Page 53 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

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.

Instead, I straighten, turn, and walk.

The air at the exit is cooler, sharper, hitting my face like something that wants to wake me. The steel door closes behind me with that same final thud. The night outside smells of rain and smoke.

I should feel lighter, emptied out. I don’t.

I feel worse.

Because Dom was right about one thing: The distraction followed me in. And it follows me out, too.

Her face. Her voice. The choice she keeps tearing out of my hands.

Mara.

Always Mara.

I slide into the car, starting the engine, it growls to life beneath me, steady, unyielding. I grip the wheel tighter than I need to, the leather creaking under my hands as I pull into the street.

The city stretches out, black glass and red neon bleeding into the wet asphalt. Everything feels sharper, too bright, too loud, like the world is mocking the emptiness clawing at me.

I should feel clean. That’s what the club was supposed to be—a purge. A place to take the edge off before it cuts me open. But all I’ve done is prove Dom right. I walked in empty and left emptier.

Mara.

Her name pounds with the rhythm of the wipers across the windshield. Her face keeps flashing in every reflection—shop windows, the rearview mirror, the curve of a passerby’s jaw in the crosswalk. She’s everywhere and nowhere, like the city itself is bending around her absence.

I remember her standing in my apartment, defiant, voice trembling but steady enough to cut: You mean you’re not giving me the choice.

She thought leaving made her free. She thought walking out the door meant she was done with me.

She has no idea.

I take a corner too fast. The tires spit water across the curb, horns blaring behind me. My pulse doesn’t change. My head is too full of her. The way she looked at me, the way her body leaned toward mine, she’s mine. Whether she’s ready to admit it or not.

The city blurs past, each block pulling me closer to the inevitable thought: Caleb. The name alone scrapes at my patience. He’s moving near her, circling the clinic, testing the lines.

If he touches her, he dies.

No— when . Because I’ll make sure of it.

But it isn’t just about Caleb anymore. It’s about Mara’s delusion that she can walk away. That she has a life outside of me.

She doesn’t.

My jaw locks as I cut through another turn, the lights of the clinic coming into view in the distance.

Even from here, I can see the faint glow spilling from the glass, the shape of the building like a beacon against the dark.

She’s inside. Probably still pretending she can live like before, filing papers, talking to Celeste, keeping her head down.

Like the world won’t keep clawing at her until there’s nothing left.

She needs control. She craves it even as she denies it. I felt it in every word she spit at me, every step she tried to take away. She wants someone to take it from her. She wants me to take it.

And I will.

Dom said emotion ruins control. Maybe he’s right. But Mara doesn’t ruin my control. She sharpens it. She’s the fracture that makes the whole structure stronger.

And I’ll prove it.