Page 34 of Crown of Thorns (The Initiation #3)

NOAH

L ouis slips back into my dorm sometime after midnight.

I’m in bed, the scent of bergamot curling from a candle by the window, soft music whispering from my speaker. I didn’t mean to wait for him. But that’s all I seem to do lately, wait for Louis Deveraux. Wait for his footsteps. His moods. His hunger.

The sound of him undressing stirs something low and mean in my gut.

I close my eyes, letting the faint splash of water echo softly in the room.

Pretend I’m asleep. But every rustle of fabric, every sigh, is magnified.

He showers, quick, efficient, familiar. He’s adopted my habits, or maybe he’s just using them to get under my skin.

Routine used to mean safety, something predictable in the dark.

Now it feels like a trap laced with silk and sharpened with memory, a performance of comfort masking something far more dangerous.

When he crawls into bed behind me, everything inside me tightens.

"Your favourite pussy’s here, baby," he murmurs, voice syrupy and dark. His thigh hooks over mine. His hand finds my arm. His nails rake gently down my forearm. I flinch, even as heat blooms low and urgent between my legs.

He smells like expensive sin. A mix of vanilla, sweat, arrogance, and something older. Something violent, like the echo of a fire long extinguished but still smoldering beneath bone and ash.

"You missed me," he says into my neck.

His fingers find me hard, and he chuckles.

"Well, hello, mini professor."

He starts to rock his body against mine. Slow, rhythmic. Sensual.

"Give me some of that rage, baby, I need it. I know you’re burning up in there."

He’s not wrong. He never is when it comes to my body.

"Go away," I rasp.

Instead, he kisses me. Soft at first, then vicious. His hands are in my hair, at my jaw, angling me where he wants me. Tongue, lips, teeth. It’s all consuming. My breath hitches. I groan despite myself.

Suddenly, his teeth nip at my jawline, a sharp bite that sends a jolt through me, pain and pleasure tangled and electric.

"You don’t mean that."

"Stop kissing me like that."

"Mmm. But you taste so good, baby."

His mouth moves over my neck, jaw, and ear, finding every place I shouldn’t be sensitive. Every place that makes me twitch and ache and curse him.

"That’s enough," I hiss.

Something splits. A wire snaps inside me. Want doesn’t just curdle, it ignites.

I grab his throat and sink my teeth into his shoulder, not to tease but to claim. To leave a mark deep enough to feel tomorrow.

I need to ruin him just to know he’s mine.

He gasps. "Yeah…that’s it."

I push him onto his stomach. Watch him reach for the lube. He knows what I want. Knows he has me cornered.

"Please, baby," he whispers. "Love it when you take control."

"Beg for it, little devil."

He moans when I slick my fingers and tease his hole. His hips roll, spine flexing. The muscles in his back ripple like a wave.

"My pretty slut."

"Fuck me, already."

He reaches back, guides me deeper.

I slap his ass. "Such a brat."

"Such an animal," he counters, grinding his ass against my cock. "You think I don’t notice how much you need this? You don’t need words, baby. Your body talks just fine. You want to hurt me and own me at the same time. Give me both. I can take it."

I’m caught between thought and impulse, my mind spiralling out of reach.

Every warning I’ve ever given myself, the rules, the restraint, shatters in a single breath. This always happens with Louis. He breaks me open and I let him. Again and again.

His scent, his skin beneath my fingertips, it unravels me. The calculated man I try to be falls away, replaced by raw, hungry need.

I want to own him. Not just this body, but everything, his heart, his breath, his defiance.

The way he trembles under my touch feeds the fire.

No longer just wanting, needing to mark him, claim him on my terms.

I lose myself in the taste of his mouth, the heat of his skin, the reckless abandon of my own hands.

Possession isn’t just about control, it’s survival. And I’m fighting to keep hold of him before the darkness drags us apart.

Like a storm breaking free beneath calm waters, like ice melting into flame.

"You’re mine," I growl, voice ragged and desperate, fingers pressing deep, claiming more than flesh.

His moan is a surrender and a challenge.

This is no longer seduction. It’s war, and I’m hell-bent on winning.

"You’ll never belong to anyone else," I mutter, pressing two fingers in deep. His moan is filthy.

He’s all pink skin and need. I grab the base of his neck, push his face into the pillow. He looks back at me with a wicked grin.

"Now," he breathes.

I don’t hold back.

He gasps when I push in. His body welcomes me. It takes me like it was made for me.

"Fuck, Noah…"

"Little devil?"

"I—"

"Talk to me."

"I’ve wanted you for so long," he says, soft and unguarded.

It splits something in me.

I grab his jaw, turn his head, and kiss him hard. The words fall out before I can stop them, thick with heat and ache. "You’re the sunshine in my life. So beautiful. So, fucking precious." And it terrifies me how true that feels.

He moans into my mouth. His hands twist in the sheets. One snakes up to grab the back of my neck. He kisses me like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

"Come with me," he whispers. "Be mine."

"Yours?"

He nods, breath shuddering. I pound into him, desperate. Addicted.

"You’ll be mine too," he gasps. "My fucking property."

I bite his neck, hard. "Only I get to taste you."

His hips jerk.

"Only I get to put my mouth here. And here."

I kiss down his spine, his shoulder, his jaw.

"You’re perfect," I say. "You’re everything."

He shudders. Moans. Comes all over my hand.

I follow, teeth clenched, gasping against his throat. We collapse in a tangled heap. Sweaty. Shaking. Satisfied.

We stay like that. Clinging. Wordless.

Sleep eventually claims us both, pulling us under like the tide.

T he soft click of the door makes me freeze, toothbrush halfway to my mouth. It's early evening, the sky outside still bruised with twilight, a few days after the forest.

I glance into the mirror, towel around my hips, hair still damp, and see him. Louis. Smirking. Relaxed. Holding a file like it’s a gift and a threat all at once.

Turning, I find him there, smirking, relaxed, a file casually resting in his hands.

I glance at it but say nothing, the weight of its silence pressing in. Louis lets it hang between us like a loaded question.

"Thought you’d want to know," he says, tossing a key into the air.

"While you were teaching, Amadou and the team finished cutting those vines. They found something. A discovery. A shed."

My heart jolts.

"A shed? And a key?"

He shrugs, a slow grin tugging at his lips.

"Oh, and by the way… I had a little research done on your ex-lovers."

I freeze.

I spot the folder of my past relationships. Compiled. Categorized. Fuck.

"That blonde from the bar isn’t in the file," Louis adds casually, watching me.

"What is this?" I manage.

"Your ex-lovers."

"Why would you…"

He lifts a brow. "Why never a man?"

My mouth goes dry. "What?"

"You’re obviously attracted to men. Why have you never dated one?"

"That’s none of your business."

"Oh, but it is now. Since you’re with me."

"Give me the key."

"Tell me the truth."

I clench my jaw. Look away. My heart’s racing, and I hate that he can see it.

"Keep the key," I say through my teeth.

"I don’t want the damn thing. I want you to tell me something. Anything. A crumb."

I want to scream at him. Throw something. Break the glass between us. But I don’t. Because I know he’s not wrong.

He watches me for a beat, unreadable. Then, with a sigh so casual it almost stings, he says, "Have you eaten?" Like we’re not on the edge of something sharp and irreversible.

I shake my head. The cold tiles sting beneath my feet, grounding me. My skin prickles.

He presses the key into my palm. Grabs my cock through the towel. My breath catches. A flicker of something flashes in his eyes, not just lust. Something sharper. Darker. Like he’s checking if I’ll flinch.

"Get dressed while I make us something."

He strides to the kitchenette like he’s done it a hundred times before. Like he owns the counter, the drawer handles, the knife that somehow always ends up in the drying rack. The fridge door hisses open, and he hums under his breath as if this were his dorm. As if I were his.

I sit there stunned, towel still clinging to my hips, watching as he unpacks groceries I didn’t buy, chops vegetables like a chef on TV, then rinses the cutting board with one hand while checking the pan’s heat with the other.

There’s something surgical in the way he moves, like he’s dissecting me with domesticity.

My stomach tightens with a sick sort of awe, equal parts fascination and dread, as if every motion is slicing me open, revealing the soft, quivering thing I swore I'd never show anyone.

He slides eggs into the pan and tosses them with a flick of his wrist, eyes never leaving the sizzling center.

I hate how good it smells. Hate how familiar this feels. Like we’ve always done this. Like he’s always been here, in my space, making himself at home. Candlelight dances across his cheekbones. The room flickers like it’s holding its breath.

And I let him because some part of me wants him to.

But something inside me is cracking. Something old. Something bitter. A memory tries to surface, dust and smoke, a voice I haven’t heard in years whispering, 'Boys don’t cry like that, Noah.' I shove it back down.

And yet Louis moves through my space like he’s earned it. He flips the eggs, plates them, then wipes his hands with a towel he brought himself, claiming the moment as if it belongs to him.

Why now? Why the key, the file, the interrogation?

It doesn’t feel random. It feels like he’s trying to anchor me.

Make sure I’m not still half in the past. Maybe he’s afraid.

Or worse. Maybe he wants proof I haven’t already given myself to someone else.

That I wasn’t his first fire. That he’s not special.

But he is. And that might be the scariest part.

He wasn’t breaking new ground. He was burning through everything I thought I understood about myself. Stirring ghosts and waking things I buried years ago.

I want to tell him none of them mattered.

That they were placeholders. Ghosts with names I never learned how to love.

But part of me still clings to silence, afraid that if I speak the truth aloud, it will demand a version of me I haven’t figured out how to be.

That they were never even close to this but my mouth won’t open.

Because if I say it, if I name it, it’ll be real.

That I’ve never wanted anyone like this.

Not a woman. Not a man. No one. And I don’t know what that makes me.

I don’t know who I am with him.Only that I’ve never been this before.