Page 81 of Fallen Empire

Raw. Primal. Owned.

He wasn’t asking. He was coming for me. And I’d already lost every weapon I had.

I barely squeezed through the doors as they opened, hoping the separation would give me a second to breathe. I pressed my back to the far wall of the elevator, trying to create space—any space—between me and what was about to happen.

He stepped in slowly and hit the button for my floor.

I stared at it like it was both my salvation and my sentence.

The beginning and the end. My misery and my undoing. My peace and my destruction.

Because that button meant no going back. Not ever.

I didn’t have to love him. Not yet.

But Ben would let me use him. Because I needed it. And he’d do it because he needed me. He’d let me call it whatever I wanted, as long as it meant I finally acknowledged that I belonged to him. I’d spent years denying it, shoving the truth into that damn box and burying it beneath excuses. All I’d done was torture myself. Torture us. And now, I was opening the cage I’d kept him in, giving him full access to the prey.

He never stepped closer. He didn’t have to.

I looked up, met his gaze, and the corner of his mouth lifted in that barely-there smirk that had haunted my dreams more times than I’d admit. It was nearly my undoing. My fingers curled around the metal railing at my back, clinging to it like it was my lifeline. Like it was the final tether before everything unraveled.

The elevator doors opened, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. We were fire and ice right now, and all I wanted was for him to cool the flames licking under my skin.

He let out a breath of laughter. Low. Dark. Just enough to let me know he’d already won whatever game I thought I was playing.

“If I have to carry you out of this elevator…” he murmured, voice thick with promise, “we won’t make it past the hall. Everyone will see me devour what you’ve been denying me for years.” His gaze raked down my body—slow, deliberate—and back up before locking on mine again. “And Mills?” He smirked. “We’ll be there all night.”

I was used to being the one in control. Not being controlled. But I’d heeded his warning, and now my feet couldn’t move fast enough. I fumbled the keys to my condo, cursing under my breath as they hit the floor just as he stepped up behind me.

I bent down to grab them.

That’s when it snapped. That invisible thread I’d been clinging to—gone.

Severed.

His hand gripped my waist, yanking me flush against him, and I felt it.

All of him.

Hard. Unrelenting.

I shot upright, heart hammering, and shoved the key into the lock with trembling fingers.

I didn’t even get the chance to open the door myself.

In one swift motion, Ben pushed it open, lifted me like I weighed nothing, and slammed me against the wall—his mouth claiming mine in a kiss that felt like years of tension combusting into one white-hot second.

My legs wrapped around his waist without thought. Without hesitation.

Like they knew where home was.

Home.

I dropped everything.

My keys. My guard. My goddamn sanity.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, dragging him impossibly closer, our bodies already smoldering. His tongue tangled with mine, desperate and bruising, until his hips pressed forward—his length grinding against the heat between my thighs. I moaned. Loud. Unrestrained. And whatever restraint he had left snapped with it.