Page 26 of Goldflame

“Say it,” he demands over my ragged breaths, pushing me right back to the edge where nothing else matters except the way he makes me feel. “Say you’re mine.”

“I…” My voice breaks as his thumb circles my clit, as pleasure builds so intensely that I can hardly speak.

“Say it.” His control is slipping; I can hear it in every jagged word that leaves his lips.

But I won’t. I can’t. Not until I know he’ll believe me when I tell him the truth.

A frustrated growl escapes his throat and he shoves me back onto the bed. He claws at my dress, ripping it around the collar until my bra is exposed. Then he claws at that too, pulling it down until my breasts are exposed.

He straddles me as he releases his cock from his pants. In quick, angry strokes, he pleasures himself, pinning me down with his legs.

“You’re fuckingmine,” he grunts as thick, hot cum spills from his tip onto my breasts.

Then to drive the point home, to prove just how much he owns me, he shoves three fingers inside me.

I don’t want to, but I immediately comeundone. Everything spins wildly out of control, intense and overpowering until there’s only white-hot oblivion as Julian holds me down.

While I’m still riding the sensations, he twists his hand in my hair, pulling at my roots and lifting my head until I meet his gaze. “They say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer—I’m keeping you as close as I fucking can so you don’t shoot me next. You’remine.In every way.”

He yanks my head back down and then climbs off the bed, zipping his pants. He leaves, the door slamming closed behind him.

My body hums even as my soul feels crushed, violated. I wipe Julian’s cum off me with the back of my hand, disgust and heat twisting inside me until I can’t tell them apart. The remnants of his touch sear against my skin like a mark. I need to get him off me, out of me.

A strangled noise escapes my throat. Energy explodes from my arms as I rip at my dress, tearing it from my body in frantic motions. The fabric shreds between my fingers, leaving me breathless and exposed.

Now in my panties, I stumble toward the door and pound on it with fists that are raw and trembling. “I’m not yours! I hate you!” My voice echoes hollowly back at me. “I’ll kill you! If you keep pushing me, I swear to God, I’ll—” My voice is too raw to keep going, and I know everything I’m saying is a lie.

I’m still in love with the monster.

But I keep pounding until the skin on my knuckles splits and the pain snaps through the numbness. Until Icollapse against the door, broken sounds escaping with my ragged breaths.

Everything is muffled—my own cries, the world outside—until there’s only my heartbeat pounding in my ears and the throbbing at the base of my skull.

I notice a journal peeking from under a pillow on the bed and laugh—a lovely little gift for Julian’s trapped whore.

I crawl across the plush carpet with shaking limbs, grabbing the journal and pulling the pen from a loop at the spine.

My first words spill onto the page:

Dear Diary,

I’ve become my mother. But I won’t end up like her—this is war.

CHAPTER NINE

JULIAN

She’s doing it again. Staring out the window like some caged bird before walking directly under the camera and raising her middle finger. It’s the millionth fucking time she’s done that in three days. I wonder how her finger’s not sore by now, considering how many times she flicks it at me, knowing I’ve been watching. Shortly after I trapped her in that room, I had guards install cameras so I can keep an eye on everything that bitch does.

Look, another middle finger.

If I were in a better mood, I might laugh. Something about her defiance, even locked away in Adrian’s room, sends a perverse thrill through me. She’s suffocating in there, I know it, but still fighting. Still clawing at the walls of her prison cell. I’d expect nothing less from the Golden One.

But I’m not in the mood to laugh. Not while sitting in Lucian’s office, surrounded by his lingering presence likea disease in the air. I half expect his ghost to crawl out from behind the massive bookshelf and start beating me.

The room is oppressive, designed to make anyone who enters feel small. Jagged edges everywhere—on the torchiere lamps, on the corners of the gold leaf mahogany bookshelves, on the waxy desk. The furniture is dark and massive, like it’s meant to trap all light. The Persian rug beneath my feet—the same one he would stand on while Adrian and I took his verbal beatings—feels like quicksand now. And everything, every single fucking thing in this room, carries the scent of his cigars.

This office holds only bad memories for me, yet now I’m expected to “work” in it.

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