My heart hammers so loud I swear he can hear it. It thunders against my ribs, ready to split through bone if I don’t hold myself together. He doesn’t speak as he leads me down the hallway—just silent, focused, every step a warning.
We reach his bedroom, and even though I’ve been here dozens of times before, it feels different now. The air’s heavier. The walls tighter. I can’t read his intent, and the not-knowing grips me harder than any restraint ever could.
“Wait,” he commands, voice low as he shifts effortlessly and drops me onto the bed.
I stay put. Not out of fear—but because I know better than to test him when he looks like this. When the fire behind his eyes burns quiet and cold.
He crosses to the walk-in wardrobe—the one I happened upon before, the one that isn’t filled with suits or coats but with toys.
But they’re not really toys, they’re closer to instruments. Steel, leather, rope. Tools that blur the line between pleasure and punishment.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited to meet someone who doesn’t flinch at the darkness?” His voice threads through the room, taut with history. “Not even my wife could face this side of me. She hated it. Hated that it existed inside me at all.”
He pulls a coil of rope from the shelf, letting it slide between his palms with the kind of ease that only comes from repetition. It’s almost meditative, the way his fingers move.
“You don’t know anything about my marriage,” he continues, eyes locked on mine now—ferocious and raw. “Yes, I loved her. And I’d do anything to give her life back. But this—” he nods toward me, gaze sweeping over my body like it’s something he’s claimed just by looking, “this is something she never wanted to understand.”
And in this moment, I forget to breathe.
“You’re mine now, Nell,” he says, voice low and anchored in promise. “You might’ve crashed into my world without warning, but I’m not letting you leave so easily.” His steps are deliberate, commanding, the rope swinging at his side like an extension of intent. “So—what do you choose for your safe word, trouble?”
That nickname, laced with affection and threat, hits just right.
He brushes the hair from his face with one hand, and my stomach flips at his devastating beauty. This is why I’ll never find anyone who compares. Just look at him. A walkingcontradiction; fury wrapped in devotion, danger dipped in grace. He’s too good for me… and yet exactly what I crave.
But I don’t want a safe word.
I want to know how far he’s willing to take this.
I want to feel it all.
“Do I need one?” I ask, letting the question hang between us like bait.
His eyebrow arches—a challenge carved into his flesh—and then he chuckles. That low, rumbling kind that stirs something wild in my chest.
He peels off the bike leathers, then slowly—excruciatingly slowly—unbuttons two buttons on his shirt. His sleeves roll up with practiced care, each movement deliberate, each second drawn out like a tease, revealing those tattoos that wrap around his body up into his hairline.
The braces slide from his shoulders and pool at his waist.
Damn.
“Not if you trust me,” he says, voice low and steady.
“I trust you.”
There’s no hesitation—because it’s true. Whatever this is, whatever we’re walking into, I trust him with all of it.
“Stand,” he commands, and I obey without a word.
There’s an unexpected tenderness in the way he moves—gentler than I imagined—as he eases the hoodie up and over my head. His fingers brush lightly along my sides as he works thejoggers down my hips. He doesn’t rush it. Doesn’t turn it into a performance. Just peels me out of my layers like he’s revealing something sacred.
Then he stills.
“No underwear?”
His gaze flickers, amused. But it’s his fingers that speak louder—trailing back up my thighs, slow and deliberate. They skate over the curve of my hips, coaxing goosebumps to bloom against my skin.
And just like that, I’m wrecked inside.
