Page 67 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

The word tomorrow still hangs between us like a blade. He says it, I repeat it, but I can’t make myself believe in the safety of that promise. Tomorrow is not a thing we’re guaranteed. Tomorrow feels like a cliff we’ve already stepped over, and tonight is the only ground left under our feet.

I don’t let go of his hand. I can feel the faint sting of scrapes across his knuckles, the places where bone met bone, the lives he ended still etched into the skin I hold. He doesn’t try to hide it. He never hides it from me. That honesty terrifies me more than any lie could.

His phone lies face down on the nightstand, humming with silence I know isn’t silence at all. He hasn’t touched it since the last message. That restraint tells me something Elias will never say out loud: he is buying this moment for me, carving it out of a war that is already calling his name.

Lydia’s shadow shifts once under the door. Watching. Guarding. Then gone. For the first time since he walked back in, the apartment feels like ours.

“You should sleep,” I whisper, though it sounds ridiculous even as I say it.

His mouth curves, not a smile, more like the shadow of one. “You don’t want me unconscious right now.”

I don’t. God help me, I don’t. The thought of closing my eyes and waking up to him gone—walking into whatever storm waits tomorrow—squeezes my chest so hard I want to claw it open.

Instead, I turn toward him, sliding the baton from my lap onto the nightstand, placing it beside his phone like they belong together—two kinds of weapons, both meant to keep me steady. My hand rests on his chest again, right over the rhythm that never falters.

“Tell me it’s enough,” I say. “That tonight is enough to hold you until tomorrow.”

His eyes lock onto mine, steel catching fire. “Mara, you’re the only thing that has ever been enough.”

The words scorch through me. Not sweet, not gentle. They’re too raw, too heavy. They feel like ownership and confession bound in the same breath. My ribs ache with the weight of it, and still, I lean in.

His hand slides to the back of my neck, firm, guiding, demanding nothing less than all of me. When his mouth finds mine, it isn’t coaxing. It’s claiming. Salt and heat, iron and hunger. I taste everything he won’t say, every death he’s dragged home on his skin.

And I let him. I open for him because I’m so goddamned tired of pretending I don’t want the very thing that could ruin me.

I don’t know if this is surrender or survival. Maybe it’s both.

His mouth takes mine like he owns the oxygen in the room, and I’m allowed to share it because he says so. I answer with my hands, fingers catching the open edges of his shirt, tugging him closer, a little greedy and not sorry for it. The bed shifts behind my knees. Elias doesn’t rush. He steers.

“Words,” he says against my lips. “Tell me what you want from me tonight.”

“You,” I manage. “All of you.”

“Clearer.”

My pulse kicks hard. I give him the truth he’s trained out of me, one confession at a time. “I want to be held down. I want you to set the rules. I want to stop thinking about anyone but you.”

His eyes sharpen. “Color.”

“Green.”

“Good girl.” His knuckles slide along my jaw. “Turn around.”

I do. He gathers my wrists behind my back, not harsh, not kind, exactly measured.

The belt from his trousers hangs on the chair beside the dresser from earlier; he threads the leather through my wrists and cinches until the restraint reads as permanent in my nerves.

My lungs drag in air that tastes like him.

Clean skin. Steel. The faint bite of soap that couldn’t erase the day he brought home.

“Testing,” he says.

I tug. The belt holds. The hum under my skin turns into a climb.

“Too tight?”

“No.”

He guides me to the foot of the bed and bends me forward over the mattress, cheek to the cover, hips angled for his hands. The position steals the last of my pride and replaces it with need. I can hear Lydia’s soft shoes in the hall, then nothing but him.

“Count,” he says.

“For what?”

“For control.” His palm comes down, firm, precise, not a strike for pain but for place. “One.”

The sound inks through me. My voice answers on instinct. “One.”

Again. “Two.”

Heat spreads. My skin sings and settles at the same time.

The numbers become a path I can walk with my eyes closed.

By five, my throat is tight with wanting.

By six, my spine curves for his hand and not away from it.

He strokes the marked skin after the sixth and the praise lands where my shame used to live.

“There she is,” he murmurs. “My focus.”

I blink hard. “I’m here.”

“Look at the wall. Stay with me.”

I hold the line he sets. When his fingers slide lower, not inside, just a promise, my knees almost give. He makes a satisfied sound that spears straight through control.

“Ask for it,” he says.

“Please.”

“Please what.”

“Please touch me.”

“That’s vague.”

I grit my teeth. My face burns. “Please touch me where I can’t think. Please make me forget everyone but you.”

His hand closes on my hips. He lifts me, sets me on the mattress on my side, then drags me back until my spine aligns with his chest. The belt bites when I move.

He kisses the place behind my ear that makes my thoughts blur.

His other hand slides to my throat, not squeezing, just cradling the column like a reminder of who anchors me.

“My rules,” he says. “You follow. You don’t chase. You let me take you there.”

“I’ll try.”

“You won’t try. You’ll obey.” A pause. “Color.”

I swallow. “Green.”

His mouth brushes my shoulder. “Then be still.”

I hold my body in the shape he sets. He keeps one hand on my throat and one on my hip, and the control in that grip rockets me.

He reads each twitch, each tremor. He gives me friction and denial in exact doses that make my spine arch off the mattress and then settle again, begging without words.

He keeps me just under a rise and then steals a fraction back.

I hate him for it and love him for it and I can’t get enough.

He bends to my ear. “Tell me what I am to you right now.”

“Everything.” It rips out of me. “You’re everything.”

“Good girl,” he says, and the sound almost ends me.

I push back into his touch without meaning to. He tightens his hand at my throat in warning, not pain, just pressure that pins my mind to his palm. The command in it is liquid iron.

“Ask,” he says again.

“Please let me come.”

“Not yet.”

A noise breaks in my chest. Then he releases my throat and slides his hand over my chest, thumb circling a peak through fabric. The friction sets nerves on fire. I hear myself beg. He rewards me by dragging his mouth down my neck, teeth grazing in a line that feels like promise and threat.

“Color,” he says again, relentless.

“Green,” I gasp, and his praise lands hot and heavy.

He rolls me onto my back, belts my hands to the headboard this time, pulls the knot firm and checks the give. The room blurs around the edges as he takes his time above me.

He’s bare but for the dark cling of his boxers, skin still damp from the shower, hair unruly from the towel he raked through it.

No suit. No pressed shirt. None of the polished armor that makes him untouchable.

He’s just muscle and heat and danger, stripped to his core, and it wrecks me how much more powerful he feels this way.

Power wrapped in restraint. A king that kept his crown on to ruin me.

His mouth claims mine with a hunger that’s almost violent, lips crushing, teeth dragging over the tender edge until sparks scatter down my spine.

I taste soap and copper, the faint ghost of something darker he didn’t wash off.

His hand fists in my hair, pulling until my neck bends back, baring me to him.

I gasp, but he swallows it whole. His tongue parts me like he has every right, and I let him. My thighs press together, a useless attempt at holding back the ache he pulls from me.

He shifts, pressing me back onto the bed.

The mattress dips under his weight, his body caging mine, and the heat of him burns through the thin cotton of my clothes.

He isn’t careful. He doesn’t ease me into it.

He takes. He bites my lip until it stings, then drags his mouth down the line of my jaw, my throat.

“Say stop if you want it,” he mutters against my skin, voice torn raw. “If not—I’ll take every inch.”

I don’t say stop. I don’t even breathe the thought. My fingers dig into his shoulders, nails scraping across damp skin.

He groans, low and harsh, and yanks at the hem of my shirt.

The fabric tears when it catches, a rip I should be embarrassed by but all I feel is the shock of cold air against my skin as he bares me to his stare.

His eyes scorch me—dark, obsessive, a predator who’s finally cornered prey that stopped running.

“Beautiful,” he rasps, dragging his thumb over the swell of my breast before bending to take me in his mouth.

Heat lances through me, sharp and consuming.

His tongue circles, then sucks hard, making me arch up into him, shameless.

He switches to the other, teeth scraping, mouth working me until I’m whimpering, wet and aching everywhere.

His hand slides down, finds the waist of my shorts, and shoves. He doesn’t peel them off like a lover might; he strips them like they’re in his way. I lift my hips and let him. Cool air hits the dampness between my thighs and I hear the way his breath stutters.

He palms me over my panties, fingers pressing hard enough to make me jerk. Then he hooks the fabric aside, two fingers sliding across the slickness there, slow at first—teasing me with how much he already knows I want it.

“Dripping for me,” he murmurs, voice a sinful scrape. “Say it. Say you need me inside you.”

Shame should rise up and choke me, but it doesn’t. My body betrays me, back arching, legs parting wider. “I need you.” The words are ragged, half a plea.