Chapter 32 #2
“Non-negotiable.” He didn’t let her finish. “You’ve lied too many times, Winters. Privacy isn’t a privilege you still have.”
The humiliation scraped raw against her ribs, but she didn’t look away.
“I decide when and how we meet,” he continued, unforgiving. “If I call, you answer. If I say come, you come.”
"That's not control, that's—"
"Command," he finished for her, his eyes cold. "You gave that up the second you chose me."
Katherine’s hands curled into fists in her lap. Each word tightened the grip he had over her—reminding her exactly what this cost.
“At work, it’s ‘Mr. Sinclair,’” he said. “Nothing else.”
The words hit harder than they should have. A title like a locked door, slamming shut behind everything they’d once shared.
“You answer anything I ask. No dodging. No edits.
No strategic silences.” He didn’t lean in. Didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. The weight of his restraint was the threat.
Katherine shifted in her seat, the air between them strung tight as wire.
Her voice came softer now. “You’re not going to use it against me… right?”
Ben’s smile curved—slow, quiet, merciless.
“Depends on what you give me.”
Silence followed—dense and absolute.
She glanced away. Just a flicker. But it was enough.
He’d seen it. And he’d marked the win.
“Even if it hurts?” she asked, barely more than breath.
His answer came without pause. “Especially then.”
His eyes moved over her face, then returned—sharper than before. “You sit where I can see you. Always. No corners.
No distance.”
A chill slipped under her skin. “Why?”
"I want you where I can fucking see you," he said simply. Like that explained everything.
The words landed low—hot, sharp, and mean. She couldn’t tell if it was fear or fury tightening her chest.
She doubted he could, either.
Was this strategy? Control?
Or something else—something raw, possessive, and far more dangerous.
Whatever it was, it hung between them like static. And God help her, it made her pulse misfire.
She watched him closely. He wasn’t negotiating—he was declaring war. And she was the territory.
“I decide when the past matters,” he said, voice flat, final. “You don’t bring up the club. Not the Crimson Bloom. Not what happened there.”
Her breath caught.
“That part of you?” he leaned in, gaze like a blade. “The one you hid behind silk and shadows? She’s mine now. I decide when she exists.”
Katherine’s spine snapped straight. Her fists clenched, but he didn’t blink.
“You want to forget her? Fine. But don’t use her—not as a shield, not as leverage. Don’t weaponize what you became when the lights went down.”
He paused—just long enough to let the next words hit like a punch.
“The way you moved. The things you whispered. The way you begged?” His mouth curled—not a smile, but something colder. “Mine.”
The room pulsed with silence, taut and waiting to snap.
“And if I choose to remind you?” His voice dropped, low and dangerous. “I will. But you don’t get to remind me.
That power’s not yours to use.”
Katherine said nothing.
Because she understood exactly what this was:
A leash.
And he’d just pulled it tight.
“If you try to quit,” Ben said, his tone quiet as a knife,
“I walk. No warning. No second thoughts.”
His stare didn’t waver.
“And your father’s case?” He let the pause stretch until it cut. “Buried. Just like they buried the truth with him.”
Her lungs felt too small, her breath like shards.
“This only works with both of us,” he added. “But if you bolt? I won’t come after you. I’ll just let him rot.”
He held her in place with nothing but silence, then added, voice low and lethal:
“If you miss a call or show up late, you owe me. And I decide how that debt gets paid.”
The vagueness of the threat sent a chill down her spine.
No limits. No specifics. Just consequence. And the tension of not knowing.
She exhaled shakily, trying to hold the line, even as her pulse thundered in her chest. This wasn’t just control.
This was punishment.
A way to remind her, every damn day, what her choices had cost her.
“And stop looking at me like that,” he said, voice rough—scraping low in his throat, like it cost him something to speak.
Katherine blinked, caught off guard. “Like what?”
His gaze dropped—to her mouth, then lower. Slow. Precise. Devastating.
When their eyes met again, the heat there stole the breath from her lungs.
“Like you’re still thinking about my hands on you. Like you want me to pin you down right here and remind you exactly how well I know you.”
Her pulse kicked. Hard.
“And the worst part?” he added, leaning in just enough to pull the air from the room, “You’re not even hiding it.”
Heat rushed beneath her skin. She opened her mouth—to deflect, to deny, to speak—but nothing came.
Because he was right.
And they both knew it.
“One more thing,” Ben said, his voice cold. “You’re not mine.”
A beat. Tight. Measured.
“But no one else touches you.”
Katherine’s spine went rigid. A chill ran through her despite the heat between them.
Ben’s gaze locked hers, voice turning lethal and low.
“Go ahead. Let someone else touch you. Let them fuck you.”
He smiled—slow, merciless.
“I’ll ruin them.”
It wasn’t bravado.
It was certainty. And she felt it in every nerve ending.
In her chest. Her throat. Between her legs.
Katherine stared at him, breath caught, pulse jagged beneath her skin. Every condition he’d laid out still echoed inside her—no lies, no secrets, no one else. His voice wrapped around her like silk pulled tight at the throat.
The room felt smaller now. The air thick with heat and threat, impossible to breathe. He didn’t move. He didn’t need to.
He was a storm in stillness.
And she—God help her—wasn’t running.
She should have.
She should’ve stood, thrown his terms back at him, walked out and never looked back.
But she didn’t.
Because she needed him.
And that was the most dangerous truth of all.
Not just his reach. Not his power.
Him.
The man who once stood in a courtroom and tore corruption apart with nothing but truth and rage. The man who now sat across from her, holding both her ruin and her salvation in two steady hands.
The man who had stripped her bare with a stare—and fastened rules around her neck like a collar.
Her throat worked. Her heart pounded.
And still—she nodded.
Because walking into hell with Ben Sinclair?
Still felt safer than standing in it alone.