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I open the door, let him go first. “Head to the guest room. You know where it is. I need to do something. Then… we talk.”

“With your cock in my ass? Seems difficult to do.” A smirk plays at his lips. He walks out before I can reply, head high, ass still leaking my cum.

I watch him disappear down the hall.

Something in me is cracked open now. Something that can’t be fixed.

I sit on the floor, back to the wall, and let the pain of it settle in my bones.

He survived me.

He survived the Crown.

And I can’t stop wanting him for it.

Chapter Seven: Samuel

I’m alone in the guest room, hands still sticky with dried sweat and crusted blood, my thighs tacky from the mess that leaks down the inside of my legs. The air is cold, sharp with disinfectant and the copper tang of my own blood.

The navy blanket on the single bed is untouched, tucked so tight you’d need a crowbar to get under it. I don’t bother. I kneel by the wall, shoulders braced to the plaster, eyes half-shut, letting my muscles shudder out the last of the shock.

The lights flicker, not from electrical fault but from the lingering ache in my brain. My wrists are ringed in bruises, deep as handcuffs. My throat is stripped, both from his grip and my own attempts to scream. My cock still aches, raw and red, half hard and dripping.

I hear footsteps outside the door before it opens, a slow, deliberate cadence that vibrates up the bones of my knees. When it swings wide, the man who walks in looks exactly as I remember—Bentley, the architect, the suit, the one who almost broke me. His hair is perfect, not a strand out of place. His jaw is clenched, eyes narrowed to a cold blue. He’s changed shirts, but not pants, and I know if I were close enough I could still smell myself on his skin.

He walks to the desk, picks up a tablet, and scans the screen. He doesn’t look at me.

“You’ve been approved to start under the Ministry of Enforcement,” he says. The voice is flat, but I catch the strain. “You’ll be processed by the end of tomorrow night. No further testing required, however, you will remain here until dawn tomorrow, as per our rituals.”

I wait. I let the words hang. I study his hands—the knuckles scuffed, a faint smear of blood at the thumb. My blood.

He glances up. Our eyes meet.

I see it then, the calculation. The way he’s already moved on, already engineering the next step.

He expects compliance.

He’s wrong.

I don’t know where the energy comes from. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe the cocktail of shame and fury in my veins. Or maybe it’s the way he looks at me, like he’s fighting himself and the chemistry sizzling between us.

I lunge.

He barely has time to register the movement before I cross the floor, bare feet silent on the concrete. I hit him in the sternum, hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, and he folds but doesn’t break. I don’t give him time to recover. I grab him by the throat, the same way he did to me, and drive him back into the wall.

The impact cracks the drywall. The tablet skitters to the floor.

He recovers fast, grabs at my wrist, tries to leverage me off, but I’m fueled by something new—animal, ugly, past the point of caring about rules. I pin his left wrist above his head, then the right, and slam my mouth to his.

This isn’t a kiss. It’s a fucking raid.

My teeth hit his upper lip, and I bite down, hard, until I taste copper and salt and then deeper, until he grunts and tries to tear away. His mouth opens in a snarl, and I force my tongue past his teeth, tasting blood and whiskey and the salt of his sweat. I bite again, lower lip this time, feeling the skin split. He groans into me, not in pain but in rage.

He bucks, tries to twist out, but I’m heavier than him and have the leverage. My free hand tears at his shirt, popping the buttons, and I rake my nails down his chest. The sound he makes is somewhere between a growl and a laugh.

I break the kiss and lean in, lips at his ear.

“My turn,” I whisper with a snarl.