Page 205 of Fractured Loyalties

Her wrists strain, metal grinding as she arches, panting, lips parted in a silent scream of need. Saliva trails down her chin, her body a taut bowstring.

I shove her flat against the mat. Her hands stay bound above her head, her knees forced wide, exposing her vulnerability. My palm grinds down over her center, rough and unrelenting through the slick barrier, circles pressing hard against her swollen clit. She jolts, a guttural gasp tearing free, thighs quaking as waves of pleasure assault her.

"Is this your desire?" I snarl, accelerating the rhythm, fingers delving to pinch and tease, leather yielding to my insistence.

"Yes—fuck, yes, God—" Her voice fractures, hips slamming up to meet each brutal stroke. She's teetering, body convulsing, head whipping side to side, sweat beading on her skin like dew on a blade.

I loom over her, lips brushing her ear. "You'll shatter only when I permit it."

Her moan shatters the air, a frantic beg erupting: "Please—please, I need to come, I can't hold—"

My free hand clamps her throat, choking off her air just enough to heighten the edge, pinning her writhing form. She bucks wildly, sounds ripping from her chest—raw, animalistic, climbing to a fever pitch of desperation. Her core clenches, flooding with heat, every muscle coiled for the abyss.

And still, Mara invades: her unyielding gaze, declaring her rejection of my protection. I claim my fate. Her silhouette in the cab's glow, abandoning me to this void.

The woman shatters beneath me, a sob of ecstasy exploding as her body convulses, climax crashing like a tidal wave. Slick essence soaks my hand through the leather, her screams echoing off the walls—ragged, primal, her form arching in exquisite agony, muscles spasming in release.

I watch her fracture, offering me total dominion: control, devotion, utter capitulation—the essence of what I've demanded in these depths.

And I feel...void. A seething rage boils up—at her for being a pale imitation, at myself for allowing Mara to embed so deeply that no other touch ignites, at the emptiness amplified by her quiver and cry.

As her body slumps, spent and glistening with sweat in the aftermath, I rise.

No unbinding. No soothing whispers. No facade of aftercare that lesser men peddle.

I stride out, leaving her bound, trembling in her sated haze—a conquest that means nothing.

For the truth scorches through me like venom: Mara alone can unravel me now. Mara, whom I'll claim not in obedience, but in the fire of her chosen surrender.

The corridor feels colder when I step out, though I know the air hasn’t changed. It’s me. I left the heat of that room behind but took none of it with me. My pulse is steady, too steady, the kind of calm that comes after nothing.

I pass the attendants without looking at them. Their eyes track me anyway, careful, like they can taste the storm under my skin.

Dom waits near the lounge, exactly where I knew he would be. A drink sits untouched on the table beside him, amber catching the chandelier light. His expression doesn’t shift when he sees me, but there’s something smug in his stillness, as though he already knows.

“How was she?” he asks.

I don’t answer.

His lips curve, thin, sharp. “That bad.”

“She did her part.”

He leans back, crossing one leg over the other. “That isn’t what I asked.”

I stop, standing over him, jaw tight enough I can hear the grind in my teeth. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Oh, I do,” Dom says, smooth, deliberate. “I’ve seen it before. Men come here thinking the room will fix them. That obedience will patch the cracks. It doesn’t. Not when the distraction follows you inside.”

The words sit heavy between us.

He raises the glass but doesn’t drink. “You’ve gone soft, Elias. Dangerous kind of soft. Emotion isn’t control. Emotion is the blade that cuts you when you forget which end you’re holding.”

I lean down, just enough to let him see the truth in my eyes. “Soft doesn’t kill men like Volker. Soft doesn’t put people in the ground when they need to stay there.”

Dom’s smile is sharp as glass. “And yet here you are. Half-hard, half-empty, chasing a woman who’ll never kneel like the ones in my rooms. Tell me—what happens when your distraction costs you the kill?”

For a moment, I consider putting a bullet through his smug mouth just to shut it. The urge is clean, sharp. But I don’t. Not here.