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She's still shaking when I finally pull out and lower her feet to the tile floor.

Not carefully. Not cruelly. Just... enough.

Her knees nearly buckle beneath her weight. She reaches for the wall without thinking, steadying herself while the water continues to run over every part of her I've already claimed, already marked, already ruined for anyone else.

Her breath catches sharply, as if the absence of me hurts more than the taking itself. Her pussy twitching around nothing, like it's mourning the loss, still clinging to the last of what I gave her.

I don't look away from the evidence of my possession. My hand moves between her thighs, spreading her open just enough to drag my fingers through the mess I've left inside her.

"Feel that?" I murmur, voice low and controlled despite the storm still raging beneath my skin. "That's what happens when I own something. That's what belonging looks like."

Her chest rises and falls unevenly with each breath, her eyes half-lidded but still watching me. I tilt her chin up with my thumb, not with gentleness—just precision. Something flickers in her gaze that I haven't named yet, something that makes her far more dangerous than she looks.

I lean in close, letting my mouth brush her ear, my words soft but absolute in their certainty.

"You're going to feel me tomorrow," I promise against her skin. "Every time you move. Every time you breathe. Every second you think you've forgotten, your body will remind you who you belong to now."

She doesn't speak. Doesn't need to. Her silence says everything words would only diminish.

I kiss her once more—firm and deliberate. There's no sweetness in it, no romance, just the seal of a contract neither of us signed but both are bound by nonetheless.

I step back, water streaming from my clothes as I zip up my jeans. The scent of her clings to my skin like heat that won't leave, like a fever I've caught and have no desire to cure.

She remains slumped against the shower wall, too wrung out to move, too full of what I've given her to think clearly. I take one last look, memorizing this moment—her knees parted, skin flushed pink from heat and use, my cum already sliding down her thighs in thin rivulets.

And then I lean in one last time—low enough for only her to hear me, voice steady, quiet, lethal in its promise.

"You thought the Hunt was over, little thief?" My lips brush her ear, just barely grazing the sensitive skin there. "It's just beginning."

With those words hanging in the steam between us, I turn and walk away, leaving her to contemplate exactly what she's become a part of—and who she now belongs to.

Seventeen

LUNA

The momentthe bathroom door clicks shut behind him, I drop. Not gracefully, not slowly. My knees hit the shower floor with a painful thud, the unforgiving tile biting into my bare skin as water pounds against my back. What had felt comforting minutes ago now turns suffocating, the sound too loud, the pressure too intense. My breath catches somewhere in my throat and refuses to settle.

What the fuck have I done?

It's not just tonight. Not just the Hunt. It's everything. Every decision that led me here, every calculated risk I convinced myself I could handle, every lie I layered over truth and sealed with desperate hope.

This place. This man. This world.

I didn't sneak into it. I belong to it. Whether I like it or not. Whether my parents still claim me or not. I was raised in homes like this, trained in their etiquette, sculpted for their ballrooms. And still, I thought I could outplay it, outrun the part of methat was built for this, control what should never have been mine to command.

But now I'm here. Trembling on the floor, aching everywhere, and filled with him.

Two hundred fifty thousand dollars that would have bought me freedom, a new identity, a life far from Christopher's reach. All I had to do was make it until dawn without being caught.

And I failed. Spectacularly.

I didn't just get caught.

I surrendered. I begged. I broke.

The money that was meant to save me is gone. The escape route I mapped out has vanished. The careful scheme I constructed over sleepless nights has crumbled to ash.

And it's not just Beckett that haunts me now, it's Christopher too.