25. Cloe
CLOE
I rebuttoned my blouse with trembling fingers. Each button was a lie. A soft click of denial meant to hide the heat still blooming beneath my skin.
The chain sat heavy against my chest.
Slick with sweat.
Weighted with Wolfe.
I didn’t dare touch it. Didn’t dare fix the collar or brush my fingers over the garnet where it pulsed in the hollow of my sternum. It felt alive. Branded. He hadn’t kissed me. Hadn’t said a word once I came. He’d just watched.
Then sat back at his desk. Like he hadn’t just wrecked me. Like he hadn’t just slid two fingers inside me while wrapping a chain around his fist. His voice had been quiet the whole time.
No praise.
No command beyond “Say thank you.”
And now?
Now I had to walk into the hallway. With damp lace and pulsing thighs and the ghost of his hand still cupped between my legs. My heels clicked too sharply on the floor. Every sound felt like guilt. Like a siren that screamed, she let him.
Royal looked up first. He always does. He didn’t smirk—not fully. But the corner of his mouth tilted just enough. He raised his coffee cup in a mock salute.
“Mornin’, sweetness.”
My cheeks burned. I didn’t reply. Didn’t break stride. Even as my skin buzzed and my knees betrayed me.
Loyal passed by me near the corner glass. His eyes flicked downward. To my collar. He saw it.
The faint shimmer of the chain. The outline of something that hadn’t been there yesterday. His mouth tightened. His hand curled tighter around the file he was holding. He said nothing. Didn’t have to. He’s always been quiet in ways that cut.
I walked faster. But it didn’t help. Every inch of fabric clung to me now. Wet between my legs. Sticky across my thighs.
The silk of my blouse stretched taut across flushed skin still humming from Wolfe’s voice. The panties I hadn’t fixed were riding up. The corset had shifted. Too tight now. Too high.
I couldn’t breathe. But I couldn’t stop. The hallway narrowed as I reached the bullpen. People looked up. Not everyone. But enough. Enough to feel like the walls were closing in. Enough to make me want to pull the ring from the chain and swallow it whole just to keep it secret.
I reached my desk and sat carefully. Too carefully.
The chair was cold. Unforgiving. It pressed against the ache between my thighs like it knew.
Like it wanted to remind me. I didn’t cry.
Didn’t shake. Didn’t fall apart. But my hands?
They stayed in my lap for five full minutes before I could type again.
And still?—
I didn’t look back. Because I already knew Wolfe was watching. And I didn’t trust myself not to say thank you all over again. Barron’s office door was half open when I looked up. I hadn’t seen him step in. Didn’t hear him arrive.
But now he was there—back to the hallway, blazer already off, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, collar open just enough to make the whole room feel warmer.
I tried to look away. Tried to focus on the report in front of me. But his hand moved—just once. Two fingers. A beckon. Nothing more. But I was already standing.
The walk to his office felt longer than it should have. Every step heavier. Like the ring at my chest had somehow fused to the skin beneath it. I knocked once. He didn’t answer. Just looked up from his desk. So I entered. Closed the door behind me.
“Sit.”
His voice wasn’t cruel. Wasn’t warm either. Just steady. Tired in a way that sounded dangerous.
I sat in the chair across from him. Straight-backed. Hands in my lap. The chain under my blouse pressed into my skin like a burn I couldn’t reach. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just watched me. For too long.
“You look tired,” he said finally.
I blinked.
“Didn’t sleep well,” I answered.
Honest.
Almost.
His eyes flicked to my blouse. Stayed there a second too long. The silk wasn’t quite smooth. The faint shape of the chain beneath it was… impossible not to see if you were looking for it. And he was.
“Was it him?”
The words landed like glass shattering in slow motion. I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. He leaned forward. Hands clasped. Still calm. Still.
“Did he touch you?”
I didn’t flinch. But I didn’t lie either. And that was the problem. His eyes darkened. Not with rage. Not with jealousy. With something worse. Recognition. He stood. Slow. Deliberate.
Walked around the desk and leaned against it, arms crossed.
“You’re wearing something,” he said.
A statement. Not a question. I opened my mouth. Closed it. He nodded. Once. Sharp.
“You think I don’t see what’s happening. But I do.”
He stepped forward. Close enough to feel. Not touch. Not yet.
“I told myself I wouldn’t ask. I told myself I didn’t care.”
He exhaled. But it wasn’t relief. It was surrender.
“Then you walked in here smelling like him.”
I didn’t speak. What could I say? That Wolfe had made me thank him with a chain in my throat? That I wore the ring and came so hard my body forgot its own name?
Barron didn’t raise his voice.
Didn’t pace.
Didn’t threaten.
Just asked:
“Do you want him?”
And God help me?—
I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t cry when I left Barron’s office.
Not when he looked at me like he’d just tasted the edge of someone else’s knife.
Not when he said nothing after asking if I wanted Wolfe.
Not when I closed the door behind me and walked out like I wasn’t already bleeding from everything I couldn’t say.
But by the time I got to the bathroom? My hands were shaking.
I locked the stall. Sat down hard on the lid, heart pounding, skin flushed, the ring at my chest suddenly too tight. I pulled out my phone. I didn’t want to.
But I had to. Because I knew. I knew she wouldn’t wait much longer. Sure enough—two messages. Selene. Time-stamped ten minutes apart.
I didn’t open them right away. Just stared at the screen. Wolfe’s name was still above hers in my threads. I hadn’t opened that one in hours. Not since the last message he sent.
You don’t lock your window.
Next time, I won’t ask to come in.
My stomach twisted.
I opened Selene’s thread.
Midnight.
Or it’s over.
Photo attached. I didn’t want to look. But I did. It was him. The ex.
Leaning against a lamppost on a side street I recognized too well. Two blocks from the building. Hands in his coat pockets. Eyes on the camera. Smiling.
You know how he gets when he’s hungry, Selene wrote.
Don’t make me let him off the leash.
My fingers went numb. The screen blurred. And for a second, I didn’t know where I was. I could smell him again. The inside of his car. The stale cigarette smoke he never let me ask him to stop.
The aftershave he used to rub into my skin when he said I smelled like someone else. I almost threw up. I dropped the phone onto the floor and braced my hands on my knees .
Breathed.
Hard .
In.
Out.
Once.
Twice.
“You’ve made it this far,” I whispered.
“Don’t fall now.”
I picked the phone back up.
Typed.
Deleted.
Typed again.
I need more time.
Wolfe’s watching everything.
Barron hasn’t let me out of his sight in three days.
… three dots appeared.
Paused.
Then she typed again.
Midnight.
Or I tell him where to find you.
That was it. I locked the phone. Pressed it to my chest. And whispered the only thing I had left.
“I’m sorry.”
To Wolfe. To Barron. To Camille. To the girl I used to be.
The message was still on the screen.
Midnight. Or I tell him where to find you.
I stared at it like it might vanish.
Like maybe if I didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe?—
Selene would disappear.
The threat would dissolve.
The weight of the book would stop burning in the pit of my gut.
But it didn’t. It never does. My throat clenched. My ribs folded inward. And I lurched forward just in time to grab the edge of the toilet .
The vomit came fast. Sharp. Bitter. Burning like shame. Like lies.
Like fear so thick it finally found a way out. When it was over, I sat back on the floor. Wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my blouse.
The silk stuck to my skin. Still damp with sweat from Wolfe’s office. Still flushed from his fingers. Still wet between my thighs from a chain I hadn’t taken off since he looped it around me and whispered say thank you. I pressed the back of my head to the tile wall.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
Exactly what I deserved.
I’d never felt this broken. Not when my ex called me a burden.Not when Camille looked at me like I might be the reason she stopped believing in good things. Not even when I stepped into this building for the first time knowing full well that I was already prey. Because now? Now I’d tasted power.
I’d tasted Wolfe’s obsession. Barron’s rage. Royal’s games. Loyal’s silence. And I liked all of it. Too much. And I still might give them up.
The ring at my chest felt heavier now. Not like jewelry. Like evidence. Of where I’d been. Of who I’d let touch me. Of what I was about to destroy. I pulled the chain from beneath my blouse. Stared at it.
The garnet caught the light like it remembered blood. I wanted to throw it in the toilet. I wanted to swallow it whole. I wanted to keep it on forever. I thought about going to Barron. About opening his office door and dropping the truth like a bomb.
“Selene sent him.”
“He’s watching me.”
“I opened the safe. ”
“I know the code.”
“I didn’t take it—yet.”
But I didn’t move. Because what if they looked at me like I was dirt? What if they stopped watching me? What if they never touched me again? And worse? What if they still did? Even knowing everything?
I didn’t trust myself not to say yes. Not to crawl to one of them. Not to beg. For pain. For punishment. For the kind of ruin I already knew how to survive.
So I sat. On the floor. In the stall. Phone in my lap. Chain in my hand. Body still aching. And whispered the one truth I hadn’t admitted yet?—
“I want them more than I want to be forgiven.”