Chapter 31
Ivy
The building is quiet. But the air has been charged with tension all week.
No voices. No distant pounding of boots or grumbling arguments. Nothing to distract me from the creeping feeling of a past that won’t let me go. Only the hollow hush. As if the whole place is holding its breath, waiting for me to make a decision I know I’ve already made.
I’ve stuck closer to Zane and Phoenix the past few days. Finally coming out of Zane’s room since Phoenix made it clear he still has my back.
But Myles has started avoiding me again. He briefly came into the kitchen while Zane and I were cooking lunch. His expression was pained, and he left looking worse.
I don’t know how to repair things between us, only that I want to.
Zane left me to clean up while he went to talk to him, but I couldn’t help but creep closer to eavesdrop.
Myles’s voice was strained when he spoke. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘I think you do. But I also think you don’t know how to stop.’ Zane’s voice followed. ‘You're a wildfire, Myles. You want to warm her… but you burn everything you touch.’
Myles’s reply was too low for me to make out, but his remorse was clear. It made me want to comfort him.
Instead I retreated upstairs, scared of getting caught listening to their private conversation.
I’ve been sitting by the window in Zane’s room for about half an hour now. He left for another hunt and won’t be back until tomorrow.
My forehead rests against the cold glass, streaked with dust and old rain. But I can still see him.
Myles.
Out in the concrete loading dock, shirtless and furious, swinging a crowbar like he wants the world to shatter beneath him.
He's ripping apart an old metal filing cabinet, swinging a crowbar in brutal arcs, muscles flexing with each violent motion. Veins bulge along his forearms, tattoos stretching over sweat-slick muscles.
A drawer screams as he wrenches it free and flings it across the concrete. He looks like a chaotic motion of raw energy. Violent. Beautiful.
And yet… I can’t stop watching.
Can’t stop wanting him.
Not in the gentle way I want Zane, with his quiet steadiness and soft patience. Not even in the way Phoenix pushes and tests me, as if he’s waiting to see if I’ll break or burn.
No. This is different. This is darker.
This is the part of me that still hasn’t shaken off the chains. The part of me that flinched when Zane kicked that door open. The part of me that cried when Phoenix tackled Myles to the ground and held him there, like a beast finally contained.
Because even as I lay there, trembling and aching, my wrists sore from his grip and my thighs shaking from the force of him…
I wanted more.
God. What the hell is wrong with me?
Pressing my thighs together, my pulse thrums low and hot as shame curls through me. Shame… and something that tastes like surrender.
I remember the way he held me down on the floor. Not a bed. Not a mattress. The hard, unforgiving floor of his bedroom, my clothes torn off, his breath ragged as he shoved into me like he couldn’t bear the space between our bodies.
He made me feel like I was the only thing that could silence the chaos in his head. Took what he needed, and I gave willingly.
The stretch of him filling me, his hand firm around my throat. His voice—guttural as he whispered filth and promises I shouldn’t crave.
“Say it. Say you’re mine.”
I did. And I fully meant it.
Even now, every bruise he left feels like a vow. A reminder of the way he devoured me with heat and raw desperation.
And I loved it.
God help me, I loved it.
I know he was out of control. I do. But I was drunk on it. On him. On the way his hands held me down with bruising force. The steady squeeze around my throat, the way he groaned when I clenched around him.
And what scares me more than him trying to hurt me again is how badly I still want him to. It’s not like before. Not like the men who took me and used me and broke me.
This isn’t that.
This isn’t Bennett. Or Derek, or any of the flesh traders who trained me to surrender to people I didn’t want.
Myles doesn’t see me as something ruined or sanctified. He sees me as something he has to have. To simply possess. To own and mark as his.
And maybe… maybe I want that too.
Is that really so wrong?
To be wanted? To be kept by them—by Myles, by Zane and Phoenix.
No one ever let me have that on my own terms. To make the decision for myself. But I want them. I want them to claim me. To keep me so fiercely that they’d guard me like hounds.
It’s not simply because I’m scared Bennett might still find me. No. What I’ve found here over the past six weeks is something far more potent.
The crowbar hits the ground with a heavy metallic crack, jarring me from the thought.
Myles stands there, breathing hard, chest rising and falling like he’s still mid-fight. His knuckles are raw and bleeding, his sharp jaw clenched like he’s trying to hold something in.
And I hate how much I want to go to him. To be the thing that calms him down. Or be claimed all over again. Would he take all of that intensity out on me? Ravage me again and leave me floating on air?
The door creaks behind me. I flinch, snapping my gaze from the window.
Phoenix stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms folded. His hair is slicked back to perfection as always, sleeves of his shirt pushed up, revealing the tattoos climbing his thick forearms.
He lifts an eyebrow like he’s been watching me for a while.
I sit up straighter, trying to act like I wasn’t spying on Myles.
“He’ll come around. You don’t have to be scared of him,” he says.
I turn back to the window. Myles is still there, glistening muscles rippling with each movement as he lays into the filing cabinet like it’s a punching bag.
‘Scared’ isn’t the right word anymore. Intimidated, maybe. But whatever it is, the feeling sends waves through my body that pool between my legs and make my core throb with need.
“Is he always like this?” I ask quietly, ignoring Phoenix’s previous comment.
“Like what? Throwing tantrums?” he chuckles.
“No…” I trail off, unable to find the words to describe Myles.
“Destructive?”
“No. It’s more like…” I sigh, looking back to Phoenix. “I don’t know. Like he was scared of losing me. Like he was sure he was.”
Phoenix sighs and steps up next to me, looking down through the window to watch Myles’s chaos. “Pretty much, yeah.”
I take the moment to examine Phoenix’s chiselled features. That straight nose, those dark eyes, high cheekbones, tight jaw. He looks like he hasn’t smiled for years. Maybe even forgotten how to.
“Why is he like that?” I question softly, unsure if I’m allowed to ask.
His focus turns back to me, then drifts lower to my lips. His gaze travels down my body slowly, making heat rise in my core. Then his eyes snap back to mine like he only just realised what he was doing.
The moment is thick, unfinished business hanging in the air between us. His fingers inside me, voice a rough whisper, taunting me for how desperate I was. How I liked the way he teased me for it.
My pulse quickens.
But he looks back out the window and rubs the back of his neck like he’s not sure if he should tell me. “His mum was an addict, so he was raised in foster care until he finally ran away.”
He releases a heavy sigh and steps away from the window. “I met him in the army. He’s calmed down a lot since then, but everything important was taken from him as a kid. Now Myles refuses to lose anything else,” Phoenix says with a shrug.
Walking toward the door, he adds, “fighting’s the only way he knows how to communicate… and he knows he can’t fight you. He doesn’t know what to do with you.”
Heavy silence settles over the room as Phoenix continues out the door.
I look back toward the window, digesting what he said.
“You want a shower?”
I jolt at Phoenix’s voice, surprised to find him still standing at the door.
My skin prickles with anticipation remembering the last time he took me.
Zane isn’t here if something goes wrong.
But I still nod.