Chapter 10 Elias
ELIAS
The steel door booms shut.
The sound carries a finality that settles in my marrow—a four-inch slab of reinforced metal sealing us away from the Feds, the Costas, and the chaotic noise of the Clubhouse upstairs.
The locking mechanism engages with a heavy, hydraulic hiss followed by three distinct clanks.
I usually count them to find my center, but the numbers don't bring me peace tonight. They’re just background static.
The only thing that matters stands right in front of me.
Mia.
She leans against the nearest bank of servers, the blue LED lights from the towers casting an artificial glow across her features.
She looks wrecked. Beautifully, thoroughly wrecked.
Her hair is a mess from the wind outside the Cozy Cup, her lips are swollen from where I kissed her in front of half the town, and she’s still clutching the master key I gave her like it’s a lifeline.
It is a lifeline, but not for her. It’s for me.
"Elias?" Her voice is soft, echoing slightly in the acoustic dead zone of the Vault.
"Lock it," I command, my voice grinding like gravel in a mixer.
She blinks. "I... you already locked it."
"The manual override," I say, closing the distance between us. "Throw the bolt, Mia. I don't want anyone getting in. Not Logan. Not Shane. Not God himself."
She doesn't hesitate. Her hand reaches for the red lever next to the keypad and shoves it down. The secondary deadbolts slam home with a sound akin to a gunshot.
Perfect.
We are sealed in. Sanctuary. A breeding ground.
I close the gap in two strides. The air in here is filtered and sterile, usually smelling of ozone.
Now, it’s thick with her. Grapefruit. Salt.
The sharp, intoxicating musk of her drenched pussy.
She’s already soaked for me, the scent filling the sterile air.
She is the woman who took my black-and-white world and bled neon pink all over it.
"The audit is over," I tell her, crowding her space until her back hits the humming server tower.
She looks up, her eyes wide. "We balanced the books. We cleared my name."
"I don't give a shit about the books."
I burned eight months of my life's work for her. I rewrote history with a fountain pen and a bottle of ink just to keep her out of a cell. I would do it again. I would burn the whole damn clubhouse down if it kept her warm.
"You're not going anywhere," I growl, bracing my hands on the metal casing on either side of her head. "You have the key, but you're never using it to leave me."
"I know," she whispers. Her pulse thumps violently in her throat. I track the little flutter of skin—thump-thump, thump-thump. I could calculate her heart rate by sight alone.
Instead, I lower my head and press my mouth to that pulse point. She tastes like syrup. She tastes like she belongs to me.
"Tell me," I demand against her throat. "Tell me who you belong to."
"Elias..."
"Say it." I bite down, not gently. I want to leave a mark. A brand. "Say it so even the shadows inside this cage can hear you."
"Yours," she gasps, her hands gripping the front of my cut, bunching the leather. "I'm yours."
That word snaps the last thread of my restraint.
I hook my arm under her knees and lift her. She yelps, wrapping her legs around my waist instinctively. She’s small, but she feels substantial against me. The only variable in my equation that has ever equaled happiness.
I carry her to the steel worktable in the center of the room. This is the same table where we spread out thousands of invoices, where we found the mirror hack, and where I took her in the dark when the power died.
But the lights are on now. I want to see everything.
My arm sweeps across the surface, sending pens, notepads, and a stack of blank refined ledgers crashing to the concrete floor. Let the order be destroyed.
I set her down on the cold edge of the table.
"Spread them," I order.
She does. She leans back on her hands, the metal biting into her palms, and spreads her knees wide.
She’s still wearing my oversized black flannel shirt, the one she’s been drowning in since the siege.
It’s the only thing she has left after I shredded her clothes three days ago.
She has nothing on underneath—no lace, no silk, just bare, pale skin that’s already marked by my hands.
I hate that she has to wear anything at all.
I drop between her legs, my hands shaking from a hunger so violent it feels like I’m starving to death with a banquet in front of me. I grab the hem of the shirt and shove it up to her waist.
The sight of her bare and completely exposed for me violently snaps the last shred of my control.
I sink my mouth into her, my tongue a relentless weapon.
She screams, a sharp sound that bounces off the steel walls.
I don't give her time to adjust, feasting on her pussy. The sound of my wet laps echoes off the steel walls as her clit swells under my touch. The need to taste exactly how much seed she’s ready to take drives me.
I count the hitches in her breath. Knowing exactly where to touch and exactly how much pressure to apply is effortless.
I audited her body days ago, memorizing every sensitivity.
She tastes sweet. Drenched. Ready.
Her hips buck off the table, her heels digging into my shoulders. "Please. Elias, please."
"Please what?" I growl against her wetness.
"Need you. Inside. Now."
The demand overrides the logic centers of my brain. It shuts down the tactical analysis. Strategy is dead; there is only conquest.
I stand up, unbuckling my belt with hands that feel too large and clumsy. My cock is a thick, leaden weight, engorged and leaking pre-cum as it strains against my zipper. I’m aching to be buried to the hilt in her heat.
I step between her legs again. She reaches for me, her small hands wrapping around my thick length, guiding me. Her touch burns.
"Wait," she pants, her eyes glazed. "Protection. Do we—"
I grab her hips, digging my fingers into her soft flesh, bruising her. "No protection. Not ever."
Her eyes widen. "Elias?"
"I told you," I grate out, my forehead resting against hers, our breaths mingling in a hot cloud. "You're permanent. This isn't a 72-hour contract. You're my Old Lady. You're my wife."
"We're not married," she whispers, but she’s not pulling away. She’s leaning in.
"Paperwork is irrelevant," I dismiss. "The math is already done. You plus me equals forever. I'm putting my seed in you, Mia. I'm filling you up until there's no room for doubt. Until there's no room for anything but me."
She shudders. A full-body quake that I feel through my grip on her hips. "Yes."
That one word seals her fate.
I don't wait. I thrust into her.
Deep. Hard. To the hilt.
She screams again, throwing her head back, her neck arching in a beautiful curve. I stretch her pussy, fill her, claim her. The sensation is blinding. This is absolute. This is ownership.
"Mine," I roar, withdrawing almost all the way before slamming back in.
"Oh God, Elias!" She wraps her legs around my waist, locking her ankles and pulling me deeper.
"Look at me," I command.
She opens her eyes. They’re swimming with tears, dilated and dark.
"You feel that?" I grind my hips against hers, hitting that spot deep inside her that makes her toes curl. "That's me. That's your husband. That's the father of your children."
"Yes," she sobs. "Yes, yes, yes."
I set a rhythm that punishes the table. Clang. Clang. Clang. The steel rattles with the force of our coupling. I am an animal. I am feral. I’ve spent six years being the quiet one, the stoic one, the one who sits in the corner and crunches numbers while my brothers brawl and fuck and fight.
No more.
I am the storm now.
Grabbing her tits, I knead the soft flesh until my fingerprints are branded into her skin.
I need to feel her clenching around me, stretching wide to accommodate every inch of what belongs to her.
Marking her everywhere is the only option.
Bending down, I suck a bruise onto her neck, right over her jugular.
A warning sign to anyone who looks at her. Property of the Treasurer.
"I love you," she cries out, her nails digging into my scalp.
The words hit me in the chest, shattering the last of my defenses.
"I love you," I snarl back. "I love you so much it makes me sick. I count the seconds when you're not in the room. I count your breaths when you sleep because I'm terrified one of them will be the last. You are my chaos, Mia. You are the only variable I can't control, and I love you for it."
I pick up the pace. Faster. Harder.
The friction is unbearable. The heat in the room is rising, the air growing heavy and thick. I can feel my release building, a tidal wave of pressure at the base of my spine.
"Cum for me," I order. "Take it."
She falls apart. Her inner walls clamp down on my cock, milking me, squeezing me in a rhythmic spasm that drives me over the edge.
"Elias!"
I groan, a low, guttural sound that rips from the bottom of my lungs. I bury myself in her one last time, holding her hips in a vice grip, and I let go.
I pour my seed into her in scalding, heavy ropes.
Hot. Heavy. Endless.
I spend every drop of my cum, filling her pussy to the brim until she’s overflowing with my claim.
I want her to feel the weight of my seed deep in her womb, a permanent reminder that the Treasurer has balanced her books for good.
It goes on and on, wave after wave of pleasure that whites out my vision.
I’m shaking. She’s shaking. We are vibrating at the same frequency, two dissonant notes finally finding harmony.
I collapse forward, resting my weight on my forearms so I don't crush her, burying my face in the crook of her neck. My heart is hammering against my ribs. One-hundred-sixty thumps per minute. Dangerous. Lethal.
Perfect.
We stay like that for a long time. The only sound in the Vault is our ragged breathing and the drone of the cooling fans. The smell of sex is heavy—musk and sweat and the metallic tang of the room.
Slowly, the world starts to seep back in. The cold of the steel table against my forearms. The harsh tremor in my thighs. I’ve completely ruined my spare flannel shirt.
I don't care.
I pull back, smoothing her hair away from her damp forehead. She looks devastating. Her lips are red and swollen, her eyes heavy-lidded and sated.
"You okay?" I ask. My voice is still wrecked.
She nods, a lazy smile stretching across her face. "I think you rearranged my internal organs."
"Good." I kiss her nose. "Let's get you cleaned up."
"Wait." She grabs my hand as I try to pull away. "You said... you said wife."
I freeze. The adrenaline is fading, but the resolve isn't.
"I did."
"Did you mean it?"
I look at the woman who walked into a federal trap for me. The woman who committed a felony to save my club. The woman who let me breed her on a steel table in a panic room.
"Stay there," I say.
I pull out of her—a wet, messy slide that makes me hiss—and zip my jeans. I walk over to the far wall, to the heavy tool chest where I keep my equipment. Not guns. Tools. Calipers. Files. A micro-torch.
I open the bottom drawer.
The small velvet pouch sits there, stolen from the display case at Peak Wilderness Outfitters. I didn't steal the ring, though. I made it. I finished filing the steel while she was sleeping.
I grab the pouch and walk back to her.
She sits up, clutching the front of my oversized flannel together, her head tilting as she tracks my every move. I stand between her legs again, ignoring the mess we made.
"I don't do gold," I say, my voice steady. "Gold is soft. It bends. It’s valuable, yeah, but it's weak."
I open the pouch and tip the ring into my palm.
It’s not delicate. It’s a band of high-grade 316L stainless steel.
Industrial. Surgical. I spent three nights filing it down, polishing it until it shone like a mirror.
I heated it, hammered it, tempered it. Inside the band, I engraved a sequence of numbers.
Not a date. Coordinates. The exact GPS location of this Vault.
"This is steel," I tell her, holding it up. "It doesn't bend. It doesn't break. You can bang it against a filing cabinet or dip it in acid, and it won't change. That's what I want. That's what we are."
Mia stares at the ring. Her eyes fill with tears. "Elias..."
"I measured your finger," I remind her. "It's a size six. Exactly."
She laughs, a wet, choked sound. "You creep."
"I'm a thorough creep." I take her left hand. Her fingers are slender and ink-stained. Beautiful. "Mia Carlson. I'm keeping you. I'm claiming you. I'm making you mine in every way that counts."
I slide the ring onto her finger.
It fits perfectly. I don't make mistakes with numbers. The cool metal slides over her knuckle and settles at the base of her finger. It looks right. The dark, polished steel against her pale skin. A promise.
"Marry me," I say.
She looks from the ring to my face. "Yes."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "Good. Because I wasn't asking."
She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me down for a kiss. It’s gentle this time. Sweet. A promise of a thousand mornings to come.
"So," she whispers against my lips. "Does this mean I get a raise?"
I snort. "You're the CFO now, baby. You can pay yourself whatever you want."
"I just want the Treasurer." She tightens her grip on me. "And maybe, eventually, a cabin on the ridge."
I lift her off the table, holding her close, feeling the warmth of her body seep into my cold, gray soul.
"You got him," I promise. "You got all of him. And I'll build you whatever house you want."
I carry her toward the leather sofa in the corner of the Vault. We have work to do. We have to tell Logan. We have to deal with the Feds. We have to figure out who was behind the mirror hack.
But right now?
I check my watch.
"We have six hours left on the lockdown," I say.
Mia grins, trailing her hand down my chest. "Whatever shall we do?"
I catch her hand and kiss the steel ring on her finger.
"I can think of a few variables we haven't tested yet."
The world outside can burn. The Costas are broken, and the Feds are buried in my artistic forgeries. Inside this Vault, the math finally works.
Mia is mine.