CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
DAMIEN
She’s still sleeping—or pretending to. Either way, I don’t move.
I just sit there on the edge of the bed, watching the rise and fall of her breath under the black sheets—my sheets—her throat wrapped in my collar, red wax still flaked across her skin like dried petals after war.
She twitches in her sleep, not from fear but from memory—of me, of us, of the things I became to make her mine: the surgeon, the priest, the shadow that kissed her beneath the water.
All of them still echo inside me like ghosts with her name on their tongues.
And now, I don’t know which version of me she dreams about—or which one she wants to wake up to. My hand hovers just above her hip, where the last brand healed clean, darker now against skin pale with surrender. I don’t touch it, because I don’t know what I’ll do if I do.
I gave her everything—my obsession, my discipline, my ruin—and she gave me hers in return: body, mind, soul. Now that she’s finally mine, I wonder what I’ll become if I stay—or worse, what she’ll become if I don’t.
She stirs again, eyes still closed, mouth parted the same way it was when I told her to say goodbye to her name—to who she was—and she did. Willingly. Begging. Smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever loved her more than I did in that moment, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid of what I’ve made.
She shifts again, slower this time—intentional.
Her lashes flutter, lips part, her breath stutters when she realises I’m watching her.
But she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t reach for the collar, doesn’t scramble for space between us.
She just lies there—bare, beautiful, and ruined in the way only I understand.
“Are you awake?” I ask softly.
She nods once, and I don’t miss the way her thighs tense under the sheets—like she thinks I’m going to reach for her again. Like she wants me to.
I don’t.
Instead, I speak the question that’s been chewing through my ribs since she came for me. “Do you want me to stay?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She licks her lips, eyes still locked to mine. “Are you going to leave?”
The question isn’t fragile; it’s curious—like she wants to know what version of me she’s waking up to. And I don’t blame her.
I stare at her for a long moment, my pulse slow and measured, but everything in me is screaming because I don’t know how to be anything but hers now. I don’t know how to be with her as just one man, either.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and folding my hands. “I could walk away. You’re broken in all the right ways now. You wouldn’t chase me.”
She shifts onto her side. The sheets fall from her shoulder, exposing the collar, the bruises, the blood-washed aftermath of everything I did to her—everything she asked me for.
“No,” she says simply. “I wouldn’t chase you.” A pause. “I’d wait.”
My heart kicks once, hard. “Why?”
Her eyes don’t blink. “Because if you left, you’d still come back. You’re mine too.”
And there it is—the answer I didn’t know I needed. She doesn’t say it as a threat; she says it like a promise, and something inside me ruptures.
She’s not the only one who gave her soul. I did too—and now she wears it better than I ever did.
She moves again, slower this time, eyes still on mine like she’s trying to see past all the versions of me she’s already survived. No fear. Just focus. And then she reaches for me—not the leash, not the sheets, me. Her fingers brush my wrist, tentative but deliberate.
“Come here.”
It’s not a plea. It’s not an order. It’s something in between—soaked in everything we are, everything we’ve done, and everything we’ll never take back.
I sit still for a breath too long, then I move. I slide forward, let her pull me onto the bed, let her guide me down beside her—not on top, not inside, beside—and that alone is enough to make something in my chest tighten.
She’s warm, soft, bruised in every place I made her mine.
But her touch—gentle. My head hits the pillow; she turns, curling against me, one leg tangling over mine, her arm wrapping around my ribs like she’s the one protecting me now.
And maybe she is, because I can’t remember the last time someone touched me without asking for something back—but she doesn’t.
She just holds me.
“You always come back,” she whispers. “Even when you leave. Even when you hide behind the others.”
I say nothing, because she’s right. Because she knows. She saw every mask and still begged for the man underneath.
Her lips brush my shoulder. “So stay.”
And for once—I do.
I don’t hurt her. I don’t command her. I just lie there, held—and finally, for the first time since I tore her open and fed on her worship, I feel human.