Chapter 18 Lena #2
I buried myself in paperwork until the afternoon shadows lengthened across my desk. But no matter how many spreadsheets I reviewed, no matter how many emails I answered, I couldn’t escape the dread building in my stomach.
Evening was coming. And with it, the manor. And him.
The drive back felt shorter than it should have.
Too soon, the gates were opening before me, the manor rising against the darkening sky like something out of a gothic novel.
Stone and shadows and secrets. I parked and sat in my car for a long moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to remember how to be cold.
Just a body. Just a contract. Give him nothing more.
I walked inside.
His scent hit me immediately, stronger now, and I knew he was home. I found him in the library, standing by the window with a glass of whiskey, silhouetted against the dying light.
He didn’t turn when I entered.
“Good evening,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. Professional. Like we were strangers meeting at a business function.
“Lena.”
Just my name. No warmth. No heat. No predatory focus. Just acknowledgment, flat and distant.
Good. This was what I wanted.
So why did it feel like a door slamming shut?
The evening routine began. We had a tense dinner together and afterward, I sat at the piano, playing the pieces he’d requested in our first weeks together. Chopin. Debussy. Music that had once made me feel exposed, like every note was a confession.
Tonight it felt like playing for an empty room.
He didn’t circle me the way he usually did, prowling like a predator assessing prey. He simply sat in his chair, whiskey in hand, and watched. His expression was carved from stone.
When the last note faded, I stood and turned to face him. Waited for the command to strip, for the inspection, for the ritual of dominance and submission that had defined our arrangement.
“Strip,” he said. The word was clinical. Efficient. A checkbox being ticked.
I removed my clothes with the same detachment, folding each piece neatly, refusing to give him the trembling vulnerability he’d gotten from me before. When I stood naked before him, he rose from his chair and approached.
His hands moved over my body with mechanical precision. Checking. Cataloging. No lingering touches, no possessive heat, no whispered promises of what he’d do to me later.
This should feel like victory. He was giving me exactly what I’d asked for. Distance. Boundaries. A transaction, nothing more.
Instead, it was being erased.
“You may go to the bedroom,” he said when the inspection was complete. “I’ll be there shortly.”
I went. Sat on the edge of his bed, naked and cold, and waited. The minutes stretched. When he finally appeared in the doorway, he’d removed his jacket and tie, but he was still dressed. Still distant.
Still a stranger.
The coldness I’d been trying to maintain all day finally gave way, shattering under the weight of his matching ice. Maybe it was exhaustion, or frustration, or the desperate need to feel something other than this terrible numbness.
“Are we going to pretend last night didn’t happen?”
The words came out before I could stop them. He went still in the doorway, his expression flickering with something I couldn’t read.
“There’s nothing to pretend.” His voice was flat. Final. “It was an evening like any other.”
“Bullshit.”
The word hung between us. He looked away.
“Careful, Lena.”
“Or what?” I stood from the bed, suddenly unable to sit still, suddenly too angry to care that I was naked and he was fully clothed and every power dynamic in this room tilted in his favor. “You’ll punish me? Add it to the contract? That’s all this is to you, right? Just terms and conditions.”
“That’s all it can be.”
“Then why did you hold me?”
He flinched. Actually flinched, like I’d struck him. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and something moved behind his eyes. The wolf, fighting to get out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You cleaned me with your own hands. You pulled me against your chest and held me like I was something you couldn’t let go of.
” I took a step toward him. He didn’t retreat, but I saw the tension coil through his shoulders.
“And then you watched me leave. You stood there and watched me walk away and you looked like it cost you something.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?”
Silence. The air between us thick with everything unsaid. His breathing had changed, coming faster now, and there was a strange quality to his stillness. Like the beast inside him was straining against a leash.
“This conversation is over.” He turned toward the door.
“No.” I closed the distance between us before I could think better of it, grabbing his arm.
The muscle beneath his shirt was rigid, trembling with some internal battle I couldn’t see.
“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to kiss me like you’re drowning and I’m air, hold me like I matter, and then pretend it was nothing. ”
“Let go.”
“Make me.”
His eyes flashed. For a moment I thought he would. Thought he’d shake me off, walk out, leave me standing naked and foolish in the middle of his bedroom.
Instead, he went completely still. His jaw worked. A vein pulsed in his temple. And then his expression cracked, vulnerability surfacing for just a second before he slammed it shut again.
“You don’t understand,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.” The word came out rough, almost pained. He was staring at the wall over my shoulder, refusing to meet my eyes. “There are things about me you don’t know. Things I can’t tell you.”
“I’m not asking for your secrets.” I softened my grip on his arm but didn’t let go. “I’m asking why you’re so determined to pretend you feel nothing when we both know that’s a lie.”
Something rippled across his face. His eyes squeezed shut, and for a moment he looked like a man fighting a battle on two fronts. His free hand came up to press against his chest, fingers digging in like he was trying to hold something back.
“Raphael.”
His name in my mouth seemed to break something loose. When his eyes opened again, they were darker than I’d ever seen them. Wilder. Like something behind them was clawing for control.
For one heartbeat, I thought he would finally be honest. Finally admit what we both knew.
Instead, his expression hardened into something cruel.
“You want to know what this is?” His voice dropped, cold and sharp as a blade. “Fine. I’ll show you.”
He moved so fast I didn’t have time to react. One moment I was standing there, hand on his arm. The next he’d spun me around, bent me over the foot of the bed, my cheek pressed against the cool silk of his comforter.
“Raphael, what—”
“You wanted to know what you are to me.” His hand pressed down between my shoulder blades, holding me in place. “A body. A contract. Something I own.”
The first slap landed on my ass before I could respond.
I gasped, more from shock than pain. The sting bloomed hot across my skin, radiating outward in waves.
“This is what you signed up for.” Another slap, harder this time. “This is what you sold me.”
“Stop trying to—”
A third slap cut off my words. My hands fisted in the silk. Heat was building where he’d struck, spreading down between my thighs despite every rational objection my brain was screaming.
“Stop trying to what?” His voice was mocking now. “Stop trying to remind you of your place? Stop trying to make you hate me?”
The fourth slap was the hardest yet. I cried out, my back arching involuntarily, and I felt something shift in my body. The pain was transforming into something else. Something my traitorous flesh recognized and wanted more of.
“That’s it.” His voice dropped lower, satisfaction threading through the cruelty. “Your body knows what it needs even if you won’t admit it.”
“I hate you.”
“Good.” Another slap. “Hate me. It’s easier that way.”
He set a rhythm then, alternating cheeks, varying the intensity. Some strikes were sharp and punishing. Others were almost gentle, just enough to keep the heat building. My skin burned. My pussy was getting wet against my will, slick and swollen and aching.
I tried to hold onto my anger. Tried to remember that this was manipulation, that he was pushing me away on purpose, that every cruel word was designed to make me feel exactly as worthless as he claimed I was.
But my body wasn’t listening.
“You’re dripping.” His fingers slid between my thighs without warning, gathering the evidence of my arousal. “You can tell yourself you hate this. We both know the truth.”
“Fuck you.”
“Eventually.” He pushed two fingers inside me, and I moaned despite myself. “But not tonight. Tonight, I’m going to make you come like this. Bent over my bed like the possession you are. And then I’m going to remind you exactly what you mean to me.”
His fingers worked me while his other hand kept spanking, the dual sensations overwhelming my ability to think. Pleasure and pain braided together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
I tried to fight it. Tried to hold back the orgasm building at the base of my spine, climbing higher with every strike, every thrust of his fingers.
“Don’t you dare hold back.” His thumb found my clit, circling with brutal precision. “You’ll come when I tell you to come. That’s the only choice you have.”
“I won’t—”
“You will.” Three more slaps in rapid succession, perfectly timed with the pressure on my clit. “Now. Come now.”
My body obeyed before my mind could resist. The orgasm crashed through me, violent and humiliating and so intense my vision went white. I screamed into the silk, my inner walls clenching around his fingers, my ass burning from his hand.
He didn’t stop. Kept working me through it, drawing out every last tremor until I was boneless and shaking.