Chapter 17 The Art of Beautiful Destruction #2
We’ve always been this way, too rough and too desperate to ever touch gently. Dom leaves marks because he doesn’t know any other way, and I crave them because pain is the only proof he’s mine. When words fail, this is how we understand each other.
His clothes become collateral as buttons pop and fabric tears. The expensive shirt splits down the center, exposing the hard planes of his chest. He slams me into the desk, scattering what little dignity the room has left as papers spill to the floor.
Dom’s belt rips loose, leather scraping through the loops before the buckle crashes against the floor. He pushes his pants down far enough for his cock to spring free, heavy and rigid, and already glistening at the tip.
I should be afraid of this hunger, afraid of him, but fear never comes. I only reach for him, starving to be filled, to drown myself in the one thing that feels real.
He drags the head of his length through my slick folds, a snarl breaking out of him before he thrusts in hard.
The stretch is savage, heat and pressure flooding me until my breath rips free in a broken gasp.
My nails carve into his shoulders as he buries himself deep, forcing me to take every inch whether I’m ready or not.
It’s too much and still not enough, every plunge setting a brutal rhythm that has my body trembling to keep up.
His hand slides to the small of my back, supporting me even as he destroys me.
“I can’t protect you anymore,” he grits out against my skin. “Every time I try, I make it worse. But I can’t—fuck, I can’t let you go.”
“Then don’t,” I whisper, broken against his mouth. My legs lock tighter around him, pulling him deeper until the desk groans under our weight. “Stay. I’ve been yours since the moment you first saw me. I’m already ruined for anyone else.”
His laugh cracks in his throat. “You don’t understand. If I fight him—if I even try to break free—he’ll kill you. He’ll make me watch and I’ll let him, because I’m too fucking weak to—”
I kiss him hard enough to steal the words from his mouth. “You’re mine. And I’m not leaving.”
His grip bruises my hips, holding me down as he drives deeper.
“You think this is noble? Romantic?” The words scrape raw, torn straight from his chest. “I’m poison, Aria.
Everything I touch turns to ash. And you,” his teeth drag along my throat, forcing a moan from me as he thrusts harder.
“You’re the only good thing I have left.
The only thing that still makes me feel human. ”
“Then take all of me,” I whisper. Every kiss, every thrust, every gasp is us dragging the broken pieces together and bleeding on what’s left.
Dom’s teeth sink into my throat and heat floods where he marks me, the sting deepening into something I can’t pull away from. My body twists on the edge of pain and need, and all I can do is take it.
He’s brutal but his hands betray him. Even as his hips drive into me with punishing force, his fingertips trace my skin with reverence.
They glide across my ribs, up to my breasts, cupping their weight with a gentleness that feels obscene against the backdrop of our violence.
Goosebumps spread across my skin in the wake of his fingers.
My eyes flutter closed and I arch into his touch, desperate for more of this contradiction.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I force my eyes open. His gaze is darkness incarnate, grief and lust and rage choking behind his pupils.
My fingers trace the soft stubble on his jaw. “I love you.”
“Fuck,” he grits, forehead pressed to mine as my walls clamp around him. His hand brushes a strand of hair from my face. “You’re everything I don’t deserve.”
My nails drag down his back, leaving bloody lines in his skin. “Harder,” I hiss.
“You want pain?” he growls, but there’s anguish beneath the rage. “You want to feel as broken as I am?”
I nod, tears spilling down my cheeks. None of this makes sense, and it’s the only thing that does.
“You think I like this?” he snaps, dragging me to the edge of the desk. “Think I want to be the monster who hurts you? Who watches you bleed and can’t stop it?”
“You’re mine. You’ve always been mine,” I gasp.
“Everything I did—every fucking bone I crushed—it was to keep you safe. To keep you alive.” His voice breaks on the last word, fingers digging into my skin as though he can hold us together by force.
“I’d watch the whole world burn if it meant protecting you, and that terrifies me because he knows it.
He sees how much I love you, and he’ll use it to destroy us both. ”
Then he flips me, my chest slamming against the desk as he spreads me open and drives back in with one brutal thrust, buried to the base. His lips find my shoulder blade, soft, almost mournful, and it’s that tenderness that undoes me.
“I need you,” I moan.
Dom’s hand finds my throat again, pulling me upright against his chest. His breath scorches my neck as his rhythm stutters. Wetness smears across my skin that might be sweat or tears.
“Say it,” he demands. “Say you’re mine. Say you’ll stay.”
“Always,” I breathe, reaching back to tangle my fingers in his hair. “I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. I promise.”
His fingers slip between my thighs, circling my clit in sharp, frantic motions that send my body lurching toward release.
“I don’t deserve you,” he breathes against my ear. “I never have.”
“You deserve everything,” I choke. “You deserve love. You deserve peace. You deserve to be free of him.”
The climax rips through me like grief, sharp and violent. My body seizes around him, holding him inside, and his groan breaks low in my ear. The rhythm falters, then he drives deep one last time, spilling into me as though he can empty out every part of himself and still never be free.
We collapse onto the floor, tangled and breathless, as if dragged through a battlefield.
And then the real tears come. Not the silent kind, but ugly, gut-wrenching sobs that tear free from my chest, ripping past my teeth as though they’ve been buried for years.
Dom pulls me into his lap, holding me tight, as if his arms alone can keep my pieces from scattering across the room.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair. “So fucking sorry. For ever walking into your life. For not staying away when I should have.” His arms tremble as they tighten around me. “I tried not to fall for you, but I couldn’t stop it. And now look what that love has done to you.”
I cry until my throat is raw and my lungs ache. When I press my palm to his chest, his heartbeat drums against it, fast and terrified. His hands smooth over my back and into my hair, like he’s trying to memorize every part of me.
“Sometimes,” he breathes against my temple. “I wake up terrified I’ve dreamed you. That you’re something my mind made up to torture me with what I can never have. But I open my eyes and there you are, and that’s so much worse. Because our love? It’s a fucking death wish waiting to happen.”
“Stop,” I choke out, fisting my hands in his shirt. “Just stop. You’re all I have left. I don’t want safe. I want you.”
“You shouldn’t. There are worse things than death, Aria. And Kian knows every single one of them.”
I pull back enough to see his face, to trace the hollow of his cheeks, the tension in his jaw. His eyes are still wild with the aftershock, but beneath that rage is something softer.
“Do you know what he wants with me? Why me?”
“I don’t,” he whispers. “Even if I could tell you everything, I still don’t get why it has to be you or why he’s so fucking obsessed. He refuses to explain, won’t say what makes you so special to whatever fucked-up game we’re playing.”
The silence stretches, broken only by the ragged pull of our breathing.
My mind scrambles to assemble the fragments.
The Scorpid’s twisted magic, Luna positioned neatly at Alexander’s side, my parents’ research still continuing after their deaths.
Contracts and secrets tangled into one another, every thread and path winding back to me.
“I need to see Kian,” I whisper against Dom’s chest.
“No.” His whole body goes rigid. “Absolutely not.”
“Dom—”
“I said no.” He jerks back, eyes wild with a fear. “You think you can outmaneuver him? Play his game? He’s been playing this longer than you’ve been alive. He sees ten moves ahead before you even know you’re on the board.”
“What’s my alternative?” I touch his face, and he leans into it. “Sit here while he destroys everything? While he uses you to hurt more people? While I wait to see what Alexander does with Luna?”
“I hate this,” he whispers. “And I hate more that you’re right.”
I stroke his hair, thoughts spiraling. There has to be a way around this. Some loophole, some—
And then it hits, jagged and bright.
Mom’s journal.
The pages scrawled in shorthand and desperation. The Blood Vow—old magic, primal, untouched by the rules of modern contracts. She’d written about it like it was myth, called it a relic from before the collapse.
“What if . . .” I swallow hard. The idea forms even as I recognize how reckless it is. “What if we made a Blood Vow?”
It’s insane. Mom’s notes had been incomplete, full of warnings about how little anyone understood this magic. But then I look at Dom, and I know I’d walk into hell itself if it gave him even a moment’s peace.
A violent shudder racks him. “No. Absolutely fucking not.”
“But it could break the contract, or at least override it. If we’re bound—”
“You don’t understand what you’re suggesting.” He pulls back enough to look at me. “You don’t tamper with a binding contract by layering ancient soul magic on top of it like some half-assed spell patch. That’s how you get yourself killed. That’s how you get me killed.”
“But if Kian didn’t account for it—”
“Do you really believe that?” Dom laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
Only the quiet tremble of a man who’s already done the math and still doesn’t like the answer.
“Kian knows every version of every bond that’s ever existed.
He’s studied them, dissected them, used them.
If we tried it, he’d have built fail-safes.
I could die, Aria. Right in front of you. ”
I flinch. I hadn’t thought Dom would say it so plainly. “Forget I said anything.”
“I get why you did.” His voice softens. “I do. But that’s not the answer. It can’t be.”
“Then what is?”
He doesn’t answer. And that’s the part that guts me. Because either he’s clueless, or he knows exactly what it’ll cost and the price is too steep.
“I’ll see him tomorrow,” I say finally. “If I cooperate, if I play his game, maybe I can convince him to release you from the binding. Show him it’s not necessary anymore if I’m willing to—”
“Don’t be stupid.” Dom’s voice breaks, anger sharpened by fear, and the sound knots my stomach. “Of all the things you could ask Kian for, you’d waste it on me?” His fingers dig into my skin. “You’re smarter than that. We have to be smarter than that.”
“But—”
“Listen to me.” He cups my face between his shaking palms, thumbs brushing the tear-tracks I didn’t realize I’d left.
“Tomorrow, when you’re in that office with him, you think about yourself.
Only yourself. No matter what he offers, no matter what he threatens—you forget about me, about us. Promise me.”
“Dom—”
“Promise me, Aria.” His forehead presses against mine. “Because if you go in there with your heart already bleeding for me, we are both dead before you open your mouth. And if there’s even a sliver of a chance we can outsmart him, we take it. But not if you’re too busy trying to save me.”
“What do I do?” I whisper against his chest.
“Survive.” His arms wrap around me again, this time tighter.
“Doesn’t matter what he throws at you or how this ends—just survive.
That’s the only thing that matters now.” His lips press against my temple, and there’s something final in it.
Like a goodbye he doesn’t want to speak aloud.
“Because if he takes you from me . . .” The sentence breaks off into breath, a sharp inhale that never makes it back out. “Just survive it, Aria. Please.”