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I swallow hard.

“How did you get these?” My fingertips follow the faint line running down his forearm.

He reaches into the pocket of his slacks and pulls out a knife. It opens with a clean snap that makes my pulse jump. The blade catches the light and throws it back at us in silver flashes.

“I like to see my pain,” he says, as if it’s a simple preference.

I hate that he feels that way because I understand exactly what he means. I’ve held my hand over a flame to feel its burn, wondering if pain might make me more real.

Slowly, I reach for the knife.

He lets me take it.

The blade turns in my grasp while light slides along its edge. My thoughts drift to my parents. To the skin I was forced to keep perfect. To the idea that my body was a product meant for someone else, wrapped up and preserved until the right man came to claim it.

There were times when I imagined ruining that perfection myself. Not because I wanted to die. I only wanted control of my own life. To decide what happens to my body.

Now I look at Edwin and want something different. I want to carry what he carries. I want to take the part of him that harms himself and hold it until it softens.

The blade lowers to my forearm and presses down just a little.

Edwin’s hand clamps around my wrist with an iron grip. He looks at me like I just pointed a gun at his chest.

In a single motion, he takes the knife from me and pushes me back onto the bed. The black robe I’m wearing splays open at my thighs. My spread legs bare my pussy to him, but I don’t scramble to cover anything. That old panic is gone now.

He hovers above me, staring down like he doesn’t know where to put the terror I just handed him.

“Your pain is mine to hold. Nothing else is going to hurt you.”

Those words rush through my blood and heat my skin. Edwin’s possession of me isn’t ownership of a commodity. It’s obsession.

He looks right at my pussy while holding the knife. His free hand drifts over my inner thigh, tormenting me with anticipation. The tip of the blade follows the same path, gliding across my skin, over my pussy lips.

When it reaches my thigh, he presses down, just enough to draw a thin line. Pain flickers, and I wince at the sting, but the rest of the world fades away. My father means nothing. Asher is a memory I can’t touch. This room, this bed, Edwin’s hands—they become the only reality I can hold.

The blade drags three more times across my skin, and I clench my jaw to take it each time. Tiny beads of blood rise from the wounds.

It’s an E, marking me as his.

His warm tongue flattens to lick it clean with a welcome tenderness. I pull my lower lip between my teeth as his head moves above my pussy. There’s nothing I want more than to disappear into him, to lose myself in his care.

But if he can mark me, I can mark him too.

Before he can get a taste, I grab him by the hair and tilt his head back. Danger flares in his eyes, but those long canines glint when he grins, amused that I would even dare.

I sit up and he lets me overpower him. I push him onto his back, even though I see the strain cross his face when the movement pulls at his sore skin. My fingers wrap around the handle of the knife, and I take it from his hand.

When I straddle his torso, the robe slides open and pools around my hips. The blade touches the center of his chest, its point pricking the skin beside the scarred brand he earned when he joined the Order.

It’s the most vulnerable he’s been with me. Unless he thinks I’m too weak to stab him.

“Not there. You’ll feel it catch in the bone.” He grabs my wrist and moves my hand upwards until the knife is poking at the side of his neck. “If you want to kill me, aim right here.”

Then he lets go. His arms fall to the bed at his sides, trusting me to do whatever I want while I have him at knifepoint.

He doesn’t move.

Control is something he gives to no one else, but he’s handing it over to me.