CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
I step out of the tub and reach for a towel. My fingers brush the edge of the towel hanging neatly beside me—soft, safe, even expected.
But I don’t take it.
The air kisses every inch of my bare skin, cool and brazen, a sharp contrast to the heat still curling low in my belly. My pulse drums in my ears as another thought slides into my mind and roots itself there.
Walk to him like this.
Naked. Shaking. Unable to hide from any of it.
Let him see what he already owns.
Not as a prisoner.
But as a woman making a choice.
I draw in a slow breath, spine straightening, and let my hand fall from the towel. The decision tastes bold on my tongue.
And without a second thought, I open the door and step into the hallway toward the man who had promised to wait.
I cross the threshold of his room slowly and find him standing at the foot of his bed. Mask on. Arms crossed.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t speak.
But something shifts in the air between us. It catches in my lungs and holds me there, suspended, trembling without touching.
His gaze roams over me with the kind of hunger that doesn’t need hands to feel like possession. That mask should’ve hidden him. Instead, it makes him more—more shadow, more myth, more predator. A silent god of restraint, daring me to misstep.
I am still dripping. Water clings to my skin like a prayer, sliding down my thighs, my calves, pooling quietly at my feet. Every droplet echoes in the silence.
Still, he doesn’t move.
"Say something," I whisper, but the words don’t sound like a plea. They sound like a challenge.
He cocks his head, and when he finally does speak, his voice is low, lethal silk.
"You made your choice."
Four words. That is all.
Then he uncrosses his arms and takes one step forward—just one—but it punches all the air from my chest.
I hold his gaze, breath shaking, heat coiling tighter between my legs, already slick again despite the bath. My body is answering a summons that hasn’t yet been spoken aloud.
"You came to me like this," he says, each word careful and unhurried, as though he was etching them into my skin.
"Dripping. Daring. Disobedient."
A pause. His thumb slides beneath the edge of his mask.
My mouth parts, but no sound came out. He steps closer. I don’t back up.
Not this time.
His fingers ghost over my collarbone, leaving fire in their wake. "You look like temptation."
"I’m not sorry, sir" I breathe.
"You should be."
He walks around me, slow and circling, letting the silence work me open. A single knuckle trails down my spine, then lower, brushing the top of my ass.
"You wanted to be seen," he says behind me. “So now you will be.”
And then he is in front of me again. Towering. Still masked.
“On your knees.”
The command isn’t loud.
But it hits me like thunder.
I sink.
He doesn’t touch me—not yet—but I can feel his heat, his control, his approval…and it soaks into my skin like something holy and profane.
His hands find my jaw, gripping it firmly as he tilts my face upward toward the mask. The hollow black openings where his eyes should be give nothing away, and somehow that makes it worse.
I can’t see his gaze.
But I feel it anyway—hot, unwavering, fixed entirely on me like something that refuses to let go.
Then he steps back, sliding onto the edge of the bed, legs spread wide like a predator ready to strike. His fingers curl in a slow, deliberate beckon.
“Now crawl.”
I drop to all fours, the cold floor biting into my skin, but I don’t hesitate. Shame is useless here. There is only hunger, raw and fierce. Only heat. Only him.
I should have been scared.
But I’m not.
Because I know that mask. I know what he would do once I gave him my surrender.
Or so I thought.
Every inch closer to him is a lesson in submission and exposure. The ache of vulnerability ripples through my thighs, trembling not with fear, but fierce anticipation. My breath comes in sharp, quick gasps.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, voice thick with possession. The cool cruelty I had come to expect is there—but something deeper too. Something hungry, something almost…human.
“You needed this,” he says, voice tight with control.
I lift my head instinctively, gaze meeting the hollow black openings of the mask.
What’s behind them feels different tonight—wilder, less contained, almost painfully raw.
“Yes,” I whisper, voice rough. “I needed you.”
He inhales sharply, like my words strike him somewhere deep and private.
Then his hand tangles in my hair pulling my head back until my throat is bare and exposed. His other hand slides along my neck, fingers trailing with reverence and authority, not softness.
“You think you know who I am,” he says, voice taut with steel and something darker. “But you have no idea what I’ve done for you.”
My lips part, confusion mingling with the heat flooding me—but it vanishes the moment he yanks me forward between his legs.
“Prove it, then,” I breathe. “Claim me.”
That is all it takes .
He rises with brutal strength, hauling me up with him. Walking me until my back slams against the cold wall. His mouth doesn’t seek mine—not fully—the mask still a cruel barrier.
But that doesn’t stop him.
His mouth hovers at my throat, the cool edge of the mask dragging over the sensitive skin there. I shiver as the hard structure grazes my collarbone, my pulse thrumming wildly beneath it.
And then—pressure.The masked mouth presses against my neck, firm and possessive, like he wants to imprint the shape of it into my skin.
“You feel that?” He rasps, voice rough steel. “That’s me—branding you without ever taking the mask off.”
His lips don’t need to touch bare skin to own me. His teeth don’t need to bite to mark me.
He has control.
And control could break a woman more completely than any kiss.
The mask slides down, grazing the swell of my breast, tracing the delicate curve of my sternum. My spine arches, bare and unashamed, aching for more.
“Still bold?” He murmurs, voice low and commanding. “Still hungry?”
I nod, breathless, trembling with want.
“Then stay exactly where you are.”
And I do.
Because something about the way he holds me—restrained me with the mask still between us—feels more powerful than anything I’ve known.
He can’t kiss.
So he devours me another way.
“Please, sir. No mask,” I whisper before I can stop myself. “Just show me you.”
It slips out—quiet, trembling, a truth I hadn’t meant to voice.
His grip falters.
Only for a second.
His fingers twitch around my wrists, a slight, almost imperceptible shift—but I feel it. Like the moment before a storm breaks.
Then it is gone.
Replaced with force.
His hold tightens again, colder now. His voice drops, all warmth stripped from it, leaving only authority.
“No,” he says—flat, final, icy. “You don’t get that.”
A moment passes.
“Not yet.”
He releases one of my wrists only to drag his hand down the center of my chest, slow and possessive, stopping just above my navel. His masked face hovers near mine, close enough for his breath to fan over my cheek.
“You asked to be seen. Not to see.”
A shiver rips through me—because beneath the control, I hear something else. Something that aches.
Longing.
Regret.
And yet he doesn’t waver.
“You wanted the Warden,” he says, as if the words cost him. “So that’s what you’ll get.”
Then he drops to his knees.
Without warning, he pushes my legs open and presses his masked face between my thighs.
The porcelain is cold at first. Hard. But he moves it like a weapon—rocking against my core with slow, torturous precision. The textured ridges along the front of the mask drag across my clit just enough to send my hips bucking.
I cry out—shocked by the suddenness of it. By the brutality.
He holds my thighs apart with both hands, keeping me wide open for him, while he grinds his masked face against me again. And again. Until the friction has me panting and twisting under him, my body aching for more contact. More anything.
He uses the hard edge of the mouthplate, then the bridge of his nose beneath the mask, then the sheer pressure of his jaw, moving his head in steady, angled strokes—building a rhythm that is maddening and dirty and all-consuming.
“You wanted this,” he growls, his voice vibrating through me.
He never even touches my clit directly, and still I am coming undone, every muscle locking tight as my back arches and my cry splits the room. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t ease up.
He works me through it—mechanical, relentless, merciless.
When it is over, I collapse, gasping, the taste of tears at the back of my throat.
And yet…
The way he holds me afterward—hands still firm, mask still pressed to the inside of my thigh—it doesn’t feel like the Warden at all.
It feels like someone who has waited far too long to touch what he thought he’d never be allowed to have.
Someone who watches me like I am his only salvation.
Someone who is breaking right along with me.