LOGIN~Delia~Three days.It had been three fucking days since Katia walked through the front doors of this house, and I had not seen her walk back out.I had been counting.The first day I had told myself it was nothing. Katia had come on Julian's call—the so-called London Extension, the business emergency that required her to drive to the city mansion at nine o'clock at night—and maybe she had stayed in one of the guest rooms. It was a large house. There were plenty of rooms. It did not have to mean anything.The second day the trays started.One of the housemaids carried a breakfast tray upstairs at eight in the morning and came back with it empty. Lunch tray at noon. Empty. Dinner tray at seven. Empty. Two trays. Side by side on the trolley when they went up. Two sets of cutlery. Two glasses.I had watched from the corridor. I had counted the cutlery.Two, fucking two!Julian had not left his wing. Not once in three days. His meetings had been rescheduled — I knew this because I had see
~Julian~My body was no longer mine to command.The fire Delia had slipped into my wine had completely burned away my civilized mind, leaving behind a feral, territorial beast that knew only one directive: possession. I had always heard rumors about the black-market aphrodisiacs used in the underground high-stakes circles—vague, warning whispers of how they stripped a man of his humanity, turning him into a relentless, unyielding animal in bed.Today, I was the witness to my own monstrous transformation.I had her legs shoved wide apart, her thighs hooked over my broad shoulders, lifting her lower body completely off the mattress to open her swollen, aching core to my weight. I gripped my fully rigid, throbbing shaft, the head purple and leaking a continuous, hot drop of pre-cum, and drove back in.Wet, heavy, and brutal.The friction of our joined fluids was a loud punctuation to the low, rattling wheeze in my chest. I pounded into her, my hips slanting with an unhinged, high-velocit
~Katia~The cool bedroom air was a brief, stinging shock against my bare, soaking wet skin, but the relief lasted only a fraction of a second.Julian’s heavy, furnace-like heat descended on my back once more, his massive frame pinning me flat against the mattress. The weight of him was suffocating, his sweat-slicked chest pressing hard against my shoulder blades, forcing my face deep into the bunching silk pillows.Before I could even drag a full breath into my lungs, his large, scarred hands clamped around my hips with a bruising, iron-like grip. He adjusted my position, pulling my hips higher, tilting my pelvis to expose my wet, swollen core completely to his dark, heavy pressure.He didn't wait. He didn't ease into the transition.He aligned the swollen, throbbing head of his massive cock at my entrance and drove in from behind.I screamed.The muffled cry was swallowed instantly by the plush fabric of the pillow. The angle was brutal—an agonizingly deep, unyielding stretch that fe
~Katia~The heavy oak door clicked shut with a definitive, hollow snap, sealing the rest of the world completely out of existence.Before my hand even left the brass handle, the air in the room vanished.Julian didn’t walk. Driven by the chemical fire Delia had slipped into his wine, he lunged—a massive, dark silhouette cutting through the dim bedroom.His hot, heavy hands clamped around my waist with a violent torque that lifted my feet clean off the floor. I didn’t even have the breath to gasp before he hauled me against his chest, his muscular frame radiating a terrifying, furnace-like heat, and threw me.I hit the mattress hard. The impact knocked the wind from my lungs, the silk duvet bunching up around my head as my hair went wild over my face.I scrambled to sit up, but his heavy knees already pinned my hips into the silk. He descended on me like an apex predator reclaiming his den, his massive chest heaving in shallow, labored gasps that rattled in the quiet room.He didn't sp
~Katia~I brushed past Delia's shoulder without another word. The suffocating, heavy scent of her floral perfume and the flicker of her useless dinner candles faded behind me as I crossed the threshold of the formal dining room and headed straight for the grand stone staircase.My heels clicked sharply against the stone as I ascended, each step carrying me further into the quiet, dark sanctuary of Julian's private wing. My heart was hammering against my ribs, wild and fueled by the sheer audacity of what lay downstairs and the unknown danger waiting for me above.When I reached his room, the door was slightly ajar. A single, warm sliver of light cut a sharp line through the dim corridor.I pushed the door open and stepped inside.Julian was standing just inside the bedroom, his massive frame trembling slightly. He was holding onto the heavy wooden doorframe with a white-knuckled grip, using it as an anchor just to keep himself balanced against the invisible weight pressing down on his
~Katia~The bedroom in the upstate Windsor estate was quiet—too quiet, the kind of heavy, isolated silence that only a sprawling property shrouded in misty rain could produce. Down the hall, Aiden was already asleep, his room dark and settled. I was sitting on the edge of the mattress, the artificial glow of my tablet illuminating the dark as I tried to review the shipping manifests for the Brooklyn shipyard, when my phone vibrated in my palm.The screen lit up with his name.I swiped the screen and pressed the receiver to my ear, expecting his usual gravelly, possessive whisper. But when he spoke, his voice sounded like iron sliding over stone—stiff, strained, and strangely formal.“Ms. Kensington,” he rasped, the words forced through a tightening throat. “I'm afraid you will have to rush to my home. We need to discuss the London extension. It's urgent.”The line went dead before I could even draw a breath to answer.I stared at the darkened screen, my stomach hitting concrete as the
~Delia~I called him at nine in the morning.Marcus—not his real name; nobody in his line of work used their real name—had been my private investigator for eight months. He had found things I had not expected him to find. He had also consistently failed to find the one thing I actually needed, whic
~Julian~I arrived at the mansion at eight fourteen.I knew about the meeting before I walked through the door. The team had flagged the activity the previous evening—the calls between Martha and my grandmother, the arrangements, and the time agreed upon. I had read it on my phone at six in the mor
~Julian~I lay in the dark of her Brooklyn penthouse, but the quiet of the room was a lie.She was asleep against my chest, her breathing slow and even, but my blood was still running hot and black. Every time I closed my eyes, I didn't see the dark bedroom. I saw the dining room table at the Kensi
~Julian~I saw it for exactly what it was.The dinner. Christopher. The seating. The hand-holding performance Delia had put on at the table like she was auditioning for a role she had never been cast in. All of it — every carefully arranged piece of it — was a response to the night Katia had stayed







