18. Briar
Chapter Eighteen
brIAR
The sound of the heavy door locking echoes through the cell. A sob tries to claw its way up my throat, but I swallow it down, pressing my back harder against the cold stone wall.
My heart is hammering so violently I can feel it in my teeth. Between my legs I’m still soaked, my pussy throbbing with an aching, empty need that makes me hate myself.
My clit pulses with every heartbeat, begging for the release he denied me. Even now, my body is traitorous, warm, wet, and desperate for the man who just had me pinned against a stone wall.
But my mind is screaming.
He will kill you here. This is how you die, alone in the dark with a monster who calls you ‘my love’ while he breaks you.
Why does my body scream for him to come back? Why am I clenching around nothing, remembering the way his fingers stretched me, the way his hand tightened around my throat until stars burst behind my eyes?
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it terrifies me more than he does.
He changed so quickly. The almost poetic, reverent man from the video, the one who cleaned me so tenderly, is gone.
Now there’s only this colder, meaner version.
His eyes had shifted. The way he looked at me, like he was barely holding himself back from truly hurting me… that scared me more than anything.
I can’t believe the hellebore didn’t kill me.
I thought poison would be quick. Clean. Instead I woke up here, aching and confused, fragments of nightmares still clinging to me, flowers blooming from corpses, one growing straight out of my own chest, blood on my hands as an old man stabbed Drystan in the heart.
A single tear slips down my cheek and splashes onto the cold stone floor. Why does the thought of him dying hurt? Why do I care at all? He’s evil. He could kill me at any moment… but he hasn’t. He saved me from Tom. He stopped me from poisoning myself.
He’s been obsessed with me for years. That painting, it was me from almost a decade ago. So he knew me before everything fell apart.
I need to be smarter. I can’t freeze and let my mind take me somewhere else like it did. I need to make him trust me, at least enough to get me out of this damn cell that looks similar to a medieval dungeon.
My eyes catch something glinting in the weak ray of sunlight that manages to reach the corner of the cell. It looks like a camera, like the ones I found. Maybe he also has at least one microphone here.
“Can you hear me?” I ask, voice shaky as I pull the hoodie over my head and wrap the thin blanket around my shoulders. The cold here is bone-deep. Every exhale fogs in front of my lips.
“Yeah.” His voice finally answers, low, heavy, disappointed.
My heart stutters.
“How long have you been following me?” I ask, turning toward the corner where I think the camera is.
Silence stretches for a long moment before he replies.
“Since you were seventeen.”
I look down at the floor quickly, not wanting him to see the panic flooding my eyes. Seventeen. That was almost ten years ago. Ten years of him watching me. Ten years of shadows I never noticed.
I swallow hard, throat tight, and try to find my voice again.
“Why did you bring me here now?” I take a shaky breath, pulling the thin blanket tighter around my shoulders. The cold stone floor seeps through it, chilling me to the bone. “Why did it take you all these years?”
This time the silence stretches longer.
“I was eighteen when I first saw you,” he finally answers. “You weren’t ready for me. I wasn’t ready for you. But I knew, even then, that we belonged to each other.”
I hear him exhale, deep and strained. “I was locked up for six years. I would’ve come for you sooner if it wasn’t for that.”
“Oh.” The word slips out weak and small. Six years. That means he wasn’t around when—
I shake my head hard, pushing the memory away before it can swallow me.
“How did you know we belonged to each other?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper. “I was just seventeen.”
“I played rugby while you joined the tennis team.” He says. “When I first saw you, ponytail, sweet blue eyes, something in me changed.”
I can’t hide the surprise in my tone. “Rugby? You?”
“A deal with my father,” he replies, a sharp edge of anger creeping into his voice. “I did something he wanted. He gave me something I needed. That’s how it always worked with him.”
I nod slowly.
I know what it’s like to have a father who treats you like a transaction.
When I needed mine the most, he told me to be quiet.
“It’s not like you were a virgin,” he’d said.
The disappointment, the rage, the pain of that day still lives under my skin.
That was the moment I decided to leave Seattle behind.
“What happened with your father?” Drystan asks, catching me off guard.
I shrug, staring at the cold stone wall. “He wasn’t there when I needed him the most.”
“Why did you leave Seattle?”
I look toward the camera, my throat tightening. “I can’t, Drystan.”
Silence falls again.
“Will you kill me?” I ask quietly, clutching the blanket.
“Only if you make me,” he answers, the words are rough and slow, laced with something dangerously tender. “And if that happens… I’ll put a bullet through my own brain and follow you into whatever hell waits beyond this one.”
I should be more terrified. I should be screaming.
Instead, the weight of his words settles deep in my chest, warm and dark and terrifying in an entirely different way. The thought that someone could want me so completely, so violently, so eternally, makes something inside me tremble, but I don’t know if it’s from fear or something else.
The night presses against the stone walls again, heavy and unrelenting. My body aches from the unforgiving slab that serves as my bed, every muscle tight with cold and exhaustion. Hunger gnaws deeper, but it is nothing compared to the hollow ache in my chest.
I wave my hands toward the camera, hoping he is still watching.
“I’m hungry!” I yell into the emptiness.
No reply comes. Nothing but the steady drum of rain beyond the thick walls.
I climb onto the bed and strain to peer through the small square window cut high in the stone.
Rain lashes the darkness outside. This winter has brought nothing but rain and low, brooding clouds.
I ache for the sun, for its warmth on my skin, for the simple freedom I took for granted.
What if I never feel it again? What if this cold rain is the last thing I will ever know? The thought settles over me like a weight pressing tears into my eyes that I refuse to let fall.
The lock turns.
I flinch hard at the sharp metallic sound, my heart lurching violently in my chest. My body jolts with sudden fear even though I knew he would come eventually. Still that lock clicks, a part of me wonders if this is the moment everything changes, for better or worse.
Drystan steps inside.
He wears black sweatpants and an oversized black hoodie that shadows his frame.
His hair is damp, dark strands clinging to his forehead, carrying the sharp, clean scent of his shampoo into the stale air of the cell.
He tosses another blanket and a pillow onto the bed without a word.
“It’s going to be colder tonight.” His voice is a low grunt. His eyes refuse to meet mine.
He turns back to the door and pulls in a small cart. The smell of warm food hits me first—seared steak, rice, boiled vegetables. A glass of deep red juice. And there, at the edge, sits the cake.
“I’m not going to eat that.” I point at the cake.
His gaze finally lifts to mine. A slow smirk curves his mouth. “It’s just cake.”
He wheels the cart closer, stopping it right in front of the bed. The rich aroma of meat and spiced rice makes my mouth flood with saliva. My stomach growls, loud in the quiet stone chamber. I snatch up the fork and knife—the knife’s point sharp and gleaming.
“Don’t even think about it, Briar.” His voice drops, rough as gravel.
I glance up. He leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, but my eyes drift lower, drawn to the unmistakable outline beneath his sweatpants. The fabric clings, leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Is he already hard, or is he simply that big?
“Eat,” he commands.
I nod quickly and look back at my plate. The first bite of steak is hot, savory, perfectly seasoned. He watches me the entire time, silent, unblinking.
“This is very uncomfortable,” I mutter between bites. I lift my eyes to him again. “Are you going to watch me eat?”
He nods once. “I’ve been watching you do all these things through a camera. Now I will watch it live. In front of me.”
Heat crawls up my neck and spreads across my cheeks. I keep eating, faster now, acutely aware of his stare tracing every movement of my mouth, my throat.
Finally I reach for the cake. I frown, poking it with the spoon. “You really didn’t put anything in here?”
“No.” His voice sinks deeper. The sound drags across my skin like a slow caress, raising goosebumps along my arms.
I scoop a piece onto the spoon and slide it between my lips. The rich chocolate melts on my tongue. I hum softly in pleasure, licking the spoon clean slowly. This has always been my favorite and he knows it.
When I open my eyes, his jaw is tight, a muscle ticking. My gaze drops lower. The bulge in his sweatpants has grown heavier, thicker, straining hard against the fabric.
A small smirk tugs at my lips. I take another bite, slower this time, letting my tongue linger on the spoon, tracing its edge with lazy, suggestive strokes.
“Fuck, Briar.” The words tear from his throat, low and strained. “You shouldn’t be teasing me.”
“Why?” I ask, voice light and teasing even as my pulse thunders. The truth burns through me: I wouldn’t stop him if he grabbed me right now. I want his hands on me. I want him to finish what he started.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says, smirking, but his hand drifts down to the waistband of his sweatpants. “But I’m not going to touch you.”
My heart hammers against my ribs. My mouth goes dry as he slides his hand inside and slowly draws his cock out.
He is huge. Thick, heavy, flushed dark with arousal. Nine silver piercings glint along his length, catching the dim light. A bead of precum already glistens at the tip.
“Shit—” The word slips from me in a breathless whisper.
He smiles, and wraps his big hand around himself. The veins on the back of his hand stand out as he squeezes tighter and begins to pump.
Drystan takes one slow step closer, then another, until the heat radiating from his body brushes against the icy air between us.
He stops just out of reach, close enough to torment, far enough to maintain his cruel control.
His fist continues its steady rhythm, veins standing out along his hand and forearm as he strokes his thick, pierced cock.
The wet sound of skin on skin echoes softly against the stone walls, mingling with the relentless rain hammering outside.
“Do you want to taste me?” His voice is low, strained, almost hoarse. “Tell me.”
“Yes,” I reply immediately, the word slipping out before I can think.
“Then kneel.”
The command sinks into me like the cold of the cell floor. I slide off the bed and lower myself to my knees on the hard stone. The chill bites into my skin through the thin fabric of my pants, but I barely feel it over the heat pooling low in my belly.
“See, my love?” His voice shakes for a second, his green eyes darkening with raw, unfiltered lust as he towers over me. “Do you see what you do to me? Ten years of wanting you. Six years of imagining being buried inside you.”
I swallow hard and loud, the sound embarrassingly clear in the quiet cell. My hands grip the spoon so tightly I swear the metal will leave marks on my palm. “Drystan,” My voice is trembling with need.
His eyes never leave mine as he pumps slowly but with devastating force, each stroke deliberate and powerful. My brain has turned into a complete mush. All I can think about is him, his scent, his heat, the heavy length of him just inches from my face.
Desperate, I drop the spoon and grab the hem of my hoodie and yank it up over my head, baring my breasts to the frigid air.
My nipples tighten instantly, aching from the cold and the intensity of his stare.
I bring my fingers up and slowly twirl one stiff peak between them, pinching lightly, offering my body to his gaze.
“Fuck—” He growls, the sound deep and guttural. His rhythm falters for a moment before speeding up. The silver piercings along his length click softly, rhythmically, with every brutal stroke of his fist.
“Please—” I beg, voice breaking as I look up at him from my knees.
He shakes his head, jaw clenched tight, hips bucking hard into his own hand. “Not yet. Not in this fucking cell.”
His breathing turns ragged. His entire body tenses. Then, with a low, broken groan, he comes.
Thick, hot ropes of cum spill across my parted lips and tongue.
More lands on my chin and drips slowly down onto my bare breasts, warm against my cold skin.
He keeps pumping through every pulse, eyes locked on the sight of his release marking me, claiming me without ever laying a single finger on my body.
The taste of him floods my mouth as I stay on my knees, breathing hard.
“My love—” He grabs my chin and my entire body screams to be taken by this man.