Chapter 4

ELARA

The morning light is cruel and definitely not helping matters.

It slices through my bedroom curtains like a knife, stabbing directly into my skull. I groan and pull the pillow over my face, but that doesn't help. Nothing helps. My head is pounding, my mouth tastes like something died in it, and my body...

Oh God, my body.

I'm sore everywhere. Muscles I didn't know existed are screaming. There's a deep ache between my thighs that makes me wince when I try to move. My hips feel bruised. My wrists are tender.

And when I finally force myself to open my eyes and look down at myself, I see why.

The fingerprints from the day before have turned purple and blue, blooming across my hips like some kind of depraved artwork.

I look like I've been in a fight.

Or like I spent three days being thoroughly, completely, obsessively fucked.

The memories hit me all at once, and I have to close my eyes against the onslaught.

His hands are pinning my wrists above my head.

His voice, rough and commanding: "Look at me when you come."

The feel of him stretching me, filling me, breaking me open, and putting me back together in an entirely new configuration.

"Mine. You're mine now, little girl."

Heat floods through me despite the soreness, despite the shame that's trying to creep in around the edges. My core clenches at the memories, and I have to press my thighs together against the sudden ache.

What the hell did I do?

I slept with a stranger. Lost my virginity to a man whose last name I don't even know. Spent an entire weekend in his bed, letting him do things to me that I didn't even know were possible.

And I loved every second of it.

That's the part that terrifies me most. Not that I did it...but that I don't regret it. Not even a little bit.

I should regret it. I should be mortified, disgusted with myself, spiraling into shame. That's what the old Elara would have done. The Elara who followed all the rules, who waited for the right person, who believed in love and commitment, and all those fairy tales.

But that Elara died on Friday night when she walked in on her boyfriend fucking her twin sister.

This new Elara...the one who demanded a stranger take her virginity, who begged for more even when her body couldn't take it, who discovered she likes being dominated and claimed and owned...she doesn't know how to feel about any of this.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it with a shaking hand.

Seventeen missed calls.

Ten from work. Seven from Elise.

Shit. Work. What day is it?

I unlock my phone and check the date. Tuesday. Thankfully, I took the day off yesterday; I feel better today and more level-headed.

My heart starts to race as I open my work email. There are dozens of messages, increasingly frantic. My supervisor is inquiring about my health, and my colleagues are wondering if I'm okay.

And then, at the top of my inbox, sent at 7 AM this morning:

URGENT: Please make sure to report to the CEO's office immediately when you get back. Tuesday at 9 AM sharp. —Executive Administration

The phone slips from my hand.

The CEO's office.

I've never met the CEO. In three years at the Cross Enterprise, I've never even seen him. He's like a ghost—always traveling, in meetings, or somewhere else. Most of the company doesn't even know what he looks like. And that's why Marcus was over the moon when he was promoted to work in the upper level, as he had direct contact with him. A feat that surely isn't easy to achieve.

But he wants to see me. Immediately.

Lucas.

The realization hits me like a freight train. Lucas must have gone to the CEO. Must have said something...lies, probably, or half-truths twisted to make me look bad. He threatened to make me lose my job, and now here it is.

I'm going to be fired.

I'm going to walk into that office and be terminated, and there's nothing I can do about it because I caught my stupid, half-baked boyfriend cheating. "I was too busy being fucked into oblivion by a stranger to remember the threat to my job existed."

"Fuck," I whisper to my empty apartment. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

I drag myself out of bed, wincing at every movement. I need to shower and make myself presentable and figure out what the hell I'm going to say.

The bathroom mirror is not kind.

My hair is a disaster—tangled and wild, with that just-fucked quality that no amount of brushing is going to hide. There are shadows under my eyes, purple half-moons that speak of too little sleep and too much... everything else. My lips are swollen. There's a faint bruise on my neck that I somehow missed before, right at the junction where the shoulder meets the throat.

But underneath all of that, there's something else.

A glow.

I look different. Not just tired or marked up, but... changed. My eyes are brighter. My skin has a flush to it. I look like a woman who's been thoroughly satisfied, claimed, and worshipped.

I look like I've been owned.

"You're mine now."

His voice echoes in my head, and I shiver despite the steam starting to fill the bathroom.

I don't even know his name. Just the initials on his shirt: D.C.

I left his penthouse while he was sleeping, like some kind of coward. Couldn't face the morning-after awkwardness or handle whatever conversation we would have needed to have. So I took a taxi home in the pre-dawn darkness, wearing his shirt because my dress was ruined, and I've been too much of a mess to even think straight since.

But I kept the shirt.

It's still in my bag, that crisp white dress shirt with his monogram on the cuff. I don't know why I kept it. As a memento? Proof it actually happened? Or because some part of me isn't ready to let go of the only physical reminder I have of the most intense seventy-two hours of my life?

I step into the shower and turn the water as hot as I can stand it.

The heat helps with the soreness, at least. I let it pound against my aching muscles while I wash away the evidence. Soap away the dried sweat and the faint scent of his cologne that still clings to my skin, and also shampoo out the tangles in my hair.

But I can still feel him.

The ghost of his hands on my body. The memory of his weight pressing me into the mattress. The way he looked at me, like I was the only thing in the entire world that mattered to him in that moment.

"Beautiful. So fucking beautiful. Look at you, taking me so well."

I press my forehead against the shower tiles and try to breathe.

I can't think about this right now. I can't think about him, about what we did, or about how much I want to do it again.