Chapter 17
You’d think after sharing some stories over rooftop steak and city lights, things might feel… lighter. They didn’t. If anything, it was worse. Not sharp like broken glass, but thick. Suffocating.
Like we’d peeled back just enough to see each other bleed, but not enough to stop the bleeding.
When we got back to my room, I expected him to leave. He didn’t. Instead, Pierce shut the door behind him with a quiet click and just stood there, one hand on the door, the other hanging loose at his side.
His eyes found mine, and something in them flickered—uncertainty, restraint, maybe both.
Then he moved. Slowly, he reached for the buttons of his shirt and began to undo them, one by one, like we were about to pick up where the rooftop left off. The moment the fabric slid from his shoulders, the air shifted.
“I meant what I said,” he murmured, voice rough but calm. “No tricks. No punishment. But if you want more, if you want me—” He stepped toward me yet, against his expectations, I took a step back.
“Don’t,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to.
His hands froze mid-air. Pierce didn’t flinch and just waited.
“I’m not there,” I said, softer now, feeling how my voice wavered. “You don’t get to pretend like this is some slow-burn redemption arc just because you opened up over some overpriced stake.”
His jaw flexed, the muscle ticking, but he just nodded. “Then let me give you something else.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
He stepped back, slow, deliberate, and sat on the edge of my bed like he wasn’t sure whether he was surrendering or offering himself as a sacrifice.
“If you’re still angry, if there’s any part of you that wants to hit me, scream, destroy something, then do it.” His voice was steady, eerily calm. “Tie me up. Take it out on me, whatever you need. No limits.”
My stomach turned. “You… want me to hurt you?”
“I want to let you take back some of control.” There was no teasing in his tone. No heat, no seduction, just surrendering himself.
For a second, I couldn’t move, or even breathe. Because this wasn’t about sex. It was about choice. My choice. And after everything he’s done, everything he’s taken, this was the first time he’d given me something without strings.
My eyes dropped to the drawer. The silk restraints, the same ones he’d used on me. I crossed the room and picked them up.
“Lie down,” I said.
He obeyed without hesitation. No smug smile. No cocky comment. He stretched out on the mattress, gaze locked on mine. He was shirtless, chest rising slowly, like he was bracing for a storm.
He should’ve.
Every moment rushed back: the night he grabbed me and put the gun to my face, the way he thinks that he owns me, the helplessness that lived in my spine for days. That fucking whippining.
I climbed on the bed and yanked his wrists up. He didn’t resist—not even a twitch.
The silk biting into his skin is tight enough to leave bloody marks later. I made sure of it. Then I stood over him, breathing like I’d run miles, like the weight of every minute he’d stolen from me was pressing down on my ribcage, demanding to be released.
I slapped him. The crack echoed through the room, sharp and unforgiving. Blood rose quickly at his cheekbone, blooming red beneath pale skin.
“You don’t get to act noble,” I spat, circling to the other side. “You hurt me. You controlled me. You played with my mind and my body. You don’t get to look at me like you’re doing me a favor.”
I slapped him again—harder. His head turned from the blow, his lip splitting against his teeth.
“You like control, don’t you?” I said, circling the bed, rage pulsing under my skin like thunder. “Like to break people, watching them snap.”
He blinked once. “I did.”
“And now, huh?”
“Now I want to bleed for you.” That should’ve terrified me. It should’ve made me feel sick, but all I felt was heat crawling under my skin like wildfire.
I didn’t speak—just hit him again. Another clean slap across the face, his head jerking sideways with the force. A line of blood bloomed at the corner of his mouth.
He licked it slowly, satisfied. Freak.
“You think this is some kind of redemption?” I leaned down, grabbed his chin roughly, forcing him to meet my gaze. “Thinking if I hurt you hard enough, you get to walk out clean?”
“No,” he said, voice gravel. “But I can’t change what I did. So give me what I earned, little fox.”
I slapped him again. Harder this time, if that even possible. His lower lip open split this time and he is fucking smiling. “You sick son of a bitch,” I hissed.
“I never said I wasn’t,” he said, still with this wicked smile and blood on his teeth. “But you want this.”
I hit him again. And again. My body trembled with rage, grief, lust. He took every blow like it was sacred. His nose was bleeding now, red streaking down toward his mouth.
“You’re so fucked up,” I muttered.
“So are you.” His breath hitched when I leaned to him. “That’s why we fit so fucking perfectly.”
I hit him with my fist—his other cheek this time. His breath hitched, but he didn’t beg, didn’t move. He just took it, offering himself to me like he thought this was worship.
“You think I want this?” My voice cracked. “You think I wanted any of this?”
“No.” His voice was raw now. “But I know what you want now. Me. Even if it kills you.”
Pierce lay still, watching me, bare chest rising and falling beneath the shadows, blood drying at the edge of his cheekbone from my last strike. Still didn’t ask for mercy, didn’t deserve any.
I grabbed his face, fingers digging into his jaw. “You really think I’m like you?”
“I think,” he rasped, “you’re the only one who ever could keep up.”
Then my eyes flicked down and there it was—his erection, hard and thick, pressed against the fabric of his pants.
My stomach twisted, rage curling into something hotter.
“You’re hard right now?” I scoffed. “Bleeding. Bound. Getting slapped around. And this is what turns you on?”
He didn’t look ashamed. “You, on top of me, furious, untouchable—yes. That makes me rock hard.”
I growled and straddled him, my knees pinning his hips down with deliberate pressure. He hissed through his teeth as I shifted my weight, grinding over his cock just enough to make him ache.
My hands fisted in his hair, yanking his head back against the mattress.
“You’re not in control anymore, Pierce.” I lowered my face until our lips barely touched. “Say it.”
“I’m not in control,” he whispered, his breath hitching.
I grabbed his throat with my free hand, squeezing it hard enough to remind him how it could feel. “Louder.”
“I’m not in control.”
I leaned in, biting his bruised bottom lip hard to taste hot copper. “That’s right.”
He groaned, not in pain, not in protest, but like it lit something inside him. I kissed him, if you could even call it that. It was more of a claim—all teeth and bruising pressure. My lips pressed to his with force and he kissed me back with the desperation of a man already lost.
I yanked his head to the side and dragged my mouth down the column of his throat. He shuddered beneath me, hands twitching in the restraints.
“You don’t get to make a sound unless I let you,” I whispered.
“I won’t,” he promised, voice hoarse.
I leaned back, watching him struggle not to move, not to beg, not to do anything unless I allowed it. And God, that was intoxicating. Because for once, I wasn’t the girl trapped beneath him.
I was the storm above him.
Dragging my fingers across his chest, slowly and unforgiving, I slapped him again just to see him flinch, and he didn’t. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, but locked on me like I was both punishment and salvation.
“You’re not even sorry,” I hissed.
“I am,” he breathed, barely holding a smile. Fucking liar.
So I reached behind me, grabbed the gun he’d left half-buried under his shirt, and pressed the barrel against his forehead. When I took the gun off the safety, Pierce’s breath caught, but his eyes never left mine.
“You said you wanted to bleed for me?” I leaned down, lips brushing his ear. “Then let’s see how much you’ve got left to give.”
