18. Zara
ZARA
T hey straightened my hair, then curled it back up. Like my coils weren’t perfect already in their natural state.
No one asked. No one paused. No one thought about the years I spent learning to love every coil, and kink, that came from my mother’s side of the family.
They just heat-trained it flat and glossy, and called it elegant.
Called it bridal. Like my crown only had worth, if it mimicked something whiter, smoother, easier to digest.
Even now, just minutes after the chapel doors had closed behind us, I could feel the stiff, unfamiliar texture pressed against my neck.
They hadn’t even let me see a mirror, before whisking us off to the upper quarters of the chapel, a private bridal suite Sterling had demanded be prepared in advance. I’d barely had time to breathe.
The dress had come off with the help of two silent attendants, who never made eye contact. My veil was laid on the vanity, like a discarded shroud, and a silk robe was placed at the edge of the bed, its folds neat, impersonal, perfect.
I didn’t get to savor anything. No meal. No toast. No shared glance over candlelight. Just signatures, a kiss I didn’t want, and then this, being ushered into a room where I was expected to bleed for him, like some medieval offering.
The war wasn’t over.
Sterling stood in the doorway like a shadow, his jacket gone, shirt half-unbuttoned, gold chain glinting against his collarbone. There was blood on his sleeve. Dried. Flaked. Not from today. From some earlier cruelty he hadn’t even bothered to wash off.
His eyes were unreadable. "You look tired, wife."
I said nothing.
"You didn’t eat much." He gestured toward the tray, left untouched on the antique table in the corner, saffron rice, roasted duck, and a glass of juice, now sweating against the silver tray. "You picked at the rice. Didn’t touch the duck."
He crossed the room in two strides, lifting the plate, and carrying it back to me, like he wasn’t the reason I couldn’t swallow.
“Sit,” he said, not unkindly, but not gently either. “You’ll eat. And then we’ll talk.”
My stomach turned, but I sat. Let him feed me the first bite, warm and perfectly seasoned. Let him pretend this wasn’t the final act of control for the night.
"I wasn’t hungry."
“I didn’t tell them to straighten it,” he said quietly. “That wasn’t me.”
“Does it matter?” I whispered. “You own the leash.”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t argue.
Instead, he turned, moving to the nightstand, where a single drawer waited open. From it, he pulled a clean, bleached-white sheet. Set it down. Smoothed it out.
The dread started at my ankles, and crept upward.
“Sterling-”
“I told you,” he murmured, voice lower now, “I protect what’s mine. And I don’t let anyone, not even them, question what that means. You’re not a whore. You’re not disposable. Remember to play the game, Zara.”
He pulled a blade from his back pocket. Something small. Sharp. Familiar. He’d used it before. Not on me. But I’d seen what he could do with it.
He dragged the blade across the inside of his palm, not flinching. Let the blood drip onto the pristine sheet.
“Now no one gets to say you weren’t pure,” he said. “No one gets to say this was anything but mine. Not even you.”
The silence after his words rang louder than a slap.
I should’ve run. Should’ve screamed.
But I didn’t.
Because I was tired. Because the world had already taken everything. Because he’d broken me before, and still managed to offer something more than anyone else ever had: permanence.
When he came to me, his body warm and hard, and towering over mine, I didn’t resist. He untied the sash of my robe, and it slipped down my arms like surrender.
My skin prickled from the cool air, my full breasts heavy and bare beneath the dim lamplight, nipples a deep brown that had never been touched without consequence.
He looked.
He worshiped.
He bent and took one into his mouth, slow and deliberate, lips sealing around my nipple, like it was something sacred. His tongue circled once, then again. My hands clenched the sheets, nails biting fabric, breath shuddering.
"You were always going to be mine," he said against my skin.
His hands were rough, but reverent. Trailing down my stomach, cupping the curve where life grew inside me. His mouth followed, lower and lower, kissing a path from navel to thigh.
He parted my legs, with a gentleness that betrayed everything he’d done to get me here.
And when he finally touched me, tongue slow, hands firm, his voice low and thick with hunger, I hated that my body didn’t fight.
It rose for him.
It wept for him.
Because even when I hated him, my body remembered him.
And tonight? It remembered everything.
He didn’t rush.
He slid two fingers between my thighs, testing my readiness, my limits. His breath stuttered against my shoulder, when he found me already soaked, already swollen from his mouth.
“This is what they’ll never understand,” he muttered. “That I didn’t have to break you. I just had to wait.”
I hated him for saying it. Hated that it wasn’t entirely wrong.
Because when he pushed inside me, slow and possessive, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream. I took him like I’d done it before. Like he fit. Like he belonged.
His hips rolled deeper, dragging against my walls, until the breath left my lungs in ragged pulses.
Sterling held my hands above my head, our fingers laced against the headboard. His chain dangled between us, brushing my chin. He fucked me like I was a vow. Like every thrust was a promise, dirty, blasphemous, eternal.
“You want something rough?” he growled, when I bit his shoulder. “Then fucking take it.”
He flipped me without warning, face down, ass raised. Spanked me once, hard enough to sting, soft enough to tease. I cried out, hips jerking, and he laughed low in his throat.
My hands slipped against the silk sheets, but he grabbed my wrists, pinned them behind my back, and drove into me again, harder now, hips smacking flesh with every punishing thrust.
“You’re so fucking wet,” he groaned. “You like this. Say it.”
“No.”
He slammed into me harder.
“Say it.”
“I hate you,” I spat, even as my body shook, with the orgasm curling in my spine.
He bent over me, lips brushing my ear.
“Then hate me while you come on my cock.”
And God help me, I did.
I shattered with his name on my lips, my cries muffled in the mattress, my thighs quaking, as he filled me up and collapsed over my back, teeth grazing the spot where my neck met my shoulder.
For a long time, neither of us moved. Just sweat and silence. Skin on skin.
And then his voice, quiet. Final.
“You’re mine now. In every way that counts.”