CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
RAVEN
The first thing I feel is the blood between my thighs. Warm. Sticky. Already drying and then the ache, the stretch.
The throb in places I didn’t know could bruise, the heat over the brand on my chest, the sting on my thighs, the shape of his hand still fingerprinted in pain along my ribs.
I don’t open my eyes.
I know—deep in the space behind my sternum, the place where prayer used to live—that something has changed.
The weight of the room has shifted.
The air feels quieter but not safe.
The mattress dips beside me, his breath brushes my cheek. I can smell him. Leather. Blood. Smoke. I let his scent wash over me before I open my eyes. I’m scared of what I will see when I do.
Slowly I let my eyes flutter open. One man. Sitting at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, hands stained red to the wrists like he’d dipped them in me. He’s looking at me like he’s watching his favourite painting bleed.
No twin.
No imposter.
No mask.
Just Damien and somehow—that’s worse because my body remembers too.
Two voices.
Two hands.
Two mouths whispering filth like lullabies and cutting me open like worship but it was always one. He fractured himself to fuck me. He split to own me completely.
He moves slowly, crawling up over me, his face soft with something that could be love or madness or both. He brushes my hair back from my forehead, fingers gentle over skin he just carved open hours ago. “Hi, baby.” My lip trembles.
“Where… where is he?” His eyes never leave mine.
“There is no him.” He kisses me. Sweet. Soft. Like I didn’t scream for mercy beneath him. Like he didn’t brand me twice and fill me while I bled. “There’s only me.”
In the deepest, darkest part of myself where fear and lust meet—I know it’s true because the moment I screamed for N…
The moment I begged him to own me…
The moment I came on his cock like a prayer—
I gave it to Damien.
All of it because he didn’t split to hurt me. He split to make me need every part of him. Even the part that doesn’t stop. Even the part that still wants more.
Even now, he doesn’t rush me.
He just stays there—half-kneeling, half-hovering above me like a god come down to rest after the flood, watching his creation tremble under its own ruin.
I want to speak.
To ask him what was real, which voice belonged to the monster and which one I moaned for but my throat is too dry, my jaw too sore, my cunt still fluttering around the echo of him.
I shift and the blood between my thighs slides warm again.
Fresh.
He sees it.
His eyes drop, and his tongue runs across his bottom lip like he’s tasting it again.
“You were beautiful last night.” His voice is lower now.
Not gentle. Like I’m the altar and the sacrifice and the sermon all in one.
“Do you remember what you said to him?” A pause.
“To me?” My mouth parts, but I can’t answer.
I remember crying out his name, unsure which version of him lay hidden between my thighs. I remember saying yours—to a man wearing Damien’s face, voice, soul. I remember loving it.
“You let me break you in half,” he says, trailing his fingers down the centre of my chest, between my breasts, over the new brand—the second one. Still blistered. Still raw.
He presses his thumb into it.
I flinch. Gasp.
He smiles.
“You told me you’d burn for me.” He leans down, tongue brushing the corner of my mouth. “Now you have.”
I shake my head. Tears sting. “You made me choose. You made me think—”
“I made you see who you belong to.” His hand slides lower, palm flat against my belly, pressing down with enough weight to remind me there’s still something inside me.
Still, him inside me.
“And you begged.”
His fingers slip lower.
Between my legs.
I jerk.
But it’s not from fear.
It’s from how fucking ready I still am.
How wrong it feels to want more and how much worse it feels to realise—I do.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers in my ear. “There’s no one left to lie to. No mask. No twin. No escape.” He kisses my throat. “Just me. And you. And the part of you that liked it the most.”
He doesn’t touch me at first.
Not properly.
Just sits beside me like a sculptor with clay still wet beneath his fingers, stroking the inside of my thigh with the same hand that bled me last night.
There’s no rush in him.
No urgency because he already knows the truth.
He doesn’t need to take me again.
He needs me to watch myself want it.
“Up,” he says, tapping my hip.
I blink.
“What—”
“On your knees. Now.”
I hesitate, and he smiles like he loves I still think I have a choice.
He grabs the rope around my wrists and pulls—slow, firm, never rough. I slide up the bed, limbs trembling, chest exposed, thighs wet with the aftermath and then he reaches behind me.
To the wall.
To the sheet that I noticed was covering the mirror.
He pulls it down.
The sheet falls like silence.
And suddenly—I see myself.
Knees spread. Skin bruised. Lips swollen. Brand glowing across my chest like a sigil carved in lust.
I look ruined and I look like I want more.
My stomach twists.
I try to look away.
He grabs my chin.
“No. You watch. You watch every second. You think you begged for a man with two faces? No. You begged for this. You begged for what I become when I stop pretending I ever wanted to protect you.”
He reaches between my legs.
Not to fuck me.
To open me.
One hand parts my thighs. The other rests under my chin, guiding my gaze back to my own reflection.
“Look at how wrecked you are.”
His fingers trail up.
Spread me.
Slide through what’s left of my resistance.
“And look how wet you still are.”
I close my eyes.
He slaps my thigh—just once.
Sharp.
Not angry.
Just a reminder.
“Open. Them.”
I do.
And what I see?
It isn’t horror.
It isn’t shame.
It’s hunger.
Mine.
“Say what you see.”
I don’t answer.
He presses two fingers into me—slow, tight, relentless.
I arch.
He curls them.
“Say it.”
My mouth shakes.
My reflection moans before I do.
“Me.” I choke on it. “I see me.”
“Say it again.”
His thumb circles my clit. Still no rhythm. Still no mercy.
I can’t breathe.
“I see me.”
“What are you?”
He kisses the back of my neck.
Licks the curve of my shoulder.
Fingers curling again.
“What are you, Raven?”
My thighs shake.
My voice splinters.
And I say it—not because I’m broken, not because I’m giving in because it’s true now.
“Yours.”
He doesn’t praise me.
Not when I say it.
Not when I give him the answer he’s wrung from me—“Yours.”
He just hums.
Low. Dark. Like a lion tasting the air right before the kill.
His fingers still curl inside me, slow and deep, dragging along the wall he already ruined last night. My thighs twitch. My hips rock without permission. My mouth opens as if a scream might fall out—But I hold it because I know what happens if I break first.
He stops.
His other hand presses at the small of my back, nudging me down until I’m on all fours in front of the mirror.
Hair a mess. Chest heaving. Blood dried in delicate trails across my hips and thighs, where the cuts still weep when I move too fast.
And now?
Now I watch him move behind me.
Unbuckle his belt.
Push his pants down just far enough for his cock to spring free—already hard. Already dripping. Already twitching like it missed being inside me.
He strokes it once.
Twice.
Then lets it drag across my cunt without pushing in.
“Watch yourself,” he says again.
I do.
And I see it—the way my hips tilt up for him.
The way my mouth parts in need.
The way my reflection begs louder than I ever did.
He grabs the leash—still attached to my collar, still stained with spit and sweat and blood—and yanks it gently.
Just enough to tip my head back.
Just enough to make the mirror show everything.
“You’ll feel me,” he murmurs, the head of his cock pressing at my entrance, “but you won’t cum. Not until you stop looking away.”
I nod.
He slides in.
Slow.
So slow it hurts.
So deep it steals my voice.
He fucks me like a prayer he doesn’t want answered. Long strokes. Deep and precise. Rolling his hips until I feel it everywhere.
My thighs quake.
I cry out.
He reaches forward, yanks my hair back so my reflection can’t escape.
“Say what you see.”
“Me—” I gasp.
“Again.” He pulls out. Slams in.
“Me!”
“What are you?” he growls.
His cock presses against my cervix.
His thumb circles my clit just once—just once—and I almost lose it.
“Yours,” I sob. “I’m yours—please—”
He stops.
Still inside.
“No.”
He pulls out completely.
I scream into the sheets.
He slaps my ass, hard enough to leave a handprint over the bruises from last night.
“Not yet, little moth. You’re not begging, right. You’re still watching her like she’s a stranger.” And he leans in—voice velvet and venom. “You don’t cum until you love her.”
The words echo in my bones—louder than the thud of my heartbeat, louder than the slick sound of my cunt still throbbing for him.
I want to hate him. I want to scream but I can’t look away from the girl in the mirror. Her eyes are wide. Wet. Glazed with need so sharp it should be shame but there’s no shame.
Just hunger.
Just me.
He circles behind me again, dragging something cold along the curve of my ass.
Metal.
Clamps.
I feel the pinch before I see them—his fingers flicking one onto my nipple, then the other, twisted just enough to sting.
I hiss.
My back arches.
“Say it,” he growls, watching my body react like it belongs to him.
“I love her,” I whisper.
He slaps the back of my thigh, and I jerk.
“Louder.”
“I love her.”
“Who is she?”
“Me,” I gasp, chest heaving against the pull of the clamps.
“And what is she?”
He picks up a candle—red wax, nearly gone—and tips it over my lower back.
The wax hits in splashes.
Searing.
Marking.
Claiming.
“Yours!”
Another splash—closer to my ass now.
“Yours. I’m yours. She’s yours. We’re—” I choke.
“Say it right.”
He reaches between my legs again—fingers flicking the vibrator back to life, pressing it against my clit, with the clamp still in place.