All Chapters of VELVET CONTROL : Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Shawn Reid The system hummed with satisfaction as I watched Catriona’s breathing slowly even out. She was still handcuffed to the door, body flushed and marked from my hands and mouth, my release still warm inside her. The car smelled of sex and her perfume, the windows slightly fogged. For the first time since Phase V had completed, the pressure in my head was quiet. Stable. Anchored. I reached over and unlocked the cuff from her wrist. The metal clicked open. She didn’t immediately pull away. I studied her face carefully — the tear tracks, the conflicted eyes, the way her lips were still swollen from my kisses. When she didn’t try to bolt or fight, I felt a deep, possessive certainty settle in my chest. She wasn’t going to leave. Not tonight. The thought of claiming her again made me hard almost instantly. My cock twitched, thickening against my thigh as I imagined pulling her back onto me, burying myself deep where I belonged. But before I could move, Catriona surpris

Shawn Reid The Mandarin Oriental suite felt like a private kingdom built just for this moment. Catriona lay beneath me on the silk sheets, her body flushed and glistening with sweat, legs wrapped tightly around my waist as I thrust deep and slow into her welcoming heat. The room was dimly lit by the city lights filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting soft gold and silver patterns across her skin. She was still slick from earlier, her walls hot and velvety, gripping me perfectly with every deliberate roll of my hips. I could feel every flutter, every clench, every tiny pulse as I dragged against that sensitive spot inside her that always made her lose control. The system was purring in my head, fully integrated at 100%, feeding me waves of satisfaction with every thrust. This was what it had demanded — the anchor secured, the connection renewed, stability restored. I leaned down and kissed her deeply, swallowing her soft, broken moans as I ground against her cli

Shawn Reid The drive back from the cemetery left a heavy silence between us. Catriona sat quietly in the passenger seat, her expression distant as the city lights began to flicker on around us. The promotion to Executive Vice President had been announced only hours earlier, yet it already felt like another lifetime. Mayette’s cold disapproval still lingered in the air, but none of that mattered now. Catriona was here. With me. The system was stable. The anchor was secured. I pulled into the upscale supermarket near the hotel, deciding we needed something normal after the intensity of the boardroom and the grave. Groceries. Domesticity. A small attempt at grounding ourselves in something ordinary. Catriona walked beside me down the wide, brightly lit aisles, her movements careful and deliberate. She hadn’t spoken much since the boardroom announcement, the weight of the promotion, the grave visit, and everything that had happened in the car and the hotel pressing down on her.

Catriona I sat on the edge of the luxurious hotel bed, staring at the closed MacBook like it was a live grenade that had just detonated in my lap. The room felt too quiet, too still. The city lights outside the floor-to-ceiling windows painted soft gold and silver patterns across the silk sheets, but none of that beauty reached me. My hands were trembling in my lap, my bare finger where the ring used to sit feeling strangely naked and cold. Shawn had laid everything bare — every single skeleton, every hidden child, every woman he had used and quietly discarded when the system demanded a reset. The full ledger of fifty-seven names. Carlisle Gallagher and the twins living secretly in Zurich. Amara Kline and the night he had fucked her raw in New Jersey while I was gone. Sicily Voss — his current executive fling — and their two children. The sheer volume of it all left me completely numb. I loved him. That was the most painful, confusing part. My heart still ached for him even no

Catriona I went to the hospital alone the next afternoon, the small velvet box heavy in my bag like an unresolved verdict I needed to deliver. The private wing was quiet, the kind of sterile silence that made every footstep echo off the polished floors and glass walls. Charles was still in the medically induced coma, his condition stable but critical after the severe spinal injury from the car crash. Machines beeped softly behind the closed door, monitoring his vitals with cold precision. I hadn’t planned to come, but after everything with Shawn — the full disclosure of all his skeletons, the what-ifs spinning endlessly in my head, the ring I had left behind in the penthouse — I felt like I owed this visit. Or maybe I just needed to close one chapter before I could decide on the next. Sophia Laurent was sitting outside his room when I arrived, flipping through a tablet with tired eyes. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her sharp eyes, but she carried herself with the sa