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25

Gillian

T he car ride is quiet, but not in the way silence usually feels.

It feels like a warning.

There’s no message this time. No call, no pretense. Just an unmarked car idling at the curb outside my building and a driver who opens the door without a word. I don’t ask where we’re going. I already know.

Ellis’s home is etched into me now. I know the shape of the drive, the sound of the gate sliding open, the shift in air pressure when the locks engage behind me. But tonight, something’s different. Sharper. Hungrier.

He’s waiting at the door when I arrive.

He doesn’t greet me.

He just turns, and walks deeper into the house.

I follow, like always.

The lights are low, but not soft. Cold. Shadowed. The background music isn’t the usual piano—it’s darker, pulsing like a heartbeat through the floors. And the air smells different—sharper. That cologne he only wears when he’s angry. Clean, bitter, chemical. The kind you taste before you notice it’s there.

Ellis doesn’t look back. He doesn’t ask how I am. He leads me to the same room, same hallway, same floor I always end up on. The bedroom. His. Mine. Ours. Never.

The door clicks shut behind me.

Then he turns.

And I know—before he says a word—that tonight is different.

His eyes move over me like a scanner. No affection. No charm. Just calculation. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask. Just crosses the room in two strides and grips my jaw hard enough to make my breath catch.

His mouth slams into mine, not to kiss, but to claim.

There’s no buildup.

Just demand.

He bites my bottom lip, hard. I taste blood. He doesn’t apologize. His hand is already at my throat, pressing—not choking, not yet, but enough to remind me I’m not here to be cherished.

I’m here to be used.

And I let him.

Because there’s no way in which it doesn’t lead to this. He’ll just make me forget until we end up where we were always meant to go. Same as always.

His grip tightens, just enough. My breath hitches.

“Strip,” he says.

I hesitate—not out of resistance, but confusion. The word lands like a blow, too blunt, too sudden.

He raises an eyebrow.

“You wanted to be useful. Prove it.”

My fingers move, almost against my will. Dress. Zipper. Skin.

I don’t look at him while I undress, but I feel him watching. Measuring. Something sharp and unsatisfied burns behind his eyes. Part of me wonders if it would be easier if he hated me out loud. At least then I’d matter.

When I’m bare, he steps forward and drags his knuckles down the center of my chest—slow, cruel, clinical. “There’s someone new,” he says, like it’s an afterthought. Like he’s commenting on the weather.

“But she’s not ready—yet.”

I flinch. And I hate myself for it.

He smiles. Not kindly.

“She’s not you,” he adds, voice low, dragging the words like silk over a blade. “But the potential is there.”

I don’t ask who. I don’t ask what that means.

Because I already know what I’ve become.

The fallback, the punishment.

He presses me back onto the bed without ceremony. His hands are on my thighs, spreading me. His mouth is against my neck, my collarbone, biting—not teasing. Marking.

When he enters me, it’s not slow.

It’s not tender.

It’s brutal.

He fucks me like he’s trying to forget something.

Or maybe like he wants me to remember it for him.