CHAPTER THIRTY
RAVEN
He looks different like this.
Still. Quiet. Human.
No mask.
No mirrored door.
No blood on his hands or a leash in his fist.
Just him.
Just… Damien.
His chest rises and falls in slow, even breaths. One hand curled near his face, the other still resting on my waist like he can’t stop touching me—even in sleep.
I watch the way his brow twitches. The way his lips part like he’s dreaming something he’ll never tell me and I wonder if it’s about me.
About the moment I screamed his name as I drowned. The moment I said goodbye to who I was. The moment I gave him everything—willingly.
I should feel used. I should feel ruined but all I feel is full.
His fire melted down and reforged every version of me that ever flinched. I trace a line down his ribs with my fingertip. Soft. Barely there but he twitches. Even in his sleep—his body knows mine.
I lean in. Breathe against his jaw. “You look peaceful,” I whisper. “But we both know you’re not.”
He stirs.
Eyes flutter.
I don’t stop.
“You wore all those faces to break me.” My fingers press against his chest, just above his heart. “But I think you broke yourself, too.”
He doesn’t open his eyes but he hears me.
I know he does.
His next breath isn’t soft. It’s shaky and his hand on my hip tightens like he’s afraid of what I’ll say next.
So I whisper it into the space between us like a spell. “If I belong to you…Then you belong to me too. No masks. No roles. Just you.”
He still hasn’t opened his eyes but I feel a change.
The breath that catches.
The muscles that tighten just beneath the skin.
The stillness that isn’t peace—it’s restraint.
He’s awake.
Fully but he’s letting me speak first.
Letting me touch first and maybe that’s the biggest surrender of all.
I shift, slow and deliberately, swinging a leg over his hips until I’m straddling him.
My body hums from the ache—but I don’t care.
Not after everything we’ve done.
Not after everything I’ve survived inside him.
He swallows.
His jaw flexes.
Still silent. Still. Still his.
My palms press to his chest, dragging down over the flat plane of his stomach. His skin jumps beneath my touch.
I smile. “You’re mine too,” I whisper again, slower this time.
Let it sink into his skin. Letting it cut. His cock is already hard beneath me, pressed against the slick heat between my thighs but I don’t move. I just lean down and kiss his throat.
Soft. Possessive. Fucking earned.
He finally speaks—voice hoarse. “You think you can handle me without the masks?”
I sit back.
Look down at him.
Tilt my head.
“I already did.”
His mouth twitches. Like the doesn’t know if he should laugh or throw me against the wall but he doesn’t move. So I do.
I reach between us, wrap my fingers around him, and guide him inside. Not fast. Not rough. Just enough to make us both feel it. The stretch. The slide. The surrender.
I sink down, inch by inch, and his breath punches out of him but I don’t let him move. I press a hand to his chest.
“No.”
His eyes open then.
And what I see?
Isn’t Damien.
Isn’t the surgeon. Or the priest. Or the executioner.
It’s all of them.
And none.
Just him.
Raw. Unshielded. Mine.
And I say it again.
“You’re mine too.”
His cock stretches me perfectly. Full. Deep. Familiar but this time, I don’t grind down on him. I don’t whimper. I don’t beg. I just sit there—hips lowered, walls fluttering around him, watching the tension climb his throat like a threat.
His hands grip the sheets.
Not my waist.
Not my throat.
Not my leash.
Because he knows.
He knows this moment isn’t his to lead.
It’s mine.
I roll my hips once. Slow. Deep.
His jaw clenches.
I do it again.
And again.
Each movement deliberate.
Torturous.
Not to tease.
To remind him.
Of the woman who bled for him.
Came for him.
Burned for him.
And now?
Owns him.
He hisses through his teeth.
“You’re playing with fire, little moth.”
I lean down, palms against his chest.
“You lit it.”
Another roll of my hips.
I clench around him. Hard.
He groans—low and raw, like it’s breaking free from somewhere deep in his spine.
I kiss the corner of his mouth. “You dragged me into your hell. Now, lie still and burn with me.”
He laughs—but it’s not amusement.
It’s surrender.
“Fuck.”
I ride him deeper, slower, circling my hips until his back arches off the bed. His hands tremble against the sheets. He won’t touch me. He’s holding on to the last thread of control.
And he knows the second he lets go—I win.
I kiss his throat again, and murmur: “Say it.”
His eyes lock with mine.
Dark. Blown. Devoted.
“I’m yours.”
I don’t stop.
I don’t speed up either.
I keep the rhythm cruel—slow and deep, dragging my hips just enough to make his cock pulse, just enough to make his breath stutter with each pass of my soaked cunt over every nerve he used to destroy me and I watch him.
Really watch him. His lips parted. Jaw clenched.
Chest rising too fast to hide the ache. He’s trying to hold on.
To stay in control. Not to give me what I’ve already taken.
I lean down, hair falling over his cheek. “You’re close, aren’t you?”
He swallows.
Doesn’t speak.
I clench again around him.
Grind down once.
Just once.
And he groans—loudly.
“You can’t cum without my permission, can you?”
His hand shoots up to grab the headboard.
Fist tight.
Knuckles white.
But he doesn’t answer.
I rock again. Slower.
Slower.
His hips twitch. He wants to thrust.
To fuck.
To take it back.
But he doesn’t.
This is mine.
He gave me the match.
I lit the fire.
I drag my lips over his jaw. “Say it. Say you need to cum.”
His voice breaks. “Fuck—Raven—”
I stop.
Still fully seated on his cock, walls fluttering around him, his tip throbbing so hard I can feel it in my spine.
“Say it.”
His breath punches out.
A growl. “I need to cum.”
“Who owns your pleasure?”
His eyes lock with mine. “You do.”
I press my palm flat against his chest. Feel his heart hammer and I utter the words he once whispered to me when I was broken and begging: “Not yet.”
His eyes widen when I say it.
“Not yet.”
And I watch it happen—that beautiful rupture.
The muscle in his jaw ticks. His abs tighten beneath my palms. His cock twitches inside me like it’s begging without words but he doesn’t move. He holds perfectly still beneath me.
“You’re doing so good,” I whisper, fingers trailing down his chest, over the scar I once kissed in confusion. “Look at you, holding back for me. Breaking for me. Just like I did for you.”
He groans—the kind that sounds like surrender and sin and suffering all braided into one beautiful breath.
I roll my hips again—once. Deep. Slow. Let him feel every inch of how wet I am. How wrecked he made me. How much I still want more.
His head tips back. Throat exposed. Chest rising like he’s trying to breathe through the fire.
I drag my tongue along the hollow of his throat, then bite down, just enough to make him jerk. “Still not yet.”
He makes a sound as if he’s going to argue.
I silence it with a kiss.
Not sweet.
Claiming.
Filthy.
Mine.
And then—I ride him harder.
Just enough to push him to the edge again.
Just enough to make his thighs shake.
Just enough to feel the pulse of his orgasm threatening at the base of his spine.
And I whisper: “Now.”
His body detonates.
He thrusts once, twice—loses it completely.
His hands finally grab my hips, dragging me down onto him as he cums—hard, hot, deep, spilling inside me with a growl that sounds like he’s dying and thanking me at the same time.
I watch his face as he falls apart.
Open. Raw. Unmasked.
His eyes flutter shut. His mouth parts and for a second, I think I see all of him—every version.
Every single one is mine. He’s still inside me. Soft now. Spent. His hands are slack on my hips, thumbs twitching like he wants to pull me closer but doesn’t know if he’s allowed to anymore.
His chest is slick with sweat. His throat bitten raw. His eyes half-lidded and too honest.
I just rested there, my hands against his chest, my body trembling with the aftershocks of everything we just did—everything we survived to get here and for the first time, I’m not afraid of what comes next.
I’m not afraid of what I’ll see when he opens his eyes because there’s nothing left to hide behind.
No priest.
No surgeon.
No monster in the dark.
Just Damien.
Just me.
Just this.
His eyes flutter open.
They meet mine and for a second, neither of us breathes.
Then, his hand slides to the back of my neck.
No leash.
No pressure.
Just touch.
His thumb grazes my skin, and he speaks— “You never belonged to the dark, Raven.” His voice is low. Almost broken. “You were made to carry it.”
My throat tightens but I don’t cry. I lean in, rest my forehead against his, and whisper back: “Then don’t you dare run from it.”
His breath catches and this time—he’s the one who nods.
We stay like that for a while.
Forehead to forehead.
No movement. No sound.
Just the shared silence of two people who have done the unthinkable and somehow crawled out of it still wanting to touch each other.
My knees ache.
There’s blood under my nails.
His cum is leaking out of me, and I can still taste the ash of the candle wax dried across my shoulder blades and none of it matters because I’ve never felt more alive.
More whole.
He finally exhales, voice ragged, breaking open the quiet with the softest thing I’ve ever heard from him: “You scare me.” I blink. Pull back slightly. He doesn’t look away. “You scare me because I didn’t think I’d ever want to stay. Not after I got what I wanted. But now… I don’t want to leave.”
I don’t touch him because of the way he says it?
It’s not a gift.
It’s a confession and it hits something in me that’s still raw because I know exactly what he means.
I was supposed to run.
I was supposed to use him, survive him, outlive him but I didn’t.
I stayed.
To crawl deeper into his mouth even when I knew it would eat me alive and I liked it.
So I whisper back: “Then don’t.”
He closes his eyes.
Not in defeat.
In relief.
Like I just took the last sharp thing out of him and for the first time since he stalked me in the dark—He falls asleep beside me.
Unguarded.
Breathing softly.
Mine.