37. Caden
Caden
Aeris was wrecking me, her cunt strangling my cock, barely able to take my length as I thrust. I wanted her to hurt. Wanted her to feel me as she went back to her fucking date.
The thought made me turn violent.
Sex had always been unstimulating, just an act I participated in when I was bored. I got far more satisfaction from the dominance, from breaking my partners down and forcing them to come over and over again, than from the physical pleasure itself.
But with Aeris … everything was different.
She fought me even with a blade at her throat, eyes blazing with raw defiance and unwilling lust. It was in the way she moaned, the way her cunt pulsated around me as if begging for more. Desperate no matter how brutally I fucked her.
She made me lose control.
And I fucking needed it.
“Tell me whose cunt this is.” I dragged the flat of the blade lightly down the side of her neck, just enough to make her shiver.
“Fuck—” The word broke into a moan as I angled my hips and hit that spot deep inside her. “You.”
I chuckled, her body wound so tight that forcing the orgasm out of her this quickly would almost hurt.
Good.
This was her punishment for making me crave her like this, for burrowing so deep under my skin that I couldn’t think of anything else. I wanted her to feel exactly how little control she had left. How easily her body gave itself to me, even when her mind still tried to fight.
“Such a needy little slut,” I taunted, holding her gaze hostage in the reflection. “Look at how you submit to me.”
Aeris was beautiful in her rage, her cursed moans spilling out like the greatest fucking symphony I’d ever heard. Her cheeks were flushed, makeup smeared, and lips parted on broken cries as she took every brutal inch.
She even pushed back against me desperately, her walls fluttering around my cock. I tightened my grip on her hair, forcing her to keep watching us in the mirror as I drove into her faster, harder.
“That’s it,” I growled, dropping the knife so I could reach down and circle her clit. “Let me feel this greedy little cunt come on my cock.”
Her orgasm seemed to tear through her, her entire body seizing so hard as she came she dragged me over with her.
My hips jerked, and I buried myself to the hilt with a guttural groan. I stayed inside her heat for a long moment, my cock taking its time to go down.
Jesus-fucking-Christ. Her submission was an addiction, even more so because she made me work for it. Like it was a gift.
Slowly pulling out, I watched with dark satisfaction as my cum immediately began to drip down her thighs.
I should have been more concerned with the fact I’d fucked her bare, but I’d been lost in the moment.
A rare snap of my control. It had been reckless, and yet I felt zero regret.
Only this intense need to mark her. Own her.
To make sure she carried a piece of me long after she walked out of this bathroom.
I knew she was clean, having stolen her medical records as soon as I knew this was inevitable. She was also on birth control, which made sense …
The thought of what Selene was making her do ignited something dark and vengeful inside me.
Tightening my fist in her hair, I wrenched her head to the side and claimed her mouth in another brutal kiss. There was no tenderness. I wanted to erase every other man who’d ever touched her, like I could rip Selene’s ownership out of her with nothing but my tongue and teeth.
A sharp pain, the taste of blood forming on my tongue. Pulling back, I licked along my bottom lip, right where she’d bitten me.
“Are you finished?” she asked, her eyes glinting with that familiar insolence. “Vivienne’s waiting.”
I clenched my jaw until it ached, every instinct screaming at me to ignore her words.
I didn’t want to walk away. I wanted to press her against the mirror again and fuck her until her legs gave out, until she was sobbing and creaming on my cock so loudly the whole fucking restaurant would hear who was ruining her.
And then I wanted to keep her. I wanted to erase those memories that haunted her eyes. Erase every flinch at a gentle touch. Every instinct that told her softness was a trap.
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
That kind of hunger could get her killed, not to mention she wasn’t ready.
Clearly she had problems with intimacy. Not sex, but affection.
Gentleness. She could handle being grabbed, pinned, and fucked hard, but anything else set off her fight or flight.
So I forced myself to step back, even though it felt like ripping my own skin off, because that was what she needed in that moment.
Reaching behind me, I unlocked the door. Aeris hadn’t known it, but she had never been in any danger, and I saw the tension leave her shoulders as soon as she realised I’d never have allowed anyone to see her like this.
It took effort, but I left her there to recover.
“Stay away from my daughter,” Tristan snarled when he caught up with me down the corridor, his voice nothing but a whisper in the busy restaurant.
I stilled, keeping my tone calm as I turned to face him. “You seriously want to play the protective father?”
“Stay the fuck away from her,” he repeated, voice shaking with fury. “She’s been through enough. She doesn’t need another monster in her life.”
“Too late for that.” I leaned in, letting him feel every ounce of threat in my words. “She’s already mine. And unlike you, I don’t abandon things that belong to me.”
Tristan’s eyes bulged, but he didn’t stop me as I returned to the main restaurant.
I knew I’d been a while, but it wasn’t like Vivienne was going to leave.
Crossing the room slowly, deliberately, I used the low hum of conversations and the soft clutter of cutlery to calm the pulse still thundering against the side of my throat.
Vivienne watched me cross the room, her gaze sharp.
I fucking hated her.
“You took your time,” she said, placing her phone face down on the table. “Who was that?”
I dropped back into my seat, jaw still tight. “I ran into a friend.” Reaching for my glass, I drank half just to try and wash the taste of Aeris from my mouth. The wine tasted bitter in comparison. Cheap. Wrong.
“It didn’t look like a friend,” she said, voice deceptively light as her eyes darted over my shoulder for the briefest second before returning to mine.
It was a crack in her composure before she gave me that polished, too-wide smile.
“Everything okay?” she asked, head tilted with concern. “I thought you’d run away.”
I took another sip, trying to steady myself.
“Of course not. Like I said, I ran into a friend.”
It took every ounce of control I possessed not to scan the restaurant for that flash of red hair. To say fuck it, put a bullet in Vivienne’s skull right here, and drag Aeris somewhere private so I could punish her properly for making me this obsessed.
She tested every limit I had with those sharp little smirks, the way she fought me even with a knife at her throat … and then melted so beautifully when I fucked her anyway.
But this wasn’t just about me, or her. It was about Sebastian, Langdon, and the empire we’d clawed out of nothing with our bare, bloody hands.
Aeris had become a dangerous distraction.
Fuck. Maybe that was the point, and I was stupid enough to fall into her trap.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Vivienne reached across the table and gently rested her hand over mine, her touch unnaturally hot against my skin. “You look flushed. Here, have some water.”
I frowned at her hand, my whole body reacting like it was one giant nerve ending.
What the fuck?
Her nails stroked over my knuckles before she poured me a fresh glass with graceful, practised movements.
My limbs felt lighter than they should have, a strange warmth spreading through my veins that had nothing to do with the wine.
“Thank you,” I said, the liquid cool against my increasingly heavy tongue.
“Did you want to go? We could always reschedule?”
Lights danced behind her, distracting as I blinked slowly.
“Caden, do you want to leave?”
Yes.
I didn’t even need to be on this fucking date. I was only here because Aeris was.
I’d already sent Vivienne a virus disguised as an innocent photo days ago.
She’d opened it without a second thought, and now it was deep inside Selene’s encrypted network like a silent parasite.
Hendrix was working through it in the background, quietly copying every file, every message, every dirty secret they thought was safe.
Then we’d delete it all.
And once we had what we needed, we were going to make an example of Selene Blackwater, and her daughter.
“Sure, let’s go,” I said, throwing some money onto the table before standing.
Vivienne’s smile was too sickly. “Cool, your place or mine?”