My mother had dissected women before, but tonight was surgical. Cold. Clinical. That line—“This girl seems rather untamed”—wasn’t casual. It was a bullet in a silk sheath.
Floris flinched. I saw it. So did Helena. That was the point.
The car ride was silent. The kind of silence that’s not just absence—it’s containment. My hands were locked around the steering wheel, white-knuckled, knuckles aching.
Helena had gotten to me. And she knew it. She always knew.
“There’s a Javanese place up ahead,” I said finally, tone clipped. “You hungry?”
I already knew she was. Her vitals were still elevated from dinner. Her glucose read low on the implant. She hadn’t eaten since midday.
“Yeah, I could eat.”
We pulled in. A place I knew—quiet, local, real. Nothing like the poison palace we’d just escaped. I read the menu without really seeing it.
We ate in the car. No table. No ceremony. Just two people sitting in the dark, pretending this was normal.
She spoke first. “Your mother seems…”
Awful. Manipulative. Calculated cruelty in pearls and perfume.
“Awful? Manipulative? A walking advertisement for therapy?” I stabbed at my satay. “Yeah, she’s all of those things.”
“She really got under your skin back there.”
I didn’t respond right away. Because it wasn’t just about tonight.
“She’s been perfecting the art of psychological warfare since before I was born. My father never stood a chance.”
Floris went still beside me. “What do you mean?”
“She treated him like a trained animal. Made him beg for scraps of affection, humiliated him for sport.”
I didn’t plan to say the next part. But it came out anyway.
“She used to record it. The sessions. Him sobbing. Pleading. Begging her to tell him what he’d done wrong.”
Her fork stilled. Her breath hitched. “Jesus, Eric.”
“When I got older, I found the tapes. Watched them.” I stared out the windshield. “It was sick. Twisted. And I couldn’t stop watching.”
“That’s not normal,” she whispered. “That’s abuse.”
“It was educational.”
I turned toward her. Her eyes were wide. But not afraid. Just sad.
“I learned everything I know about control from those tapes. How to break someone down, build them back up, make them grateful for the privilege of being destroyed.”
Her face crumpled. “You’re nothing like her.”
I laughed. Sharp. Bitter. Hollow. “You’re right. I’m worse.”
“No, you’re not—”
“I am, Floris. She only destroyed one person. I’ve made it into a fucking art form.”
“That doesn’t make you worse. That makes you damaged.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing at all,” she said, twisting to face me fully. “She chose to hurt people because she enjoyed it. You hurt people because it’s all you know how to do. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. And the fact that you can even ask that question proves it.”
I stared at her and for one moment, I believed her. “You’re going to be the death of me,” I said quietly.
“Probably.”
“I should fire you. Send you back to Boston, let your brother’s treatment lapse, wash my hands of this entire mess.”
“But you won’t.”
“No. I won’t.”
The space between us turned molten. She was too close. Too real. Her pulse was racing. So was mine. She whispered, “Why not?”
And I broke. “Because you’re the first person who’s ever looked at me and seen something worth saving.”
And then I kissed her.
I didn’t think. I never didn’t think. But this wasn't the strategy this time. This was compulsion.
My mouth crashed against hers—desperate, rough, teeth and heat and all the things I swore I wouldn’t feel. Her back hit the seat. My hand closed around her throat, not to hurt—to feel. Thumb under her jaw, anchoring her to the moment.
“This is a mistake,” she gasped against my lips.
“I don’t make mistakes,” I growled, kissing her harder. “You’re the one who keeps asking for this.”
Her legs trembled under my hand. I slid my fingers up her thigh—slow. Testing. The fabric bunched. My knuckles pushed higher.
She was already wet.
“Thought so,” I murmured against her throat. “You watched that tape of Sia and still came crawling back.”
“I didn’t crawl,” she whispered. I pressed two fingers inside her—slow, deep, controlled. “I walked.”
I laughed. Low. Cold. “No, Floris. You obeyed.”
Her hips bucked into my hand. My fingers curled. She moaned into my mouth.
“Shh,” I whispered. “You’re supposed to be quiet, remember?”
“You didn’t say that this time.”
“I don’t have to.” I pulled away. Slipped my fingers out. Her body clenched at the loss.
I didn’t give her time to second-guess it.
One arm around her waist, the other gripping her thigh, I hauled her straight across the console and onto my lap. The chair rocked beneath us, leather squealing in protest, her gasp catching against my collar as her legs fell open across mine.
Her skirt hiked high on instinct, but I wasn’t gentle about it—I shoved the hem up to her hips with both hands, fingers sliding under, palms burning with the heat of her thighs.
Lace. Black. Useless. Already soaked.
My knuckles brushed the drenched fabric, and she trembled. The scent of her hit me like a drug I hadn’t had in weeks—ripe, heady, begging.
“Eric—” she started, breath ragged, voice half warning, half prayer.
My fingers hooked the lace aside, dragging it out of the way like it was never meant to be there.
I was already hard, already furious, already wrecked from the second she stepped into my office like she didn’t belong to me. I looked at her, right in the eyes, low and quiet.
“You don’t want this?”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak at first. Just held my gaze like she knew this was the edge of a cliff she wasn’t coming back from.
“I didn’t say that,” she whispered.
That was all I needed.
I gripped her hips and guided her down on me in one brutal motion, and her gasp—sharp, broken, utterly real—ripped through both of us. My eyes rolled back for a second.
Tight. Hot. Perfect. Every inch of her pulled me deeper like she was made for this. Made for me.
It wasn’t slow or sweet. It was a war. Our bodies crashed like two storms trying to drown the other first.
My hands locked on her hips, dragging her down again and again, each thrust rougher than the last. Her fingers dug into my shoulders—nails biting through the fabric, scraping skin.
Her mouth parted, moaning without meaning, throat too raw for words. The desk shuddered beside us, her body tightening every time I bottomed out inside her.
She didn’t ask me to stop. Didn’t beg for mercy. She gave herself to the moment, and I took every broken piece she offered.
“You’re mine when you’re like this,” I hissed into her neck, teeth brushing skin, tongue tasting salt and sweat. “You always were.”
She arched against me, nails slicing lower, voice barely audible through the haze. “Shut up,” she whispered. “Just—don’t stop.”
I didn’t. Couldn’t. My rhythm turned punishing, controlled only by the violence of needing her—of hating how much I did.
Her head fell back, neck exposed, chest rising too fast, and I bit my way down her throat like I wanted to leave proof. Her body clenched around me—hot, slick, desperate—and I felt it.
The shift. The crack in her control.
“Eric,” she moaned, trembling all over, legs seizing tight around my waist.
I leaned into her ear, low, dark, brutal. “Come for me.”
She shattered. Hard.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream, teeth sinking into my shoulder to stop herself from making noise, hips spasming against my grip.
I held her through it, every shake of her thighs, every twitch inside her dragging me closer to the edge until I lost it too—deep inside her, raw and undone.
My body bucked once, twice, then stilled, locked around her like I could anchor both of us if I just held on long enough.
Her breath came in shallow bursts against my chest. My hand slid up her spine, anchoring her to me even as the storm between us faded into ash.
“Fuck,” she whispered, still clinging to me like her bones weren’t working anymore.
I pressed my lips to her hair, breath ragged, voice barely a rasp.
“Yeah,” I said, eyes closed. “We’re both fucked now.”