4

Sloane's POV

My body was trembling uncontrollably now. The dual sensation of his thick cock stretching my sore cunt and his mouth nursing greedily at my breasts was too much.

Pain and unwanted heat tangled until I couldn’t separate them. Tears soaked the pillow under my cheek. My wrists ached in his grip. My breasts throbbed from the constant suction.

I badly want to push him off me but he's way too strong and I don't have any strength.

He shifted suddenly, releasing my wrists only long enough to shove both of my legs higher, folding me nearly in half so he could drive even deeper.

The new position tore a raw cry from my throat. He groaned her name against my breast and sucked harder, as if the sound of my pain fed something in him.

I felt him swell inside me. His thrusts grew shorter, more frantic.

His mouth stayed locked on my nipple, sucking in deep, greedy pulls even as his hips stuttered. When he came it was with a long, guttural moan of her name.

“Lark…” spilling hot and deep inside my already-filled cunt while he continued to nurse at my breast like he couldn’t bear to stop.

Even after the last pulse left him, he didn’t pull out. He stayed buried to the hilt, body heavy on top of mine, mouth still soft and wet around my nipple. The sucking slowed but never fully stopped—lazy, sleepy pulls now, the kind a child makes when it is almost asleep but refuses to release what it is feeding on.

“Please…” I whispered, voice barely there. “Please get off… I can’t…”

He made a low, wordless sound against my breast and sucked once more, deeper.

His hand stayed cupped around the soft flesh, holding it to his mouth. Gradually his body grew heavier. His breathing deepened.

The thrusts had long since stopped, but the gentle, rhythmic nursing continued for a long time—soft, wet, insistent—until even that faded into the slow, unconscious draws of true sleep.

He slept on top of me like that, mouth still loosely latched to my breast, one heavy arm draped across my waist, cock still soft inside my sore body.

The room was quiet except for his deep breathing and the faint, wet sound of his lips against my skin.

I lay still beneath him, tears drying on my face, both breasts aching from the long, hungry attention, everything between my legs throbbing with a deep, raw hurt.

Then slowly drifted to sleep.

The next morning light was cruel.

It cut across the bed in a thin white blade and laid every mark bare. The bruises on my hips, the swollen tenderness between my legs and the faint red imprint of his mouth are still visible on my breasts.

I woke up already hurting, already small, and then I felt him look at me.

He really looked at me.

Kaelan sat up as if the sheets themselves had turned to ice.

For three full heartbeats he said nothing.

He only stared at my face the way a man stares at a wound he did not know he carried.

“You,” he said, and the single word was already a condemnation. “You are not her.”

I tried to speak but I couldn’t form a word to tell him, I was too tired.

He moved closer, one hand locked around my wrist hard enough to grind bone and dragged me upright.

The sudden pull tore a broken sound from my chest. Pain flared white-hot between my legs. I bit down on it, and tears filled my eyes.

“You stood in her dress,” he said, voice low and shaking with the effort of control. “You signed her name on that certificate. You let me touch you. You let me…” His voice cracked, then hardened into something uglier. “You stole her life. You put on her skin like a costume and walked into my bed as if it belonged to you.”

“I didn’t want to…believe me…”

“Do not say a word, you slut!” The roar finally broke free. He yanked me off the bed so violently I stumbled and fell to my knees on the cold floor.

The ruined nightie almost slipped from one shoulder. I stayed there, shaking, arms wrapped around myself, while he stood over me like a storm given human form.

“She was supposed to be here,” he said, each word a separate cut. “Lark. The one who was promised. The one this entire alliance was built upon. And instead I found you. A replacement. A thief who thought she could wear another woman’s future and I would simply never notice.”

I lifted my face, tears streaming freely now. “They forced me. My parents…Lark ran…she begged me…”

“I do not care how you arrived.” His voice dropped to a deadly quiet. “You are here, you took her place and now you will pay for it.”

He dragged me barefoot through the corridors.

Staff scattered.

No one looked.

Down the stairs, past the polished world of the main house, into the colder, narrower halls of the servant’s wing.

He unlocked a low door and shoved me inside so hard I fell again, palms scraping against stone.

The room was small. Windowless. A single bare bulb. Metal shelves. A thin mattress. A bucket. The air smelled of dust and forgotten things.

Kaelan stood in the doorway, filling it completely, and the look he gave me was pure devastation turned outward.

“This is your place now,” he said. “Not the rooms prepared for a wife. Not the bed you already dirtied with your lie. Here is where the house stores what it does not wish to see. You will stay in this room until I decide what is to be done with a woman who believed she could steal a life that was never hers.”

“Please,” I whispered, the word cracking open. “Please don’t leave me here. I never wanted her life. I only wanted to be free of mine.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and for one impossible second I thought I saw something almost human behind the rage. Then it vanished.

“You are not free,” he said. “You are a thief. And thieves are locked away.”

The door closed. The lock turned with a sound that felt final.

I stayed on the floor, forehead pressed to the cold stone, and sobbed until my ribs ached. Every part of me hurt, the places he had taken, the places he had marked, the deeper place where hope had lived only yesterday and now lay gutted.

Hours later the door opened again.

Venia Thorne, his mother stood there, looked at me the way one looks at something that has crawled in from the gutter and left stains on clean floors.

“So,” she said softly, and gently, and that gentleness was worse than shouting. “This is the parasite.”

I raised my head. My voice was ruined. “I’m Sloane. I’m not…”

“I did not ask.” She remained in the doorway, unwilling to step into the room I now occupied. “You inserted yourself into a contract sealed with my family’s name and my family’s future. You allowed a lie to stand at the altar. You let my son believe, even for one night, that he had received what was promised. In this house that makes you a parasite. Something that feeds on what does not belong to it.”

Tears spilled again, hot and helpless. “I was forced. My sister ran. They would have destroyed me if I refused…you all saw I wasn't my sister…”

“Then you should have let them destroy you.” Her voice never rose, yet every word landed like a slap. “Instead you chose to destroy the arrangement that kept two families from ruin. You chose to sit in a stolen dress and speak stolen vows. And now you will live with the consequences of that choice in a room that matches what you are, you are just something to be stored and forgotten.”

She turned to leave, then paused.

“The staff have been instructed that you are invisible. They will not answer if you call. They will not look at you if you pass. As far as this household is concerned, the woman who arrived yesterday does not exist. Do not test that instruction. Parasites who make themselves noticed are removed.”

The door closed. The lock turned.

I crawled to the thin mattress and curled into myself, arms around my knees, the torn nightie useless against the cold. The sobs came harder now, the kind that feel like they might split the chest open. I had traded one cage for another, and this one had no windows, no kindness, and a name that was not even mine.

Later, I no longer knew how much later, the door opened a third time.

An older man stood there, looking broad, silver at the temples with the same sharp bones as Kaelan, the same refusal to feel.

Aldric Thorne, his father I think, looked at me for several long seconds. He did not speak and did not step inside.

He simply regarded the broken thing on the floor of the storage room as one might regard a stain that would eventually be scrubbed away, then turned and walked off without a single word.

The door shut loudly and I flinched, my lips trembling.