Chapter 15 #2
I want more, and I want less. I want her closer, but I also want her gone.
My hand twitches at her throat, and the thought hits me so fast it almost knocks the air out of me, how easy it would be to press violently.
Not enough to break her. Just enough to stop her breathing and knock her out, for real.
Just enough to remind her, and myself, that I’m the one in control.
Because of this feeling, this burn in my ribs, this quiet, terrifying ache to be seen by her?
It’s a weakness, and I don’t do weakness.
So I imagine taking it back and taking her back, crushing the softness until all that’s left is silence—crushing her throat with my palm until the life leaves her eyes.
But she sighs again, innocent, trusting, and it undoes me. I don’t move. I just hold her, sliding my palm down to cup her breast. My jaw clenched, fingers curled, fighting the part of me that doesn’t want to hurt her at all.
My cock pulses inside of her, loving the idea that I’m taking her and she doesn’t even know it. I pull back slightly to shove myself further inside of her.
I feel her flutter around my cock and let out a gasping breath, finally waking. How tight her body gets with the shock of registering that I’m inside of her is intoxicating.
I squeeze her throat as a warning, but she surprises me, grinding her hips back into my pelvis. She shoves me deeper with her little desperate thrusts.
“Look at your hand, darling,” I whisper in her ear, thrusting in and out of her at a slow pace, savoring how she ripples on my cock. I memorize the wetness gushing down the side of my shaft and coating my pelvis between us.
She’s so goddamn perfect.
“Hayden, what the fuuuuuuuuck,” she moans out, looking at her hand, but grinding back on my dick.
“That’s right, darling, adjust to the size of it all,” I pant in her ear, increasing my pace, causing her steady breathing to hitch. “If you ever take them off, I’ll end your life. No warnings, no second chances. I’d rather bury you in them than see you without them.”
Her breath catches. She reaches up, fingers brushing the emeralds at her throat, then the ring, slow, intentional.
“You’d kill me?” she says, voice low, laced with something softer than fear. Her lips curve into the faintest smile as she moans out and comes on my cock. “That’s fine…I’d die for you.”
Martine Lilian Herron
I wake up to stillness.
Not silence, there’s the faint rustle of leaves outside the window, the distant hum of the grounds below, but that other kind of quiet. The kind that lets me know I’m alone.
The sheets are soft, warm against my skin, and tangled all around my tanned legs. But the space beside me is cold.
He’s gone.
Even before I look, I know it. There’s no pressure in the mattress where he should be, no breath but mine echoing in the vastness of this room.
I sit up slowly, the silk sheets slipping from my chest. The room yawns around me, impossibly large, old, beautiful, a little cruel. Hayden's bedroom is the one room in the house I’ve never explored, and it feels... arranged.
My eyes fall to the nightstand.
A white porcelain dish. A cup of coffee, still steaming. A perfect fruit bowl, featuring papaya, strawberries, and blackberries, so ripe they look artificial. And a note, heavy cream paper, folded once. I reach for it with fingers that feel oddly heavy.
His handwriting is crisp and surprisingly elegant.
On assignment, urgent. I’ll return soon. The pill isn’t optional.
-H.
I stare at the words. I reread it, this time at a slower pace. The pill isn’t optional.
But we both know everything is a choice.
My eyes flick to the pill. Perfectly placed in the center of the dish like a prize, the same muscle relaxer as last time.
I don’t touch it.
Instead, I breathe.
Coffee first. I lift the cup, still warm—a quiet luxury, decently hot in my hands.
The porcelain kisses my lip and—
That’s when I see it.
The ring.
On my finger.
I freeze, the cup halfway to my mouth. My breath catches. I just stare at the massive emerald, deep green in the early light, set in a cage of diamonds. The kind of piece that feels less like jewelry and more like a declaration. It doesn’t belong to me. It couldn’t.
But it’s there, fat and shiny, on me.
Hayden must’ve slipped it on in the dark last night. I can’t remember. Everything after the fireplace, the wine, and the intensity of our dining table declaration is a blur. The middle of the night is a mix of skin, shadow, his breath on my neck, and then nothing clear until now.
I twist my hand in the light, mesmerized. It doesn’t even look real. It appears to be something stolen from a museum or passed down through generations. And now, it’s mine. Or...his. On me.
The diamonds catch the sun and scatter it across the ceiling. I want to take it off, terrified at the weight of it, but I know better.
I sip.
It’s strong, black, exactly the way I take it. Of course.
I feel an unfamiliar weight at my neck and reach up to feel a large collar of emeralds at my throat, circling the base of my neck. I tug at it with one hand, trying to find the clasp, but I fail. Was this his other gift?
It’s clearly a matching set. I glance at myself in the vanity mirror across the room. It’s as beautiful as the ring, and I can’t help but gasp at it in the mirror. They’re breathtaking, and something in how tight they are around my neck just screams ownership.
This is a collar. I’ve been collared and married by Hayden Herron. And instead of allowing it to terrify me, I simply gulp and return to my coffee. If I stop to think about the truth of what this all means, I may finally crumble.
I sip again. It steadies me, but it doesn’t answer any of the questions I have. The pill stares back at me.
I remember my mother’s bottles. She never called them pills. She called them helpers as if they were little spirits assigned to carry her through the day. Cyclobenzaprine. Diazepam. Carisoprodol, later, when things got worse.
She always looked…happy. Not just on them, but in them, like they were rooms she could live inside.
Relaxed, radiant in that foggy kind of way.
I used to lie on the rug of our great room and watch her float through the house in her robe, a martini in one hand, a half-smile on her lips that never seemed to reach her eyes.
I reach for the pill and pinch it between my fingers. It’s lighter than it looks. A ghost of something dangerous wrapped in a white shell.
My stomach tightens as I roll the pill across my tongue. I chase it with coffee. The warmth doesn’t soothe me as much as I want it to. It just spreads the unease. The coffee cup clinks back down on the saucer. The pill dish is empty now. I sit very still, waiting.
Moments later, I feel my body relax, and the pain I felt in my behind while sitting up has dulled.
The mansion feels too quiet. Not peaceful, sterile. Like it’s waiting, too, I pull the sheet tighter around my body and stare across the room. The fireplace is just grey ash. His cufflinks are still on the dresser. His absence hums like a sound only I can hear.
I hate how calm I feel.
Maybe that’s the pill.
This isn’t the first time.
Not this pill, exactly, but something similar. A muscle relaxer? A sedative? An anti-anxiety cocktail meant to smooth the edges of the day, or the decisions he’s made in my absence. Whatever it is, I’ll feel it soon. Not all at once, but slowly, like a warm hand at the base of my spine.
I think about my mother again.
How happy she looked in the afternoons. The gin. The soft voice. The way her eyes would glaze, not with sadness, but with something worse, acceptance.
Back then, I thought she was glamorous. Elegant. A little tragic. Now, I see it for what it was.
I hated it, watching her disappear by degrees. But this, me, now, it’s the same, isn’t it?
Only I’m not disappearing. I’m becoming what Hayden wants.
And the worst part? I feel good doing it.
There’s a twisted kind of safety in surrender. It makes everything easier. It strips the need to question, to plan, to worry. He decides. I comply. I still get the illusion of elegance. I still wake up to silk sheets, black coffee, and carefully arranged fruit bowls. And now…a pill.
A single white dot on a porcelain dish. Small. Silent. Absolute.
It was never optional.
Not really.
And I took it anyway.
Hayden Herron
The door clicks shut behind me with a satisfying finality. Three locks. Always three. I didn’t need them, not really, but rituals mattered. They marked the threshold between the outside and this…sanctum.
The estate is safer than the Federal Reserve.
Between everything I’ve had to do, I have no choice.
I roll my shoulders once, a sharp crack cutting the silence as I drop my bag beside the table. There is still blood on my knuckles from my visit to see Douglass. Dried. Barely visible unless you look closely. I didn’t bother washing it off.
At first, it was easy to find information about Martine's mother, although it was annoying. Why the Brotherhood had me chasing a woman who would just become a ghost was beyond the reasoning I could comprehend. My obsession with Martine threw me further into the investment I’d usually lend to an assignment.
I was graduating this year and had paid my dues in bodies and blood.
I’d killed enough men and women for them to prove my dedication.
Sure, I had a conscience when I was younger and felt like I would never recover from my first assignment—to kill a woman.
I learned quickly, conscious or not, that an assignment was a requirement to be carried out swiftly and without remorse.
It had to be completely clean, or you would be taken out for not finishing the job.