Chapter 11
Aurélie was still asleep when the world started bleeding in around the edges. I didn’t fucking want it to.
The light was pale, not even full daylight yet, but it was enough to pull me from the high. That fragile, floating afterglow that still clung to my skin like sweat.
Aurélie was sprawled beside me, facedown in the sheets, one arm curled beneath her and one leg thrown over the blanket like she’d tried to chase me in her sleep.
Hair tangled. Cheeks flushed. Lips parted.
She hadn’t moved since I’d carried her here and tucked her into my chest like something breakable.
My good girl. My perfect submissive. My fucking wife in almost every way that mattered.
And all I could think was—God, what did I just do to her? What did she let me do? Because I’d never done or felt anything like that before. Not in racing, not in sex, not in life.
It had been too much.
I’d stayed up for a long time after Aurélie fell asleep looking up these feelings. People in forums online talked about the drop after an intense BDSM session. The way they’d walk that razor-thin edge of power and care, taking someone to the brink and watching themselves unravel in the process.
But this… this had been something else. Something hallowed and harrowing.
She gave me the most terrifying gift a person can give: absolute submission. No limits. No filter. No safe words. Just trust, laid bare and trembling.
And I had taken. Fuck, I took. I’d watched her twitch and moan and cry for me.
I knew every inch of her, each individual response.
How her breath caught when I cupped her jaw, how her inner thighs clenched when I growled in French, how her cunt fluttered when I licked her but refused to let her grind. I saw it all. Felt it all.
She said thank you for her punishment like it was a goddamn prayer. I became someone else in that moment.
Not just a man. Not just her boyfriend. Something darker, hungrier, a creature built from her obedience and his own control. I wielded her moans like weapons and her orgasms like scripture. And when I heard her say Daddy Dom with that bratty fucking smirk, I nearly blacked out.
The line between pain and pleasure didn’t exist. Worship fused with destruction until I couldn’t tell them apart.
It all blurred into one endless, orgasmic unraveling.
I don’t even remember how long I stayed between her thighs, just that the room got brighter at some point and I still hadn’t had enough.
I’d marked her like a fucking canvas.
The worst part was that I loved it. Every slap, cry, flick of my tongue.
The way her hips twitched when she tried to squirm away and I held her there, made her take more because she wanted it.
She gave me the permission to cross that line with her.
Her submission wasn’t just about restraint, it was a release. For both of us.
And now she was here, blissed out and wrecked, breathing steady beside me while I sat in the wreckage of what we’d created.
Not ashamed. Not scared. Just… altered. Permanently.
I should’ve felt guilty. Should’ve been horrified at how much I’d enjoyed it and how far I’d gone. At the marks on her thighs, the bruises darkening on her wrists, covering up the ones Morel had left behind. The way I used her, pinned her, spanked her until she shook.
I should’ve questioned what the fuck that made me.
But I didn’t, because all I could think about was the way she’d looked at me afterward. She’d kissed me in the shower like I’d saved her, then pressed her lips to mine over and over until our chests stopped heaving and the soap slid down our skin and our pulses finally slowed.
She curled into me in bed afterward, damp hair clinging to our skin, her lashes fluttering like she was still floating. She looked like… like she felt safe.
All I felt was this bone-deep ache of knowing that she saw me. All of me. And she hadn’t looked away.
We didn’t just understand each other on a physical level. We were something deeper than that. We were biblical.
She gave me her obedience, her trust, her submission, and I gave her everything I had. Rage. Reverence. Hunger. Violence and devotion wrapped in the same brutal package.
And still, she touched me with love and adoration. She kissed me like she’d seen the darkest parts of me and decided to love them anyway. That was the moment I knew I could never let her go even if my life depended on it.
The things we shared with each other—about ourselves, our lives, our dreams, hopes and aspirations—only fortified my resolve that I would marry her in a goddamn heartbeat.
I’d take her last name if she asked me to.
I’d fall on my knees at the fucking altar just to hear her say I do in that feminine French lilt and know it was for me. Always me.
“I can hear you thinking, mon champion,” Aurélie murmured sleepily, tearing me from my thoughts. Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw from all the crying and moaning and screaming I’d wrung out of her the night before.
I blinked and focused on her face, her hazel eyes still heavy with sleep, her lashes clumped together. She looked soft, with her freckles sprinkled across her nose and her teeth biting into her bottom lip. Christ. She looked like mine.
But before I could respond—before I could even reach for her—she groaned and rolled to her side with a sharp wince.
My stomach dropped.
She curled in on herself, one hand flying to her lower abdomen, pressing there like she could soothe the pain with touch alone.
“Auri,” I said, voice instantly taut. I sat up fast, reaching for her. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
She sucked in a slow breath through her nose, eyes squeezing shut. “It’s okay,” she rasped. “It’s the endo. Sometimes it hits hard the morning after.”
Fuck. Fuck.
Of course it did. I’d had her in every position, bound her, spanked her, made her come so hard she squirted, then filled her to the hilt like I was trying to fuck my name into her womb.
She winced again, fingers trembling where they pressed into her belly.
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, brushing her hair behind her ears and smoothing my hand over her back. “Shit, Auri—baby—why didn’t you tell me it hurt?”
God, I should’ve fucking known. She had just told me about the endometriosis, and I took her submission as a gift and then kept taking.
“It didn’t,” she said softly, cracking her eyes open to look at me. “Not then. Not during. I swear. I felt good. I felt… perfect.” A weak smile tugged at her mouth. “It just catches up with me after sex sometimes. It’s normal.”
“Normal doesn’t mean acceptable,” I muttered under my breath, trying to keep the guilt and panic at bay. “You’ve never—I’ve never seen you in pain like this after sex.”
Aurélie opened her eyes, searching mine frantically. “We crossed into new territory last night, mon amour.”
My hand moved instinctively, massaging soft circles into her lower back, trying to soothe.
My other hand slid over her hip to ghost over her belly, hesitant to press but desperate to do something.
I fucking hated this—that she was in pain.
That I’d done anything that might’ve pushed her too far.
That her body made her pay for something that had been so beautiful. So holy.
“I’ll get you something,” I said, already climbing off the bed before I finished the sentence. “Water. Heat pack. Painkillers—where the fuck are your painkillers?”
“No,” she croaked as her fingers circled my wrist. “Just stay here in bed with me. S’il te pla?t. It’ll fade soon.”
I froze, caught between the urge to listen and the need to fix it. My heart slammed against my ribs, every nerve screaming that she was hurting and I was standing here useless.
“I—baby, I can’t just stay,” I protested. “You’re in pain. I need to do something. I need to take care of you the way you took care of me.”
Her hand fell away like it took all her energy to even lift it.
“Okay,” she rasped. “There’s a heating pad in the dresser.
The lavender…” her voice faltered. She grimaced, face twisting both in discomfort and in thought.
I loved when she made that face, because I knew she was trying to dig through her brain for the right word.
“The, uh, the… lapin.” She winced. “Shit. What is it? Not a rabbit, the… the cute one. The baby. Oh! The bunny. The lavender bunny. Ugh, my English is compromised.”
Something about the way she said it—half pain, half frustration, all adorable—made my chest squeeze, but I didn’t dare smile. Not while she was hurting.
I blinked. “You have a bunny?” The corner of my mouth twitched before the concern smothered it. “Of course you do.” It was ridiculous and so very Aurélie, but I didn’t laugh. I was on a mission.
I tore through her drawers, equal parts panicked and possessed, heart thundering like I was on the last lap of the season.
T-shirts flew, landing on the floor before I found the plush purple bunny with the faint scent of chamomile and fabric softener.
I cradled it in my hands for a moment, stupidly gentle as I gaped at it.
It was long and weighted, and the label on the end was fading and in French.
It was the kind of thing she probably bought years ago and something I never thought I’d see.
I shoved it into the microwave. The damn thing beeped too loud after I heated it up, making me flinch like I’d set off an alarm.
Jesus, my nerves were already fried and it wasn’t even nine in the morning.
I grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge on my way back, my hands trembling so badly the condensation nearly made it slip.
Then I dug through her toiletry bag until I found the Vicodin tucked beside tampons and muscle rub.