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“No, no. Don’t argue. It’s already done. You’re going to be my bride.”

She went still.

“I’ll give you time to let that sink in,” I murmured. “But you don’t have a choice. Your father made that choice for you. He knows that shutting your reckless mouth and stopping your dangerous little games requires a man who can handle you.”

I traced one finger along the curve of her ass, watching a shiver roll through her.

“And now that man is here.”

I straightened slowly, eyes raking down her flawless punished body.

“You can pout, you can scream, but you’ll say yes. Eventually.”

CHAPTER 16

Sloane

I didn’t move.

I just stood there—completely naked, my ass still burning from the sting of his hand, my bottom hole sore and plugged, mouth dry, pulse pounding so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think.

He had gone still, maybe five feet away now, watching me with the calm of a man who had just rewritten the rules of my life and expected me to thank him for it.

I should have lunged at him, scratched his face, cursed him out,something. But I didn’t. I just kept standing there like a fool, like a girl who had wandered into the wrong room of the castle and found the dragon waiting.

My chest was rising and falling like I had just run a mile. My skin was prickling all over. I thought I might throw up or cry or explode or… I don’t know.

You’re going to be my bride.

The audacity of it. The way he said it like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t the single most insane thing anyone had ever said to me in my entire life. Like I was not a human woman with choices and a voice andrights. Like I was just a prize, a piece of property.

Like I was already his.

And worse?

My father agreed to it.

I felt the betrayal hit me like a blade between my ribs. My own father. The man who always said no one would ever control me. That no one would ever touch me unless I wanted it. That I’d have choices, a future,freedom. He had sold me off like I was some complicated political inconvenience that needed to be handed over to the one man insane enough to try to tame me.

Now here I was, standing in the middle of a skyscraper penthouse with the city sparkling behind me like a stage I never auditioned for, naked and utterly punished.

I balled my hands into fists at my sides.

I was not crying. Iwould notcry.

I was furious.

More than that, I was turned on, and I hated that more than anything else. That was the worst part, the most humiliating, soul-crushing part of it all; he had touched me, and my body hadlikedit. He had punished me and my pussy had dripped with arousal. He had called me ‘baby girl’ and every inch of me had fuckinglistened.

I hated him for it.

I hatedmefor it.

Like a predator, he moved.

He closed the distance between us with the slow confidence of a man who knew exactly how far he could push me before I broke. Maybe that was what he was going to do now. Maybe that’s what this was.

My breath caught as he stepped in front of me, silent, unwavering. His blue eyes didn’t ask. Theytook.