CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE #3
Once he dries me off, brushes and braids my hair, provides me with water and painkillers, and dresses me in one of his button-ups, we move to the library.
He orders Chinese food because during a meeting, I mentioned it was my favorite.
So, over eggrolls and wine, he feeds my soul and gives my exhausted body a sanctuary to recuperate, snuggled beside him on his love seat.
Even shirtless and wearing a pair of gray joggers, he’s the Axel I’ve come to know, stoic and brilliant, as we discuss literature and history, music and iconic films—things that skirt the fringes of our unstable reality.
And occasionally, when I surprise him by knowing an obscure artist, book, or movie, he glows with what must be teenage giddiness buried deep inside him.
It wrenches my stomach for the fourteen-year-old boy who was exploited by the same monster who strangled the life out of my vibrant mother.
For all the years he endured, all the burdens he carried, all the childhood lost. For all the ways he determined not to only run his father’s empire differently, but to raise his siblings with the love and stability he’d never had.
It stokes a burning ambition in me to keep that glee at the surface of this stalwart man.
Despite that, I wait for him to drill me about my mission, to demand that I divulge what I was hired to find, or even to rebuke me for killing Shep, for this night to be tainted by choices I can’t undo.
But he doesn’t. The reprimand and interrogation never come.
That thought sends me in another direction though. “You’re a Dom. That’s what you like, right?”
“Yes,” he says, swirling the cognac in his snifter since he switched from wine, “but that term is broader than what most realize. And this—what we’re doing—is all new for me. I like having you submit, but I don’t need you to. I want you, Zara. Your spirit and fire.”
“I don’t think there’s any getting rid of that,” I tease. “But I want you too. And I want to … understand. Explain it to me.”
For a still beat, I fret that these types of conversations only enforce how much younger I am, but then I realize he would have been just as schooled in these topics in his twenties and even his teens. He grew up around a sex club, like I grew up around killers.
He sets his glass on the coffee table and drapes my legs over his, holding me close.
“I’ve never been the type of Dom who finds joy in inflicting pain for the sake of inflicting pain or who seeks control because intimacy and arousal only unfold then.
If that’s what you needed, I’d provide it with pleasure because it served you.
But for me and many Doms, power and dominance are synonymous with servitude.
In all my relationships, I want to be worthy of the trust and loyalty I demand.
Even if someone I care for isn’t concerned about their health, future, or emotional needs, I am. I can carry it.”
“Like your Atlas tattoo,” I summarize, realizing I already suspected this about him.
He slants his head, debating that assessment. “In part, yes.”
“And who helps you when you’re weary?”
“I don’t—” He stops abruptly, surveying me with an expression I can’t completely discern. “Are you volunteering, little Thorn?”
I burrow my head in the crook of his neck, melting into his solid strength. “I would be honored.”
He takes my wineglass from me, scoops me into his arms, and strips us both down before he tucks me beneath his heavenly sheets, climbs in beside me, and tips my face to look at him in the silvery moonlight.
“I want nothing more than to have you stand beside me. But I need you to promise me that if things get hard, if there’s something confusing or painful, we approach it together.
You come to me first. Because you know nothing would come before you. ”
Nothing would come before me. I think we both know that is a bold statement. He’s still hiding things, and not even I know who I work for or what I could be facing.
But even the notion of him viewing me as a partner warms me, so I offer honesty with a positive slant. “I’ll try.”
His sapphire eyes shimmer like a moonlit ocean, daunting with enigmatic depths, but still swirling with hope. “We could practice. In a more exciting way, have some fun. If you’re open to it, I’d like to play, to cram our days with so much anticipation that it radiates from us.”
My core tightens with the type of anticipation he’s suggesting. “I want that too,” I whisper. “Like what you described in the conference room.”
He keeps his face impassive, aside from the feral set of his jaw. “You do?”
Propping myself up on my elbow, I ruminate on how much I crave something that isn’t life or death, that frees me and clutches me in the same breath.
“I’ve been lonely for a long time. Lost. But with you, even with how screwed up everything is, I feel desired, like I have a purpose.
So, yes. I want that—not only because you want it.
I like submitting, being led. It’s … freeing. ”
His answer is a kiss, savage and sultry and pleased.
“You are so desired, and you won’t be alone ever again.
We’ll discuss more specifics tomorrow. Tonight, you need rest.” He pulls my body flush against his, but his steel-rod dick prods my abdomen, and my nipples harden, and his chest rumbles with a growl.
“You’ll rest soon. But I need you once more, darling. ”
That’s all the warning I’m given.
Flipping me onto my stomach so I’m lying straight with a leather pillow wedged beneath my clit—the one he used the first night I was here—he crosses my ankles and plunges inside me.
He fucks me deep and slow, goading me to chase that friction.
And it’s that small detail that has me exploding in minutes—the indecency of grinding myself against a pillow.
Finding gratification in something tinged with shame is a feat I can’t manage in the rest of my life.
But Axel knows. He just knows what I need. And he forces me to take it.
We spend the rest of the night levitating between sleep and ecstasy, nightmares and fantasies. Maybe it can’t last, and maybe I can’t be his in public, but for now, I’m alive. I’m his.
And until I have to fight for my freedom, I want to be owned by the Noire king.