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Dante O’Driscoll doesn’t beg. He shatters empires.
His mouth curves as he fingers the collar’s clasp, never breaking eye contact. He could open it in a second, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he presses the metal to my pulse.Do you feel how fast you’re racing for me?the gesture says.
“For weeks,” he murmurs, “I’ve asked for pieces—your obedience, your risk, your pleasure. Tonight I want the only thing you keep behind firewalls even I can’t breach.” A breath. “Tell me, Dahlia.” A rough plea lurks behind alpha dominance.
“What if I don’t know how to say it?”
“Then bleed it out in any language you have left.”
He cups my jaw, thumb stroking the hinge until the trembling eases. His touch is neither gentle nor harsh; it’sanchoring. He drops to one knee, bringing that formidable height level with mine. It undoes me more than any order.
“Collar or no collar,” he says, “you stay because youchooseme. Or you try to walk away when this is over.”
“Try?”
“I refer you to everything I said last night? With the addendum that I will try to let you go.” A muscle jumps along his jaw. “It would kill me. But I’d do it. The only thing I can’t guarantee is long-term success of keeping that promise.”
That’s the difference between a captor and a Dom who loves. It cracks something wide open in a heart.
I close my fingers around his wrist. “Say it again. Help me with this.”
His eyes turn molten. “I love you, Dahlia. Nothing you do or say will change that—only what I do to protect it. To earn yours.”
“And if it shatters me?”
He smiles—a sliver of pain and awe. “Then I’ll learn how to hold broken things without cutting myself.”
My vision blurs. The room swims. For the first time since the collar snapped shut, Iwantto remove it—only so I can hand it back, a gift instead of a shackle. My fingers slide to the clasp.
His hand covers mine. “Your choice,” he says.
Three syllables that sound likeforever.
I unhook the metal, set it in his palm. The air feels shockingly cool on my neck. Naked. Frantic. Vulnerable.
“Put it back on me,” I whisper, “only if you believe I can be your equalandyour submissive.”
His eyes flare. He rises, towering, and circles behind me. The collar clicks in place—no longer a claim of possession, but of promise. A kiss where the clasp meets my skin.
“Look at me, little thief.”
I turn. He lowers to my height again, forehead touching mine.
“I’m not running,” I say, voice trembling but sure. “I’m scared I’ll never measure up. That loving you means losing myself. But the truth?” I swallow. “I came alive in the dark with you. I want every impossible piece—field ops, playrooms, boardrooms, coffins if we must.”
I draw a shaky breath. “I love you, Dante. And I love and hate how much it hurts.”
His laugh is wet, shaky. “You’re the only pain that feels like oxygen and salvation.”
He moves before I can think—grabs my wrists, yanks me into him, mouths crashing together like we’ve both been starved. A rough kiss—salted by tears, tempered by steel—seals confession into covenant. He pulls back just enough to speak.
“On your knees,” he orders softly. “Where my love belongs.”
I kneel, not in defeat but devotion. He unfastens a silk leash from his pocket, clips it to the collar, and presses it into my hands.
“You hold it,” he says. “Power goes both ways.”