COMMANDED
Prima
“Don’t move.” The voice of the man who’d commanded I call him Greymarch when we were in this place cut through the dim light of the Thorned Thistle’s private viewing room, and I froze with my hand halfway to the door handle.
“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you, Ophelia?”
I hated how he said my real name. Like he knew all my secrets. Like he owned them.
“I need to go,” I whispered, but my traitorous body wouldn’t turn the handle.
“No.”
“But—”
“You’re done running.”
I heard him move closer, felt his heat behind me. He didn’t touch me—he never touched without permission—but I could feel him everywhere.
“He’s looking for you,” the man who could read my every thought said, making my pulse jump. “Downstairs. Prowling the main floor like a hunter.”
“I know.” My voice came out breathy, desperate.
“You left him hard and aching in the library after that little performance of yours.”
My face burned. “It wasn’t a performance.”
“No?” His breath stirred my hair. “Then, what would you call grinding against him while you watched me demonstrate rope work with another submissive? What would you call the way you moaned when I met your eyes across the room?”
“Stop.”
“That isn’t your safe word.”
God help me, it wasn’t. We’d established it three nights ago, when I agreed to this insanity. When I’d agreed to explore what it meant to want two men at once. What it meant to want to kneel for them.
“Turn around.”
I did because I always did what he commanded. Long before he brought me here. It was how he knew. And that was why I needed to leave.
He stood too close, dressed in black leather pants and nothing else, his chest still gleaming with sweat—the laird who’d become the Highlands’ most infamous dominant. The man who saw through every mask I wore.
“You’re scared,” he stated as simply as he’d told me no.
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Of what you make me want.”
His smile was dark, too knowing. “And what about what he makes you want?”
As if summoned, the door opened behind me and someone walked in. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. I could smell his cologne and feel the way the air changed when he entered a room.
“Going somewhere, Prima?” he asked.
My code name on his lips was a reminder of what we were outside these walls. Operatives. Professionals. Not… whatever this was becoming.
“I—”
“She was running.” Greymarch’s distant gaze looked at nothing, yet saw everything. “Again.” He stepped forward, less than an inch from me. My nipples hardened instantly.
The other man moved behind me, trapping me between their bodies. Still not touching, but so close I could barely breathe.
“We talked about this.” His voice was rough. “No running. No hiding. Not here.”
“This is getting too complicated.”
“Because you want us both?” Greymarch asked. “Or because we both want you?”
My breath caught. In three nights of watching, of learning, of careful negotiations, we’d danced around the truth. That this wasn’t just about me exploring submission. It was about the three of us starting something that shouldn’t work but did.
“Tell us to stop,” the man behind me said. “Use your safe word, and this ends. We go back to being colleagues who share a secret.”
I opened my mouth, but the word wouldn’t come.
Greymarch’s leather-clad thigh brushed my hip when he closed the space between us. “Or tell us the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That you’ve been wet since you watched me bind her. That you imagined it was you in those ropes, suspended and helpless while he watched.” Greymarch’s voice dropped lower. “That you’ve been pressing your thighs together, trying to find relief, but what you really need is permission.”
My eyes drifted closed. “Please.” I said the word, unsure what I was asking for.
“Please what?” The voice behind me had gone commanding. “Please let you go? Or please make you stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.” Greymarch’s finger traced my cheek. “You know exactly what you want. You’re just too afraid to ask for it.”
“What if someone finds out? What if—”
“What if you stop living in fear?” he interrupted. “What if you actually let yourself have what you want for once in your perfectly controlled life?”
Hands gripped me from behind. Rough. Less practiced. But no less possessive.
“We’ve been dancing around this for days,” the voice said against my ear. “Watching scenes, talking about limits, pretending this is just curiosity. But we all know what happens next.”
“What?” My voice was barely a whisper.
Greymarch smiled, dark and full of promise. “You choose. Submit to what you want, or walk out that door and we never speak of this again.”
I stood there, caught between them, between worlds, between who I believed myself to be and who I was in this place where masks didn’t matter.
“If I stay...”
“You have twenty-four hours to make your decision. If you stay, then tomorrow night, you’re ours. No more watching. No more talking. Just feeling.”
“Yours?”
“Isn’t that what you want?” The hands on my waist tightened. “Both of us learning exactly what makes you fall apart? What makes you beg? What makes you scream?”
I shuddered. “Yes.” The word escaped before I could stop it.
“Yes, what?” Greymarch’s voice was pure command.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And?” He nodded toward the man behind me.
I turned my head, meeting those dangerous eyes that had haunted my dreams for months. “Yes, Sir.”
His pupils went black. “Fuck.”
“Tomorrow,” Greymarch said firmly. “Here. We’ll be waiting.”
“What should I—”
“Wear something you don’t mind losing.” His smile turned wicked as he stepped away at the same time the man at my back walked to the opposite side of the room. “We have three days of frustrated want to work through. Your clothes won’t survive it.”
The sound that came from deep inside me didn’t feel human.
“Go,” Greymarch commanded. “Before we decide we can’t let you.”
I fumbled for the door handle, desperate to escape before I begged them not to let me go. Before I dropped to my knees and admitted how badly I needed this.
“Ophelia?”
I paused at Greymarch’s voice.
“Touch yourself tonight if you need to. But don’t come. Not until we give you permission.”
The door clicked shut on my desperate whimper.
Tomorrow night, everything would change.
Tomorrow night, I would finally stop running.
Tomorrow night, I would be theirs.