ログインI couldn't answer. I was gasping, my vision going spotty at the edges, and for one long second neither of us moved at all."Look at me." His voice had changed completely — no roughness left in it, nothing performative, just something close to alarm. He turned me, carefully, onto my side, one hand coming up to my face. "Breathe. In through your nose. Look at me and breathe."I did, shaking, and he stayed like that, still inside me, utterly motionless, his thumb moving once — just once — across my cheekbone to catch a tear I hadn't realized had fallen.He didn't say anything about it. He didn't ask if I was okay in words, didn't apologize, didn't do anything that would have let me file this moment away as proof of something. He just waited, silent, until my breathing evened out, his thumb resting against my cheek like he'd forgotten to move it.Then, the second my breathing steadied, his expression closed back over, fast, like a door shutting."Better?" he asked, flat again, all the ala
Ezra didn't touch me right away.He stood at the edge of the bed for a long moment, looking at me the way he'd looked at me in the auction house — like he was checking for cracks — except this time there was something else underneath it, something hungrier, something he'd clearly been holding back all night and had run out of reasons to keep holding."Say something," he said."What do you want me to say?""I don't know." His voice was low, rougher than it had been in the car, in the meeting room. "Something that isn't a lie."I didn't have anything that wasn't a lie. I was exhausted, marked, shaking, and the only true thing left in me was fear, and I didn't think that was what he was asking for.He climbed onto the bed and I flinched back instinctively, and something tightened in his jaw when I did — not anger, not quite, something closer to a man absorbing a hit he'd expected and still didn't like taking. He didn't stop moving toward me. He just reached out, slow, and pushed a piece
"Don't mistake care for softness," he said, voice rough now, his other hand gripping my hip hard enough to bruise exactly the way Roman's had. "I said I wouldn't damage you unnecessarily. I didn't say I'd be gentle."The whiplash of it — kindness and cruelty in the same five minutes, from the same hands — left me more disoriented than anything Roman had done, because at least Roman had never pretended to be anything other than what he was.He fucked me like that for a long time, controlled even in his roughness, never once losing the rhythm he'd set, watching my face the entire time like he was still checking, still measuring, still deciding something about me with every reaction he pulled out of my body. My third orgasm of the night crested slow and then broke all at once, and I heard myself say his name without meaning to, and something crossed his face when I did — quick, unreadable, gone before I could name it."Again," he said, voice tight now, his own control finally starting to
Silas closed the door behind him the same way he did everything — without wasted motion, without a sound.He finished unbuttoning his shirt while he looked at me, unhurried, his eyes moving over my body the way you'd check inventory rather than look at a person. I pulled the sheet up instinctively, and he noticed, and something in his face didn't change at all."Don't," he said. "It's not going to stay there."I let go of it. There wasn't a version of tonight where fighting him made anything better, and some part of me had already learned that lesson from the room downstairs.He sat on the edge of the bed and reached for my ankle first — not my hip, not my throat, my ankle — turning it slightly, like he was checking for something."Does that hurt?" he asked.I blinked at him. "What?""Your ankle. You've been favoring it since the car." His thumb pressed once, testing. "Answer me.""No. It's fine."He held it a second longer, like he didn't fully believe me, then set it down and moved
"Shut up," I whispered, and he laughed — actually laughed, low and rough against my skin — like nothing I said tonight was going to land the way I wanted it to.He didn't wait after that. He shifted, positioned himself, and pushed inside me in one hard stroke that stole the air straight out of my lungs. I cried out, and his hand came up to cover my mouth, not gentle, just efficient, like he'd expected the sound and had already decided he wasn't going to let it carry through the house."Quiet," he said against my ear. "Unless you want my brothers walking in early."The thought of that — of Silas and Ezra somewhere just outside that door, listening, waiting their turn — sent something sharp and confused through me, fear tangled up with a shame I didn't have a name for.He didn't go slow. He set a pace that had the headboard knocking against the wall within seconds, his hips snapping against mine with a kind of hunger that felt less like desire and more like something he was owed and had
The bedroom was bigger than my entire room back home. Bigger than the room I'd shared with nobody, in a house where I hadn't mattered enough to take up more space than that.Roman shut the door behind us. The lock clicked, and the sound of it went through me like something physical.Silas and Ezra weren't in the room. Not yet. I didn't know if that was mercy or just order — Roman first, the way everything else tonight had gone in an order none of them had asked me about."Strip," Roman said.I didn't move. Not out of defiance, not really — my body just wasn't listening to me anymore, frozen somewhere between the fear and the cold and the sheer size of what was about to happen.He crossed the room without hurrying, the way he did everything, and stopped in front of me close enough that I had to tip my head back to keep looking at him."I'm not going to ask twice," he said. His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. "Every second you make me wait is a second I remember later. Don't gi







