Page 21 of In His Name

The car takes a sharp turn, and I use the momentum to flip our positions, pinning her beneath me on the leather seat. Her dress bunches around her waist, her skin glowing in the dim light filtering through the tinted windows. She looks debauched. Claimed. Exactly as I've pictured her countless times.

"Do you have any idea," I say, punctuating each word with a deep thrust that makes her gasp, "how many men I've destroyed to clear the path to you?"

Fear flickers across her face, but it only heightens her arousal—I can feel it in the way she tightens around me, see it in the flush spreading across her chest.

"What do you mean?" she whispers, even as her legs wrap around my waist, drawing me deeper.

I smile against her skin, tasting the salt of her sweat, the essence of her surrender. "You don't think it was coincidence that brought you to me, do you?"

Her body goes rigid beneath mine, but I don't stop moving, don't release my grip on her wrists pinned above her head. Realization dawns in those emerald depths, horror mingling with a dark excitement she can't quite hide.

"You—”

"Me," I confirm, my free hand sliding between our bodies to circle her clit. "Always me. In the shadows, pulling strings, eliminating obstacles."

She tries to struggle, but it's halfhearted at best. Her body betrays her again as pleasure builds, her back arching off the seat.

"I hate you," she gasps, even as her hips rise to meet mine.

I laugh, the sound dark and possessive. "No, princess. You hate that you love this. That you love me."

"I don't?—"

"Lie to yourself if you must," I interrupt, increasing my pace, feeling my own release building. "But your body knows the truth. It's always known."

The car begins to slow as we approach the gates of the mansion.

And I keep fucking her. I find her clit between us and circle it with the pad of my thumb.

She shatters in my arms again. “Good girl,” I praise her that’s two. I need one more, baby.”

My balls are boiling. I’m going to come any minute now, but I refuse to come until she comes again. I find her g-spot with my cock and hammer into it again and again all while rubbing her clit. “Come on, baby. Come on my cock one more time, and you’ll be done.”

She bites down on her lip before finally screaming my name.

“Fuck yes!” The sight of her with her head thrown back in blissful abandon as her pussy pulsates around me sends my seed rocketing up my stalk. I grip her hips as I pull her down tightly while I pump my cum inside her.

She collapses against me, and I stroke her hair, murmuring praises to her while I continue to pulsate inside her.

This fucking woman is mine whether she realizes it yet or not, and I don’t regret anything that brought her to me.

I’ll kill every fucking person on this planet if that’s what it takes to keep her.

CHAPTER 10

Hannah

The red dress hangs in the closet like a bloodstain against the neutral palette of my permitted wardrobe. I stare at it from my position on the bed, knees pulled to my chest, still processing the events of last night. The charity gala—my first public appearance as Hannah Severino, beloved wife rather than captive possession. I performed exactly as instructed—silent unless spoken to, physically connected to Dante at all times, eyes appropriately lowered, responses carefully measured. A perfect marionette, strings invisible to anyone who didn't know to look for them. And they didn't look. That's what terrifies me most about last night: how easily the world accepted the fiction Dante presented. How readily they believed that I was there willingly, that the hand at my waist was affection rather than control, that the tattoo visible at my neck was a choice rather than a branding. The outside world—once my hope for rescue, for recognition of my captivity—now reinforces my prison walls through their acceptance of Dante's narrative.

No one questioned why I never spoke unless spoken to. No one wondered why I never moved more than arm's length from Dante's side. No one noticed the careful calculation in every word, every gesture, every smile. They saw what they expected to see: a powerful man with his beautiful, deferential wife. A relationship perhaps old-fashioned in its dynamics, but nothing to raise eyebrows in the circles Dante moves in.

Even Mrs. Morrison, with her friendly overture about lunch—she didn't see a captive in need of rescue, just another society wife to add to her collection of powerful connections. Her eyes registered no alarm at Dante's immediate intercession, at his physical removal of her hand from my arm. She accepted his excuse about my busy schedule without question, without suspicion.

The reality sinks into me like a stone into still water, sending ripples of understanding through my consciousness: to the outside world, I am Hannah Severino now. The girl I was before—Hannah Brightley, art student, daughter, sister, friend—exists only in memory, and increasingly, only in mine. How long before even those memories begin to feel like someone else's life, like a movie I watched once rather than a reality I lived?

I close my eyes, trying to conjure the details of my former bedroom—the color of the walls, the arrangement of furniture, the view from the window. The image comes, but fuzzy around the edges, details missing or misplaced. Was my bookshelf to the left or right of the desk? Did the window face east or west? What color was my bedspread? Things I should know with absolute certainty now require effort to recall, as if those memories are being systematically overwritten by my present reality.

More disturbing still are the gaps in emotional memory. I know intellectually that I loved my family, that I had friends I cared about, that I was passionate about art. But the emotional texture of those connections grows increasingly distant, harderto access, like a radio signal fading as the distance increases. Did my mother's laugh really sound like that? Did my sister's hugs really feel that way? Did creating art truly bring the satisfaction I remember?

---