Chapter 3: What He Paid For

The zipper slid down her spine like a whisper.

Elara's hands were shaking. The blue dress—the one she'd worn to dinner with the Ashfords, pooled at her feet. She stood in Isabella's bedroom in nothing but a black lace bra and matching panties that Mrs. Windsor had laid out that morning.

She hadn't chosen them. She hadn't chosen anything since she walked into this penthouse.

Behind her, she felt Alexander's eyes on her bare skin like a physical weight.

"Turn around."

His voice was calm like he was inspecting a purchase.

Elara turned.

He stood a few feet away, still in his suit from dinner. His tie was loosened. His jacket was gone. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and veins. He looked at her the way a collector looks at a painting he's just acquired.

He owns me.

The thought should have filled her with rage and it did. Somewhere deep down, buried under layers of exhaustion and confusion and the strange, shameful relief of being warm, fed and wearing silk instead of scrubbing toilets.

But it also filled her with something else.

No one has ever looked at me like this. Like I'm worth looking at.

"Walk to the bed."

She walked. The mattress was soft beneath her when she sat. He didn't move from his spot. Just watched her with those dark, unreadable eyes.

"Lie back."

She did. The sheets were cool against her bare skin. Her heart was slamming so hard she could feel it in her throat, between her legs, everywhere. She stared at the ceiling because she couldn't look at him. Not while she was spread out like an offering.

His footsteps crossed the room. The mattress dipped as he sat beside her.

"You're trembling."

His hand settled on her stomach. Just rested there, warm and heavy. Her muscles clenched beneath his palm.

"I've never—" She swallowed. "I've never done this. Not like this, until now...”

His fingers traced the edge of her bra, just above the lace. Feather-light. Teasing. Her nipples tightened painfully against the fabric.

His hand slid up, cupping her breast through the lace. Her back arched without permission.

The sentence dissolved as his thumb found her nipple, circling slowly. Her breath hitched. Her hips shifted against the sheets, seeking friction she didn't know she needed.

"You're going to learn something tonight." His voice was low, almost conversational, even as his fingers worked her breast, sending sparks down her spine. "You belong to me. Your body is mine. Your pleasure is mine. When you come, it will be because I allow it. When you ache, it will be because I want you to ache. Do you understand?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"Use your words."

"Yes." It came out a gasp. "Yes, sir."

"Good girl."

The praise hit her somewhere deep. Somewhere she didn't know existed. She'd been called many things in her life—burden, nobody, invisible—but never good. Never like she'd done something right just by existing.

He unclasped her bra with one hand. The lace fell away, exposing her to the cool air and his burning gaze. She instinctively moved to cover herself, but his hand caught her wrist.

"No. You don't hide from me. Not anymore."

He pushed her wrist into the mattress, pinning it there. His other hand cupped her bare breast, thumb circling her nipple until it pebbled hard and aching. She whimpered. She couldn't help it.

"You feel that?" His voice was rough now. "That's what happens when someone actually pays attention to you. When someone takes the time to learn what your body needs."

He lowered his head. His mouth closed over her nipple, hot and wet, and she cried out. Her free hand flew to his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands. He sucked hard, then soothed with his tongue, and she was drowning, drowning in sensation she'd never felt before.

This is wrong. He's forcing me. I'm trapped.

But her hips were lifting, pressing against his thigh, seeking more. Her body didn't care about wrong. Her body had been starved for this—for touch, for heat, for being seen—and now it was feasting.

He released her nipple with a wet sound and looked up at her. His lips were slick. His eyes were dark with something that looked almost like hunger.

"You're already wet for me. I can smell it."

Shame flooded her face with heat. But beneath the shame was a pulse of pure want.

He sat up and began unbuckling his belt. The sound of leather sliding through metal made her stomach flip.

"Look at me."

She forced her eyes to his.

"You are going to take everything I give you. You are going to come when I tell you to come. And when I'm done, you're going to lie in this bed—Isabella's bed—and understand that your body no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the man who saved you from a life of scrubbing toilets and being nobody."

He pulled his belt free. His pants followed. His shirt was already gone—when had he taken it off? She hadn't noticed. She was too lost in the landscape of his chest, the hard planes of muscle, the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his briefs.

He was beautiful, terrifying and completely in control.

This is my life now.

The thought landed strangely. Not with despair. With something like... acceptance. Maybe even relief.

I don't have to fight anymore. I don't have to survive on nothing. I just have to let him take what he wants and in return, I get this. Warmth, safety, pleasure I've never felt before.

Was that so bad? Was trading her body for a life of luxury really worse than trading her body for minimum wage, scrubbing toilets until her hands bled?

Isabella is dead. She doesn't need this life anymore. Maybe... maybe I deserve it.

His briefs came off. She couldn't help but look. He was thick and hard and ready, and her thighs pressed together involuntarily.

"No." He grabbed her knee and pushed her legs apart. "You don't close yourself off from me. Ever."

He settled between her thighs, the weight of him pressing her into the mattress. His length nudged against her entrance, hot and insistent. She was wet—shamefully wet—and he slid against her folds, coating himself.

"Please," she whispered. She didn't know what she was begging for. For him to stop or for him to never stop.

"Please what?"

"Please... sir."

He smiled. It was the first time she'd seen him smile, and it was devastating.

"That's my good girl."

He pushed inside.

She gasped. He was thick, stretching her in ways she'd never been stretched. Her body resisted for a moment, then yielded, pulling him deeper. He didn't stop until he was buried to the hilt, his hips flush against hers.

"There." His voice was strained. "Now you understand. You were empty before. I filled you. That's what I do. I take broken, empty things and make them whole."

He began to move. Slow at first, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in. Each thrust pressed against something deep inside her, something that made her vision blur and her toes curl.

"You're going to come for me." His thumb found her clit, circling in time with his thrusts. "Now."

The command broke something. Her back arched off the bed as pleasure ripped through her, sharp and overwhelming and unlike anything she'd ever felt. She cried out—his name, she thought, or maybe just a sound—and her body clenched around him, pulling him deeper, milking him.

He groaned. His rhythm faltered, then picked up, harder, faster. He was chasing his own release now, using her body for his pleasure, and she let him. She let him because what else could she do? Because some dark part of her wanted to be used, wanted to be the thing that made this powerful, terrifying man lose control.

He buried himself deep and came with a guttural sound, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath hot against her lips. She felt him pulse inside her, filling her, marking her.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Then he pulled out and rolled off her, lying on his back beside her. She stared at the ceiling, her body still trembling, her mind blank.

"Clean yourself up." His voice was distant again. "Mrs. Windsor will have breakfast ready at seven. Tomorrow, you learn Isabella's schedule. All of it."

He stood, pulled on his briefs, and walked out without looking back.

The door clicked shut.

Elara lay in the massive bed, in her dead sister's room, with the evidence of what he'd done to her still wet between her thighs.

I should feel violated. I should feel ruined.

She waited for the tears. The rage. The despair.

Instead, she felt her body humming with the aftermath of pleasure she'd never known was possible. She felt the silk sheets beneath her, softer than anything she'd ever slept on. She felt the warmth of the room, the absence of hunger, the strange, unfamiliar weight of being wanted.

I've never had anything. Now I have everything. All I have to do is be her.

She closed her eyes.

And for the first time in years, she fell asleep with a mindset of being fulfilled.