blocking the line of sight. “Not here.” His voice was steel.
They argued. I couldn’t catch the words, but the air vibrated with threat. Finally, Atticus stepped into the hall, door closing behind him.
I sat on the bed, heart in my throat, pulse so loud it drowned the world. I told myself to stay put, but every nerve screamed that something was breaking.
Minutes later, Atticus came back in. His jaw was tight, but he put the gun down calm, deliberate. He came straight to me, hands bracketing my face.
“Safe,” he said. Just that one word.
My body trembled. He pulled me into his chest, anchoring me. “You’re safe.”
I clung to him, every muscle quaking. “I don’t want to live in fear.”
“You won’t,” he promised, voice a low rumble against my hair. “Not with me.”
He ruined me again before dawn, this time slower, more deliberate.
As if he was proving that even in the shadow of danger, his possession was steady, his control absolute.
He whispered that I was his, kissed me until the fear bled into fire again, until I forgot the knocks and the blood and the shadows.
When I came undone, it was with his mouth at my throat.
When his breathing evened out beside me, mine didn’t. My body was loose and used, but my mind stayed clenched tight.
I stared at the ceiling until the patterns in the plaster blurred.
I thought of the mothers again, the way they looked at their babies like they were brand-new miracles and also brand-new vulnerabilities.
Those boys with their tiny fists—would their mothers want them to grow into men who kept guns by the bed, who broke jaws and called it reminding?
And those girls, slippery and wailing in their first breaths—would their mothers hope they’d become women like me, pressed against glass by a man who terrified them in ways they couldn’t stay away from?
The answer twisted in my chest.
I slipped out from under his arm. He stirred but didn’t wake. I moved quiet, each floorboard groan loud in my ears. My clothes were still half-tangled in a pile, smelling like sweat and river air. I pulled them on with shaking hands, not bothering with neatness.
The loft felt different all of a sudden. Less sanctuary, more cage. The windows that had framed the river looked like escape routes now. The water slid by, steady and indifferent, while my pulse raced.
I realized with a jolt that I’d barely been back to my own house.
My bed still held the shape of nights I hadn’t slept in it.
Mail was probably stacked behind the door.
Plants I’d sworn I’d water were either thriving without me or giving up.
I’d let his loft swallow whole days and nights without noticing.
At the door, I hesitated. My tote leaned against the wall, exactly where I’d dropped it. My phone sat inside. I pictured Stephen’s name lighting the screen, or Mom’s, or Alana’s. I pictured myself lying when they asked where I was, who I was with.
I couldn’t keep lying.
I pressed a palm to the door, the wood cool under my hand. Behind me, Atticus shifted in his sleep, a sound low in his chest that made me ache even as it hardened my resolve.
I loved the way he touched me. I loved the way he made my body feel alive. But the rest—the knocks, the blood on his knuckles, the men who smiled wrong when they saw me—that was too much.
I turned the knob slow. Stepped into the hallway like I was crossing into another version of myself.
The air outside was damp. Dawn crept pink over the river. My chest loosened just enough to breathe.
I didn’t run. I walked, steady, down the stairs and out to the street. Every step felt like pulling threads free from a net that had been cast without my permission.
I told myself I needed space. Just space.
But the hollow in my chest said what I really needed was to remember who I was before a dangerous man decided to call me his Lady.