Unholy Obsession

THE GREATEST MISTAKE IS THE UNKNOWN DISASTER.

Cloudless, beautiful fall night.

The type of night that gives no prediction of how wrong it could go.

I stare at the mansion’s entrance. The lanterns lining the walk hum. The thump of the moths crashing against the heated panes of glass guarding the flickering flame.

I am hidden by the leaves of an overgrown bush. My feet are on the verge of being consumed by the undergrowth as my mind replays the moment, taking over my will and throwing me back to when it all went wrong. The screams are the loudest between my ears. Then, the shot. The sound of the bullet finding its mark against her chest. Blood sprays like an exploding can of paint across every surface in the room. My hands shake violently, and the dampness spreading down my leg mirrors the raw panic inside as I claw at the shadows, desperate to escape.

There’s no threat now, no person holding a gun, no death on the floor. Everything is abandoned. Nothing left, not even the mistakes of the past.

The only sound is the desperate buzzing of bugs, drawn to the eternal flame’s flickering glow.

Still, I can’t quit this place.

I didn’t take action back then, and I do nothing here now. I ran. Like a coward. I faced death, and I ran. That’s what I did back then.

I couldn’t save her. The woman who did everything right and who is no longer with us.

The woman who came to me for help. She trusted me. A mortal mistake.

A sudden gust of wind forces me to fold deeper into my coat, as the icy chill slithers down my spine. It’s not the coldness that disturbs me to the core.

It’s that night.

The almost.

The way everything has moved on from that night Brittany allowed me into her home, tucked behind the guarded gates of one of Baton Rouge’s old-money enclaves, still pisses me off. The neighborhood was built around sprawling lawns, mature oaks, and houses large enough to hide an entire family’s ugliness without troubling the neighbors.

When I arrived, I could never have imagined the death spiral that would play out.

The air had been warmer then, unlike tonight, when the wind whispered eerily, like soft voices murmuring through a haunted memory lingering near a silent house.

The beautifully manicured lawns bordering this darkness stood silently, their vibrant green a stark contrast to the shattering of a life and the heavy weight of survivors’ guilt that filled the air.

Word has it that the shock will diminish. My friends and family have no idea about the deep gloom that disturbs my nights. Because the silence of the massacre hides the fact that I was there.

Because the one thing protecting me is also the thing keeping me alone with it.

The nightmares are getting worse.

Sleep only comes when I force it now. Enough alcohol to make the room soften around the edges, or enough pills that my body gives up before my mind can drag me back into that house.

Without chemical sedation, the screams could keep me awake in an endless reverberation of Brittany’s dying moment.

Taking on more therapy isn’t something I am willing to do. I’m not losing my mind. I’m haunted, as echoes of the past stir the surrounding stillness.

I’m supposed to be on a cruise to Jamaica. Last minute, I canceled. I always cancel. Desperation claws at my throat as I strain against the walls of my enclosure, craving even a brief escape to feel alive would be wrong.

It was careless of me. A moment of intoxication as my friend, Dani, tried to offer a brief escape to sun and fun on the water. A perfect prescription for depression. Only, I’m not depressed because of a mental disfunction. I am depressed because of the burden I accepted when I fucked up. My mistake cost an innocent woman her life. That is not the same as being genetically disposed to depression or having a depressive moment. I am the sole reason she is no more. That is my burden to carry. I can’t discuss it with my therapist. Not in full context. I can’t share it with anyone. A scarlet letter marks my body, and I am unable to tear it away.

I believe the world lost Jade Bellerose, along with Brittany, on that tragic day. The shell left behind is nothing but an imposter.

An unworthy second.

It’s why I’ve returned. A goodbye of that nature. One last trip to the place that was not meant to become a disaster.

The cold key in my pocket urges me to continue forward with the plan.

The branches creak when the wind finds them, and my hair lifts from my shoulders, black strands winding across my face like restless fingers.

I release a loud sigh, blending weariness with destiny.

It is time. I’ve delayed enough.

I inch out from my secured cover of the bushes and step toward the path. Beneath my feet, the sand crunches quietly as I linger for a brief second. This is not a sensation of fear. I am unafraid of death. I’m scared of being stopped.

I pull out the gun.

Metal.

Final.

It is the fate I’ve chosen.

I cock it back, and I close my eyes. As if something sinister takes over, I don’t feel my finger wrap around the trigger. One pull. A second longer. I can do this.

I hope the family improves in my absence.

I know the dynamic will. There won’t be a failure among them. That gives me a spark of happiness in this last moment.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Brittany’s spirit and my loved ones.

My fingers shake as I press the trigger…

A flick of pain pings against my forehead.

Ouch.

I catch a small round ball fall from my body, roll onto the sidewalk, and disappear into the edge of the lawn. What the….

I snatch the gun up and break it open. My stomach drops.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

It isn’t a handgun.

It’s a BB gun.

For a second, I can only stare at the useless thing in my hands while the joke settles in. All this time I thought I had something between me and whoever came through that door.

Turns out I brought a toy to my nightmare.

Even when I tried to protect myself, I somehow fucked that up too.

A laugh cuts through the dead silence.

My entire body jerks before my mind catches up with the sound. It came from behind me, low and unmistakably male, close enough that every hair along my arms lifts at once.

For one horrible second, I forget how to breathe.

His presence presses closer behind me while I scramble to hide the gun. Fake or not, it looks real, and the last thing I need is someone seeing it and deciding to make my night worse.

I shove it toward my jacket pocket.

It catches.

My fingers slip.

The gun hits the pavement with a hard plastic crack, bounces once, then rattles against the concrete loud enough to sound like a confession.

My heart stops.

Fuck.

I do the only logical thing available to a woman operating on pure panic and punt the damn thing as hard as I can. It sails across the yard. For half a second, I’m impressed with myself. Then it punches straight through the front window of the vacant house next door.

Glass explodes inward.

An alarm immediately starts screaming into the night.

I stare at the broken window.

I’m impressed by my accuracy.

Then a hand closes around the back of my neck.

Every thought in my head disappears.

His palm is warm against my skin, fingers spreading beneath my hair with enough pressure to hold me exactly where he wants me.

My breath locks in my chest.

The alarm keeps screaming somewhere beyond us, but the sound suddenly feels far away.

All I can hear is the blood pounding in my ears and the quiet certainty that whoever laughed behind me is close enough now to feel me shake.

He’s not safe.

No.

That isn’t the problem.

I’m not safe.

The darkness and the angle of his body leave me blind to everything except the pressure of his hand at my neck. I can’t see his face, can’t tell how tall he is, can’t even turn far enough to catch more than a shape behind me.

Panic wins.

I lift both hands into the air, as if surrender might convince him I’m not worth the trouble.

There’s nothing to take. No purse hanging from my shoulder. No jewelry worth ripping from my skin. I didn’t bring cash in my pockets, and the closest thing I had to a weapon is currently lying somewhere inside a vacant house after I kicked it through a window.

If he came looking for an easy victim, congratulations.

He found one.

His grip tightens at the back of my neck, fingers digging in until a sharp pulse of pain shoots beneath my skull.

My knees threaten to give.

For one humiliating second, I’m not sure whether it’s fear or the pressure holding me upright.

Is it possible to have the worst night of your life twice on the same square acre?

Because apparently I’m collecting them.

Asking for a friend.

I do what any trapped woman with half a survival instinct would do and drive my knee backward, aiming for the one part of him most likely to make him reconsider every decision that brought him here.

Unfortunately, he’s ready for me.

He catches my leg before I connect, hooks an arm around my waist, and uses the grip at my neck to yank me so fast my shoes scrape across the pavement.

My back hits him for half a second before he forces enough space between us for me to look up.

Fine.

If I’m about to die, I’ll accept the dance.

Olé, motherfucker.

I may have spoken my challenge a little too soon.

I take back the Olé.

Not the motherfucker part. He is still very much a motherfucker.

He surges forward with me trapped against him, lifting me high enough that my toes barely skim the ground as he carries me toward the steps. I twist, kick, try to find enough pavement beneath my feet to push back, but every time the tips of my shoes catch, he steals the ground from me again.

The shattered window waits at the top, shards of glass still clinging to the frame while the alarm shrieks loud enough to burrow into my skull.

Oh, absolutely fucking not.

I claw at the arm locked around me, digging my nails into skin hard enough that I feel them catch. He doesn’t loosen his grip. Doesn’t curse. Doesn’t even stumble.

Nothing.

Apparently, a man who regards attempted castration and ten fingernails digging into his flesh as minor inconveniences grabbed me.

Wonderful.

The broken window gets closer.

My humor dies somewhere around the second step.

I twist against him, digging my nails into whatever I can reach—his arm, his wrist, the hand still controlling the back of my neck. I catch skin. I know I do.

He doesn’t even flinch.

Because apparently my fate is to be kidnapped by the one psychopath on Earth who considers fingernails a mild inconvenience.

He presses me against the solid wood door hard enough that my cheek catches the grain while his free hand reaches past me.

Metal scrapes against metal.

A key.

He has a fucking key.

My brain stops working.

No.

Wait.

That doesn’t—

The lock turns.

Every thought I had about being dragged into some abandoned house collapses at once, replaced by something considerably worse.

He belongs here.

Or he has enough access to make it look like he does.

Either option is terrible.

The smallest, most pathetic fuck slips out of me before I can stop it.

Then another, much softer. Almost silent.

“Fuck.”

He forces me across the threshold.

We pass through what used to be Brittany’s living room, and for one disorienting second, the room isn’t empty.

The furniture comes back first. The sofa. Everything sitting exactly where it had been that night. Then Brittany is present as well, lying sprawled on the floor with tiny droplets of her blood marking everything nearby.

I blink.

Gone.

The entire room has been cleared out so thoroughly that it hardly looks like the place where I witnessed a woman die.

My mind doesn’t get enough time to catch up.

He shoves me against the wall beside the security panel, knocking the breath from my lungs, then reaches past me and punches a code into the keypad.

The alarm dies.

The sudden silence should be a relief. Instead, my ears ring.

Because he knows the code too.

Wonderful.

I’m still trying to decide how many ways I am fucked when something near the broken window catches my eye.

My BB gun.

It lies among the shattered glass where I kicked it through the window, surrounded by the damage caused by the single most pathetic weapon ever brought to a kidnapping.

I stare at it.

Somehow, it looks even more useless from inside the house. Not that it would have saved me. I’m here now, trapped inside the place I never wanted to see again, completely at the mercy of the man who dragged me through the front door like I weighed nothing.

Oh mighty captor, please let me go. I’ll do anything.

The thought comes with all the dramatic desperation of a woman in a terrible movie.

Anything?

My brain immediately objects.

Probably not anything.

I have limits. Anal, for example. There is absolutely no reason to get graphic about this. It’s not like he’s —

I stop myself.

Nope.

We are not finishing that thought. Not while I’m pinned against a wall by a man who apparently owns keys to my nightmares. I should buy a lottery ticket. With this kind of luck, I’m either due for a jackpot or another homicide.

I’ll be here all week with the jokes.

Well, maybe not all week.

Depends on how murderous he’s feeling.

My feet leave the marble again before I can think of anything useful to do. He carries me deeper into the mansion, and somewhere between the foyer and the staircase, I realize I’ve never actually seen most of this place. The last time I was here, I made it as far as the living room before Brittany’s blood turned the rest of the house into a place my mind refused to map.

Now I’m getting the tour.

Past the kitchen. Down a hallway too quiet for a house this size. Up the stairs while I claw at his arm and hate how little it matters. Each step takes me farther from the front door, farther from the window I shattered, farther from anything that could still resemble escape.

Then he carries me into a room, and my entire body goes cold.

Not a bedroom.

Not even close.

The room is black.

Not painted for style. Built for intent. Black walls. Black floors. Black leather catching the low spill of light like oil. The air smells faintly of polished wood, steel, and something darker underneath—clean, but not innocent. There’s furniture, but none of it belongs in any room meant for rest. A narrow bench. Heavy rings bolted where rings have no business being. Restraints. Hardware. Deliberate things. Purposeful things.

My struggling stutters.

Oh.

Oh, no.

This isn’t a room where people sleep.

This is a room where people are kept.

My brain fires too fast, grabbing at details and shoving them together before I’m ready. The stripped-out house. The key. The alarm code. The fact that this room exists, concealed within a space everyone else would believe to be vacant.

Against every reasonable possibility, he carries me straight into it.

“Whoa—what the fuck?”

The words barely leave my mouth before he turns me and drives me against the wall. My shoulder catches first, then my palms, and suddenly I’m face-to-face with the hardware I noticed from across the room.

Chains.

Leather cuffs.

Far too many fucking options for attaching a human being to a wall.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

My body reacts before my brain finishes putting the pieces together. I shove backward, twist, try to duck beneath his arm, but he steps into me and takes away every inch of space I might have used. His weight pins me against the wall while I fight for enough leverage to turn around.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Nothing.

That scares me more than an answer probably would.

My left arm is pulled above my head.

There’s a metallic click.

I jerk my wrist down. It doesn’t move.

A cuff.

The realization hits at the exact moment he reaches for my other hand.

“Oh, fuck you. Absolutely not.”

I fight harder, throwing my weight sideways, kicking backward, trying anything that might make holding me more trouble than I’m worth. It buys me nothing. He catches my right wrist, forces it up beside the other, and another click seals the decision for both of us.

For one second, I stop moving.

Then I lose my fucking mind.

I wrench both arms downward hard enough to make the chains snap taut above me. Leather bites into my wrists. Metal rattles against the wall as I twist, pull, kick, and throw every ounce of panic I have into getting free.

Nothing gives. The cuffs, chains nor him.

My breath comes faster as the truth finally settles somewhere beneath my ribs. I’m trapped. Actually fucking trapped.

Who the fuck is this guy?

I can’t defend myself with my wrists locked above my head, which becomes a much bigger problem when he grabs the waistband of my pants.

Then they’re gone.

Just—gone.

For one deeply inappropriate second, I’m almost impressed by the efficiency.

Seriously?

No.

Absolutely fucking not.

Every stupid joke in my head evaporates as cold air hits my bare legs and the reality of my position finally catches up with me.

“No. No, no, no.”

I yank against the cuffs hard enough to make the chains rattle against the wall.

Nothing moves.

Except him.

If I were facing him, I’d have options.

A knee to the balls. A heel to the shin. At the very least, I could give him my best touch me and die, motherfucker stare and pretend it carried any actual authority.

But I’m facing the wall.

I can’t see him.

I can hear him moving behind me, close enough that every small sound becomes something my mind has to interpret without evidence. A shift of fabric. The scrape of a shoe. His breathing somewhere near my shoulder.

That’s worse.

Not knowing what he’s doing is worse.

I pull against the cuffs again, harder this time, but the leather only bites deeper into my wrists.

Who the fuck is this guy?

I’m in his lair, and I don’t even know his name.

The thought lands harder than it should.

I have spent my entire adult life walking into situations other women were desperate to escape. I have listened to every version of he won’t let me leave. I’ve memorized bruises women tried to hide beneath sleeves, learned which husbands checked mileage and bank statements, which ones controlled phones, which ones smiled at neighbors before locking the doors behind them.

I knew what trapped looked like.

I knew how to get women out.

Almost all of them.

Brittany flashes through my mind before I can stop her.

And now here I am with my wrists bound above my head, facing a wall I can’t move away from while a man whose name I don’t even know stands somewhere behind me with all the freedom I don’t have.

The irony would almost be funny if terror weren’t crawling up my throat.

I now understand for the first time the exact moment some of those women reached—the point when the fight was no longer about victory but about refusing to make things simple.

Fine.

I can do that.

He can restrain my hands. The door can be taken away. He can put me in a room built to make helplessness look inevitable.

But helpless isn’t the same thing as finished.

My body may be trapped.

My fight isn’t.

And if I get one hand free, one opening, one stupid mistake from the man behind me, I’m going to make him regret every decision that put me against this wall.

I just need one chance.

Then his hand circles my waist.

Skin on skin.

Heat curls low in my stomach before I can stop it, and for one stunned second, I forget about the chains altogether.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

No.

Absolutely not.

My body does not get to pick now to become an idiot.

I am not turned on by this. There isn’t a secret kidnapping fantasy lurking in my basement. I’m a vanilla girl. Give me a bed, mutual enthusiasm, and maybe enough bad judgment to make tomorrow awkward. This?

This is fucking unhinged.

I jerk against the restraints again, rattling the chains hard enough to make metal strike metal above my head.

Still trapped.

Wonderful.

Apparently my nervous system has confused mortal danger with foreplay; my wrists are attached to a wall, and I’m being manhandled by a stranger whose name I still don’t know.

I need Jesus.

Actually, Jesus might be underqualified.

Somebody send backup.

He strips away the last piece of protection I have left.

Cold air hits my skin, and something inside me snaps.

“No.”

The word tears out of me as I fight the restraints, every muscle pulling against the cuffs.

He can’t do this.

My body reacts to the adrenaline anyway, heat rushing through me while my mind races in the opposite direction.

No.

I’m not into this.

I’m…

“I’m a virgin,” I hiss.

He goes still.

Not kind-still. Not oh God I didn’t know still. The kind of still that says the words landed, and he is turning them over like they might be a trick.

“Say that again.”

His voice is close. Too close. Warm air against the side of my throat, and I hate that I feel it everywhere I’m trying not to.

“I’m a virgin.” I make it sharp. Ugly. A door slammed in his face. “So if this is the part where you—”

His hand on my waist tightens. Not crushing. Claiming. His thumb drags a slow, insulting line just under my ribs like he’s mapping the exact place my breath keeps snagging.

“I’m not asking you,” he says. Quiet. Almost conversational.

“I’m not—”

He doesn’t turn me. Doesn’t hunt for my mouth. He steps in until my bare back is flush to his pelvis and the wall takes my cheek, my forehead, whatever it can steal. My bound wrists pull taut above me. His other hand slides up my spine—slow, possessive—and settles at the nape of my neck. Not choking. Pinning. Holding my head where it is, so I have to speak into the wall.

“You rattled those chains like you wanted out.” His mouth barely moves against my skin. “Then you made that sound.”

“I didn’t.”

A pause. Precise. “Your body is communicating.”

Heat punches low and vicious. I jerk, metal singing overhead, and it only presses me back into him. Bare skin. I can feel his hard penis warm against my opening. The hard, unmistakable line of him against the small of my back that I refuse to name because naming it makes it real.

“Please,” I whisper.

It dies against the wall. Useless.

I would dig my nails into him if I could reach him. Peel skin. Make him bleed for putting me here. I would scream. No one would hear me. It would only anger him. I am desperate to stop whatever this is, and yet my body wants it.

Bitch.

My hips hitch back before I can stop them, a tiny, humiliating seek that seats him more firmly against me—hot, blunt, slick with what I’ve already given him. Still not in. Still right there. The head of him kisses my opening like a question I keep failing.

“Please,” I say again, and I hate that I can’t tell which way I mean it.

His hand at my nape doesn’t ease. The one at my hip does the opposite of mercy: it holds me still, so I can’t chase, and I can’t escape, so every small roll of his body is something done to me. Shaft sliding through the mess between my thighs. Head catching, pressing, promising, refusing.

“You can beg the wall,” he says against the back of my neck. “It won’t answer. I will.”

I exhale.

“I know.” A breath. Almost a laugh, not quite. “That’s why it’s working.”

I wrench at the cuffs until pain lights up my arms. My fingers claw at air, at iron, at nothing. If I had one hand free I would rake him open. I would make a door out of him. I don’t have a hand free. My cheek has plaster on it while his cock paints wet, shallow strokes over a place no one has ever reached, and a body that keeps softening for it as if it didn’t receive the memo.

“Don’t.” The words shred on the way out. “Don’t— I’m— I said I’m…”

“I heard you.” His mouth stays at my hairline. No face. Nothing I can look at and hate properly. “Virgin. I know. And, now you’re mine.”

He notches himself there again and holds. Pressure without breaking. Heat without entry. I can feel my pulse flutter against him, traitorous and obvious.

My body clenches around nothing.

Bitch.

I want to scream. I want to run. There’s nowhere I can go, and my pussy is begging for the release. I can feel myself press against his dick—the warmth, the hardness—before I even mean to. A helpless little grind that seats him tighter against me, head slick and blunt at my opening, shaft riding the mess I’ve already made of us both.

God, I need it.

The thought lands like a slap. I try to take it back. My hips don’t. They push again, tiny and frantic, chasing the thick heat of him like my body has filed a separate petition and won.

“Don’t—” It comes out wrecked. “I don’t—”

“You do.” His voice is gravel at the back of my neck. He doesn’t thrust. He lets me do it to myself: that shameful, searching press of my pussy along his dick, smearing myself over him, opening around the idea of him and never getting more than the threat. “Feel that? That’s you. Working for it with your face in the wall.”

I jerk forward to get off him. The cuffs yank me short. I sag back and get all of him again—hot, hard, not inside, so close my empty cunt flutters like it can pull him in by wanting alone.

“Please.” I don’t know anymore if I’m asking him to stop or to put it in and end the argument. “I can’t— I need—”

“I know what you need.” His hand slides down my stomach and cups me from the front, two fingers spreading my pussy so his dick has a wet, perfect track to drag through. He rocks. Shallow. Cruel. The head kisses my entrance, catches, stretches nothing, retreats. “You need to come on a cock that isn’t going to give you one. Not yet.”

“Then let go of me.”

“No.”

He holds me there and makes me feel every inch I’m not getting. The hardness riding my slit. The warmth pulsing against the place I’m aching to be filled. My body shoving back for more, greedy and shameless, while my mouth keeps trying to file a complaint no one in this room is taking.

I would run if the chains would let me. I would scream if it would change the math.

Instead, I press against his cock again, a broken, needy roll, and hate the sound that leaves me when he still doesn’t take what I’m offering.

God, I need it.

He feels it. Of course he does. He notches himself there and stops dead, throbbing against my opening, my pussy clenching around air and the shape of what he won’t give.

“Beg the wall,” he murmurs. “Beg your own body to quit. None of it’s getting you filled tonight.”

I shake. Drip. Push back anyway.

“Why,” I moan.

The word breaks on the wall. Ugly. Honest. My hips keep offering what my pride already surrendered—slick, open, grinding along the hard heat of his dick like I can argue him into me by friction alone.

I need it.

Please enter me.

I don’t say the last part out loud. I don’t have to. My body says it for me, a helpless clench around nothing, a wet, searching press that seats the head right against my entrance and begs.

He goes still behind me.

Not leaving. Not giving. Holding that single filthy point of contact until I can feel my pulse trying to pull him in.

“Why?” He repeats it against the back of my neck, almost softly. “Because you mentioned virgin, like it was guaranteed. Because the second I push in, this stops being the thing you can still call a fight.”

“I don’t care.” It rips out of me. “I— please. I need it. Please—”

My forehead grinds into plaster. My bound hands claw at iron. I shove back onto him, shameless now, trying to take the head of his cock myself, and he grips my hip and stops me. Keeps me stretched around the idea of him and not the fact.

“No.”

One word. Final. His cock stays there, thick and wet and throbbing against my opening, and he will not give me the inch that would ruin the line.

“You don’t get to come on a decision you made in a moan,” he says. “You get to hang here and feel how badly you want me inside you. That’s the point.”

“Please enter me.” This time it is out loud. Small. Ruined. “Please. I can’t— I need you to—”

He rocks once, just enough to drag through my pussy and kiss that untouched place again, a cruel almost that makes my knees go.

“I know,” he murmurs into my hair. “Ask again.”

I do. God help me, I do—pushing back, dripping down him, moaning why and please into the wall while he holds me on the edge of the thing I swore I didn’t want and now can’t stop begging for.

He doesn’t enter me.

He makes me feel every second of not being entered until please is the only language I have left.

“I need it… please.”

“No.”

The word is still at my ear when something else touches me.

Not him.

Cold at first. Smooth. Then it lives—a hard, buzzing kiss he seats dead on my clit and holds there like he’s done negotiating.

The sound I make isn’t human.

It’s more intense than anything I’ve ever felt. Not a tease. Not a finger. A current slammed straight through the place I’ve been grinding on his cock like an idiot, and my whole body locked. Thighs shaking. Cuffs screaming. His dick still hot and slick against my opening, still not in, while the vibrator chews through every last scrap of pride I had left.

“Take it,” he says against the back of my neck. “You wanted release. Earn it like this.”

I try to twist away. There’s nowhere to go. He follows, ruthless, keeping the head of that thing mashed to my clit, and the orgasm doesn’t build so much as detonate.

I tense.

I scream.

It rips out of me into the wall, raw and helpless, and then something in me breaks open—a sharp, shocking gush I don’t understand until I feel it leave me, hot, pulsing, spilling down my thighs, over his cock, over his hand, over the toy he’s still holding on me as he paid for the show.

I can’t stop. Another wave hits, and I squirt again, messy and loud, body jerking in the chains while he keeps the vibrator right there and lets me ruin myself on it.

He laughs once, low, pleased, mouth in my hair.

“Oh, that’s interesting.” The toy eases just enough that I can hear how wet I am. How wrecked. “You’re a squirter.”

I sag. Shaking. Soaked. Empty and overfull at the same time, his dick still notched against me like a reminder of what he wouldn’t give.

He taps the vibrator against my oversensitive clit again—light, cruel—and I jerk with a broken sound.

“Squirt your juices for me, little lamb.”

I do. I can’t not. Another helpless spill while my face stays in the wall and the man behind me finally has a new name for what my body does when it stops asking permission.

“Easy, Lamb.”

Lamb?

I have a nickname now.

I’m the wolf, fucker. You have me chained… like I’m a lamb. I’ll show you.

The laugh that wants out of me is all teeth. It comes out wrecked instead, because the vibrator is still a live thing against my clit and his dick is still hot against my opening and my body hasn’t gotten the memo that this is a declaration of war.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I just did.” His mouth stays at the back of my neck. No face to bite. No throat to reach. “You shook apart in my hand and tried to pretend you were still a fight. Lamb fits.”

I wrench at the cuffs hard enough that metal screams. My wrists burn. Good. Pain is a language I still own.

“I’m not your anything.” I shove back anyway—stupid, furious—and only paint myself over him again. “You don’t get to name me.”

“I already did.” Calm. Almost bored. The toy taps my oversensitive clit, and my knees try to fold. “Lamb. Soft where you swore you were sharp. Wet where you swore you were holy. Still kicking like that’s going to change the hook in you.”

“I’m the wolf,” I snarl into the plaster. “You hear me? I’m the wolf. You just caught me on a terrible night.”

A pause. I feel him smile without seeing it. His hand spans my hip and holds me still, so I can’t make the threat into movement.

“Good,” he murmurs. “Then keep growling, Lamb. I like the way it sounds when your mouth and your cunt are telling different stories.”

I bare my teeth at a wall that doesn’t care.

“Let me go.”

It comes out raw. Not pretty. Not a moan this time—an order thrown at a man I still can’t see.

“No.”

Simple. Same as every other no he’s given me. His body cages mine from behind, cock still slick against me, the toy a dull threat near my hip now that he’s let me stop shaking.

“Let me go.” I yank the chains until my shoulders scream. “You got what you wanted. You made your point. You named me. Let me go.”

His hand flexes at my waist.

“I didn’t get what I wanted, Lamb.” His mouth is at my hair, not my face. “I watched you beg to be entered and I still didn’t take it. That wasn’t the end of this. That was me being careful with something that keeps calling itself a wolf.”

“I am—”

“Then prove it when your hands are free.” A beat. Cruel. Almost fair. “Right now you’re on a wall. You’re dripping down your own thighs. And you’re asking a stranger to unlock you like he’s going to forget what you just did on his fingers.”

I swallow blood-taste and pride.

“Let me go.”

Quieter. Worse.

He doesn’t move to the cuffs. He drags the head of his cock through the mess I made—one slow, possessive slide that isn’t entry and still feels like a claim—and then he stills.

“Say it again.”

“Let me go.”

“And what do you do if I do?”

Hunt you, I think.

Out loud, all I have is the truth that will get me nowhere:

“I run.”

His laugh is low. Not kind.

“That’s what I thought.” His forehead rests against the back of my skull. The chains stay locked. “Not yet, Lamb. You don’t get the door until you stop shaking.”