Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
KEIRA
Ewan left an hour ago.
Some business emergency pulled him away, and I had to school my expression into disappointment while relief flooded every vein.
He made me sit through dinner first, though.
The blue dress. The pearls. My split lip throbbing while I smiled and nodded and pretended he isn't the vilest creature on earth.
Now the bed is empty. The house is quiet.
And I'm watching the clock.
11:52.
I slip from beneath the sheets, bare feet hitting the cold floor. I grab the silk robe hanging in my closet and imagine Tristan peeling it off me. My entire body hums with anticipation.
It's been so long. The last time we were together, I got pregnant. I'll never forget that night.
It was, without question, the best sex of my life.
I step into the hallway, avoiding the light cast by dim wall sconces. Every creak makes my heart stutter. Every distant footstep sends adrenaline spiking through my blood.
Maintenance room behind the library. Third door on the left.
When I get there, I'm breathless, scanning around me for the twentieth time, praying no one saw me sneak down here.
I grip the handle. The second I pull, the door swings open from inside.
A hand closes around my wrist and tugs me into darkness.
Tristan's body presses against mine, pinning me to the door. He's solid and so warm. He smells like teakwood and spice—his old signature scent that makes me want to lick him.
It's all starting to come back to me.
"I missed you," he breathes against my mouth.
"Already?"
"Always."
He kisses me. The pain from my split lip flares, but I hold it in, grateful there's no light on.
"I need to see you." His mouth trails down my neck and I'm ready to tear his clothes off.
"It's fine. Let's stay like this."
But he moves anyway, and there's a click. Then an orange glow illuminates the space from a small lantern. I glance around at the exposed pipes overhead. Gray concrete. Cleaning supplies stacked in a corner. An unfinished, barely used closet.
"Keira."
His voice brings me back, and that's when I take in the murderous look in his eyes.
Right. My stupid lip.
"It looks worse than it is."
"Don't." His thumb hovers over my bruised mouth without touching. "I'm going to kill him."
"Later."
"No. Now." He grips my waist, trying to move me from the door. "Stay here."
I grab his arm with both hands. "No."
"I'm done waiting. He dies tonight."
"He's not even home."
"I don't care. I'll find him."
Jesus Christ. This is not how tonight was supposed to go.
"Hey." I force steadiness into my voice. "Look at me."
He's shaking, not even trying to hide the fury rolling off him in waves. He turns toward the door again.
"Look at me. Please."
He pauses.
"If you walk out that door, we all die. Me. You. Hale." I hold his gaze. "Is that what you want?"
His jaw works. "I can handle him."
"Not alone."
"You'll help me."
I shake my head. "I'm rusty, and I don't have the same strength I used to. We won't survive, and you know it. We have no backup here."
"He put his hands on you again."
"And you're going to make me forget." I step closer, palms flat against his chest. "So be here with me. Please."
He drops his forehead to mine, trying to temper his ragged breathing. I watch his throat work as he swallows the rage, trying to leash it.
"Tell me what you need." There it is…the pleasure Dom in him, surfacing.
I had a feeling this would work.
"I need to stop thinking. I need to be somewhere else. Someone else. Just for a little while."
He studies me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
"You trust me?"
"Yes."
"Completely?"
I nod.
The tenderness in his expression hardens, sharpening into something more focused and dangerous, making heat pool low in my belly.
"Then here's what's going to happen." His voice turns authoritative. "You're going to let me do whatever I want to you. The only words I want to hear are my name—or ‘red’ if you need me to stop. Understood?"
I take a breath. "Yes."
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, understood."
That earns me a wicked smile. "Good girl. Turn around. Hands on the door."
It was Tristan who introduced me to this world years ago—awakened something in me I didn't know existed. I loved submitting to him, loved the way he'd reward me with gentle praise and filthy promises that would make me wet days later just thinking about them. He made me feel safe enough to let go.
He moves behind me, the anticipation becoming its own exquisite torture. He finds the tie of my robe and pulls slowly. The silk parts, hanging open, while his finger traces from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine.
"Do you have any idea how many nights I spent dreaming about this body?"
I stay perfectly still.
"Thousands." His lips brush my shoulder blade. "I memorized every curve. Every sound you make when you're about to fall apart. I played it on repeat in the dark."
The robe slides off, pooling at my feet. Goosebumps erupt across my skin. The nightgown beneath is practically nothing.
He fists the material at my hip.
"I'm going to make you forget every hand that ever touched you except mine. And when I'm done, you're going to know exactly who you belong to."
Ruin me. I've always been yours.
"Please," I whisper.
"Please what?"
"Ruin me."
"With pleasure."
The sound of fabric tearing fills the small space. I gasp as he tugs it away.
I'm completely bare. Naked in a maintenance closet with my palms pressed against cold wood. Exposed and at Tristan's mercy.
I keep waiting to be triggered, but every worry, every fear, washes away with his touch.
"Don't move."
His footsteps retreat. There's some rustling before he returns. Something light brushes my wrists.
"I'm going to tie your hands above your head. It gives you something to hold onto—and gives me access to everything." He presses a kiss to my shoulder. "Tell me to stop if you need to."
"I don’t want you to stop."
He binds my wrists with what feels like torn fabric, looping them together and hooking them over a pipe along the top of the doorframe. Not tight enough to hurt.
I like that he's telling me what he's doing, giving me the option to stop if I need to. Having the choice is liberating.
"Look at you." He circles into my peripheral vision, drinking me in. "Fucking perfect."
He turns me to face him, the binding twisting. My bare back presses against the cold door, but the way he's watching me makes my skin burn.
His gray-green eyes are molten in the lantern light.
"I'm going to erase every trace of him. Every touch. Every mark. Until the only thing your body remembers is me."
He leans in, lips at my ear. "And you're going to be so good for me while I do it."
A shiver cascades through me.
"Tell me where he hurt you."
The question lands like a stone in still water, rippling outward.
"Tristan—"
His thumb brushes my jaw, impossibly gentle.
"I need to know so I can take it back. Every place he put his hands, I'm going to put mine instead. Every place he made you feel used or broken…I'm going to make it mine. Until your skin forgets he ever existed."
I'm worried about how I'm going to react—how my words will affect him. But I told him I trust him, so I take a deep breath and let go.
"My throat." The words scrape out. "When he's angry, he squeezes until I can't breathe. Until I stop fighting."
His nostrils flare, but his hands stay soft.
He leans in and presses his lips to my throat. Just rests there, breathing me in.
Then his mouth moves slowly up the column of my neck, his teeth finding the spot just below my jaw, hidden by my hair.
He bites down.
The sting blooms into something warmer, spreading through my chest.
"Mine now," he murmurs against the mark he's made, his tongue soothing the tender skin.
"Where else?"
"My wrists." I don't look at the faint scars—at the evidence of being pinned, of fighting back, of eventually going limp because it was easier than struggling.
He takes my bound hands and presses his lips to the inside of my wrist, right where my pulse hammers.
"Mine." He moves to the other. "These are yours to give. Because you choose to surrender."
I'm crying openly now, silent tears streaming as he reclaims me piece by piece.
"Where else, baby?"
"My hips." When Ewan would force himself on me, he'd grip so hard his fingerprints would bruise my skin by morning. I used to count them in the mirror after—like if I knew exactly how many, I could control something.
Tristan sinks to his knees.
The sight of him there, replacing the horror with devotion, undoes me completely.
A kiss pressed into bone. Then another mark, deliberate and claimed.
"Mine."
He moves to the other side. Kiss. Mark. Soothe.
"Every time you feel these tomorrow—walking through his house, sitting at his table, pretending to be his wife—you'll know the truth. You'll feel me there. Even when I'm not beside you."
He looks up at me, eyes blazing.
"Where else?"
I open my thighs for him.
He follows the same pattern—careful, intentional.
"I'm written into your skin," he murmurs against my inner thigh. "Hiding where only you can feel me."
He starts to rise, trailing his mouth up my stomach, between my breasts, along my collarbone, leaving a constellation of marks as he goes—small bites in hidden places, secret signatures mapping his journey across my body.
By the time he reaches my face, I'm covered in him.
"One more."
"Where?"
He kisses me.
His teeth catch my bottom lip ever so lightly, but this time I welcome the sting because tomorrow it will remind me of him and everything he's giving back to me.
"Tristan." His name is the only word I can manage.
He reaches up and unhooks my wrists, catching me as my arms drop. Blood rushes back into my hands, tingling, and I tug at his clothes, desperate to feel his skin against mine.
"I need you," I whimper. "Please. I need you inside me."
He lifts me and carries me toward the stack of boxes covered with his jacket, laying me down carefully. He tears at a condom wrapper, then grips the back of my neck and pulls me against him as he positions himself at my entrance.
We're both breathless, eyes locked, as he begins sliding into me.
Inch by inch.
Letting me feel every part of him as he fills me completely.
It's nothing like before.
He moves inside me with long, deep, unhurried strokes, savoring all of it—his forehead pressed against mine, his breath mingling with my breath, his eyes never leaving my face.
"You feel…" He trails off, struggling. "I don't have words."
"Then don't talk." I wrap my legs around his waist, drawing him deeper.
We rock together in the flickering lantern light, surrounded by dust and cleaning supplies, and somehow it's the most sacred moment of my life.
Because it's not about the setting. It's about us—two people who found their way back to one another against impossible odds.
"I never stopped wanting you." The words fall between thrusts. "Not for a single day. I love you, Keira."
"I love you too, Tristan." Tears stream down my cheeks. "I always have."
"I love you," he whispers again, closing his eyes like he's praying.
The pressure builds gradually, a wave rising from somewhere deep, gathering strength with every stroke.
"Stay with me," he rasps.
"I'm here."
"Do you feel me? All the marks on your skin? All the ways I'm written into you now."
I feel them—every tender spot where his teeth left evidence, every hidden signature.
"You're mine, Keira. Not because I own you, but because you let me in when you could have kept everyone out forever."
"I'll always choose you," I gasp.
He's moving faster now, his control beginning to fray.
"Come with me." His hand slides between us, fingers finding my clit. "I want to feel you come on my cock, wearing my marks."
The wave crests.
I break apart with his name on my lips and his marks burning on my skin. He follows seconds later, burying himself deep and groaning against my throat, against the mark he left there, sealing it with his release.
We stay tangled together for a long time.
Breathing. Trembling. Coming down from something that feels like more than sex.
A ritual.
A vow.
A new beginning.