CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RAVEN
He doesn’t speak for a long time.
He just stands there, back rigid, staring at the message that cracked him open like glass under a boot. The screen is still glowing on the floor between us.
She’s not just yours, Damien.
I touched her first.
The room is too quiet. I can hear the hum of the fridge three walls away. I can hear his breathing. Measured. Controlled. A lie.
I know that look.
It’s the same one he wore the first night he touched me, like I was salvation wrapped in sin. Like he wanted to fuck the hurt out of me and make sure it never came back.
But now?
Now he looks like he wants to tear the skin off the world just to see who else has looked at me.
He turns. Slowly.
His eyes land on mine like they belong there. Like they own me.
“Take your clothes off.”
The command slices through the silence like a blade.
My breath catches. “Damien—”
He closes the space between us with three controlled steps, grabbing the hem of my shirt and yanking it over my head in one motion. He doesn’t ask again. Doesn’t explain.
His mouth crashes onto mine like he’s trying to wipe away every other man’s existence.
“He thinks he touched you first?” His voice is ragged, torn from somewhere deeper than rage. “Then let me show you what it means to be owned.”
His hands are everywhere—urgent, rough, trembling with something more than lust. It’s possession. Worship. Warning.
He kisses down my neck, bites into my shoulder, and then licks the bruise like he’s proud of it.
“I would burn down this city for you,” he murmurs, dragging his teeth over my throat.
“I would rip out the lungs of every man who ever looked at you like you were free to take. I’d wear their screams like a fucking crown if it made you feel safe. ”
His hands grip my thighs and lift me—hard.
He drops me onto the table, yanks my pants down, and falls to his knees like he’s praying.
His mouth is fire, his fingers bruising, and I can’t speak because I’m already coming apart—already unravelling from the sheer force of how much he needs to claim me.
“Let them watch,” he growls against my skin. “Let them see how you break for me. Let him know who she really belongs to.”
I don’t get a second to breathe. He doesn’t give me one. He’s fucking me like a storm, like the answer to every threat that’s ever dared to exist. His hands tangle in my hair as he leans over me, forehead pressed to mine.
His voice drops—barely more than a breath. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved that didn’t come with a body count.”
And when I look into his eyes—I know that’s a promise he’ll shatter.
Because after tonight?
The count starts for real.
“You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved that didn’t come with a body count.”
He says it like a confession. Like a threat.
And then he fucking breaks me.
He grabs my face in both hands, kisses me deep—so deep I can’t breathe without him—and then he spins me around, bending me over the table like I weigh nothing. His chest presses against my back, his breath heavy against my ear.
“Say it.” His voice is now cracked open—hoarse and desperate. “Say you’re mine. Say you’ll let me protect you. That you’ll let me fucking destroy for you.”
I can barely get the words out. “I’m yours.”
“Louder.” He grinds against me, letting me feel exactly how hard he is, how much he’s losing it for me.
“I’m yours, Damien. I’m fucking yours—”
He growls—a low, primal sound that vibrates through me—and yanks my panties down, tearing them at the seam like they were nothing. One hand fists in my hair, the other wraps around my throat, pulling me back so I’m arched for him, helpless and exposed.
He doesn’t ease into me.
He shoves in hard, filling me in one brutal, possessive thrust that punches the air from my lungs.
“This—” he snarls, slamming into me again, “is what that message just cost him.”
Each thrust is rougher, deeper. His hips slap against me with the kind of desperation that tastes like vengeance.
“He thought he touched you first? He thought he could threaten what’s mine?”
He buries his hard throbbing cock deep in my pussy, and I scream his name, fingers clawing at the table, legs shaking from the force of it. But he doesn’t stop.
He pulls out, flips me onto my back, and slams back into me without a word—his hand wrapped around my throat again, not choking, just owning.
“I’ll carve my name into your skin if I have to,” he breathes, forehead pressed to mine. “I’ll make sure you never forget who you belong to—even if it kills me.”
“Then do it,” I whisper, too far gone to pretend anymore. “Mark me. Ruin me. I don’t care. Just don’t leave me.”
That’s what breaks him.
He lets go completely.
His hand slips between my thighs, thumb circling my clit with brutal precision while he pounds into me like he’s branding me from the inside out. I cry out, breaking apart in his arms, and he groans, deep and guttural, coming undone with a savage final thrust.
For a moment, there’s silence. Just breath. Sweat. Heartbeats that don’t know how to slow down.
Then he cups my face again, gentler this time.
“I would kill for you, Raven.” He kisses my lips. My nose. My eyelids. “But I swear to God… if anyone else tries to take you from me—” He swallows hard. “I’ll become a monster you’ll never forget.”
And as I lie there, shaking, his cum leaking from between my thighs, my skin covered in bruises and kisses and everything in between—
I realise something terrifying.
I want him to become a monster.
Because that monster is mine.
I don’t know how long we stay there.
My body aches in a heavy, humming way that only happens when someone’s ruined you completely. Damien doesn’t move—just breathes against my collarbone, one arm locked under my back like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.
His hand slides over my hip. Down my thigh. Slow. Gentle.
Like he’s grounding himself in the shape of me.
“He’s still watching you.” His voice is barely more than a whisper.
My heart stutters. “Damien…”
“I let someone get too close.” He exhales, dragging his fingers through the mess between my thighs, then up over my ribs. “I let you think you were safe. That was my mistake.”
He pulls back slowly, then grabs the discarded sweatshirt from the floor and tucks it between my legs. I flinch at the pressure, but he just shushes me softly, brushing his thumb along my cheekbone.
“I’ll clean you properly when I come back.”
I blink. “Come back from where?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just finds my underwear—what’s left of it—and pockets it like a fucking trophy.
Then he crouches beside me, all sweat and blood and wet skin, and kisses my forehead.
“The man who sent that message? He knew exactly what it would do to me. He wanted me to snap. And now?”
He reaches for his coat. Pulls a blade from the lining and straps it to his forearm like it’s second nature.
“I’m going to show him what obsession really looks like.”
I sit up, my heart thudding too loud. “You can’t just go out there—”
“I’m not going to kill him,” he says. Then smirks. “Not yet.”
I scramble off the table, grabbing the sweatshirt to pull around me. “Damien. Stop. Just wait. What if it’s a trap?”
He turns.
And for the first time, I see something raw in his expression. Something close to… guilt.
“It is a trap. And I’m walking straight into it.”
I move toward him. “Then let me come with you.”
He grabs my wrist—fast. Not hard. Just final.
“No. You stay here. You wait for me. If I’m not back by morning…”
He trails off.
I can’t breathe.
“Damien—”
“If I’m not back by morning, lock every door. Burn the fucking building down if you have to. Don’t let him touch you.”
His mouth crashes into mine—hot, desperate, claiming. I kiss him back like it’s the last time I’ll taste him. Because some part of me is terrified, it is.
He pulls away, eyes blazing.
“Don’t forget who you belong to.”
And then he’s gone.
Slipping into the night like a shadow, with blood beneath its nails.