And I loved it. God help me, I loved the violence he wielded on me just a little too much. My body rocked instinctively, pressing back against him, chasing the friction of his length between my thighs. Each drag of his tip left me wetter, needier, trembling harder.
He steadied the candle and poured again, this time tracing a deliberate shape down my spine—some kind of mark, a symbol I couldn’t make out. It dripped and cooled, his signature branded in wax while his other hand stroked down my ribs to grip my hip.
I moaned low and raw, rocking against him again and again until it felt less like a choice and more like an addiction I had to give into.
I was weak.
I was lost.
I was broken all for him.
He stood there watching and then he set that candle down and massaged my ass cheeks where he’d smacked them, humming as my rhythm got faster and faster.
“Please. Please. Please. God, just fuck me. I want to feel you in me again. Hard. As hard as you can.” I begged him through tears that blurred my vision, the sound breaking in my throat.“Please, Bane,” I whispered hoarsely into the darkness of the bathroom. “Please.”
He didn’t move. Not an inch. His chest rose and fell, his blue eyes fixed on me with restraint. The candlelight flickered across his face, shining light on those perfectly carved godlike features.
I moved against him, desperation overtaking me. My hips rolled, finding a rhythm on their own as I climbed toward a high that needed to be attended to. His cock was right there, hard, heavy, glistening with my arousal, but he still hadn’t thrust into me. He just stood there, holding me in place, watching me unravel on my own.
“That’s right.” His voice was a low growl that vibrated against my spine. “Ride that cock, Pink. You ride it so good.” His fingers dug deeper into my hips, guiding without giving, making me work for every inch. “But you don’t get to take it all, baby girl.” His mouth ghosted my ear, hot and dark. “It’s not yours to take anymore.”
The words hit me harder than any of his spankings could have. He wasn’t mine, but I was so close to having him. I wanted it so badly that my body shook as my movements grew frantic, my thighs trembling from the effort of grinding against the hardness of him, slicking his length with everything I had. I felt feral, shameless, trembling on the edge of breaking apart.
Then his palm came down hard against the curve of my ass he’d been kneading. The sound cracked through the air, sharp and hot. I gasped, my body jerking forward. His grip followed, fingers bruising, anchoring me in place.
“Now,” he growled, the command dark and absolute. “Come. Let me see that poison of yours drip out all over me.”
I did as I was told. My body didn’t give me a choice.
I couldn’t stop it if I tried. My body betrayed me completely, clenching and shuddering around nothing as the orgasm tore through me. My moan broke against the mirror, my foreheadpressed to the cool vanity as the world narrowed to him—his voice, his hands, his cock slick against me. I came hard, the tremors rolling through me in waves, wetness coating him just like he’d demanded.
And still he didn’t move. He just held me there, watching as I broke, as if he owned not only my body but my release itself.
CHAPTER 13
BIANCA
He’d pulledmy skirt down before I’d even caught my breath. No whispered words. Just his deep voice telling me to “take all the time you need” and that I could go back to my room instead of returning to the dinner table. Then he’d tucked himself back in with a look on his face that made my stomach twist. Disgust. I just didn’t know if it was for me, for himself, or for everything we’d just done.
I didn’t follow him.
I walked back to my room in a haze of embarrassment and confusion, my heels clicking against marble almost robotically. My skin still buzzed where his hands had been. My back ached faintly where the wax had seared me, a reminder of how easily pain blurred into pleasure in his presence. I should have been horrified by what happened in that bathroom. The blood on my dress, the way I had begged him, the fact that I’d wanted every rough second of it. But my body had hummed the entire walk back to the elevator. Even now, my thighs pressed together like they held a secret.
I think I was deranged.
I shut the door to my penthouse suite and leaned against it, palms flat, taking in my surroundings. My room was too perfect.Too clean. I went to the shower to wash everything away, but before I did, I turned my naked body so I could see my back.
Written in hardened wax was:
mine.
I didn’t scrub much after that because I wanted the feel of him to stay. I grabbed a robe and sat down with sopping-wet hair and turned on my phone speaker to hit play on an audiobook. My only allowed escape. Bane hadn’t been too strict about that, probably because he saw no danger in stories. To him, it was just background noise. But for me, they were proof I still had a piece of my world that belonged to me.
I folded up cross-legged on the bed, painting my nails, as a narrator’s voice filled the silence. Each brushstroke of color across my fingertips felt like an attempt at normalcy, like if my nails looked pretty enough, maybe I could believe I wasn’t unraveling.
But my head wouldn’t stop replaying the night. The way Jameson had smiled at me, all charm and warmth, slipping me attention I tried to want. The way Angela had tilted her glass toward Bane, eyes fluttering without so much as a hi to me. The way Rafe hadn’t even looked up. None of it mattered. Not when Bane came to me like a storm, violent and all-consuming.
A knock jolted me out of my thoughts.
