Page 176 of Fractured Devotion
I lean down, pressing a kiss just beside the trail I carved with the knife.
Then another.
My lips leave a wet path down his chest, kissing along the marks and softening the bite of the blade with warmth.
“I’m not letting you go until you tell me everything I need to know,” I murmur against his skin.
He groans, his hips bucking slightly despite himself, the tension between pain and pleasure clouding every line.
I remove the knife, setting it aside, then lean back to study him.
Helpless.
Open.
Mine.
I don’t give him time to regroup.
I trail my fingertips along his thighs, just the barest touch, watching him twitch beneath me. He’s spent and breathless, yet I know his body well enough by now to see the flicker of need still sparking under his skin.
I circle his nipple again with my fingertip, slow and lazy.
“Talk,” I murmur.
He swallows hard, his voice wrecked but obedient. “Nobody knows I know this,” he rasps, his voice thick with the weight of the confession. His chest heaves under my fingertips as he shudders. “I used Rourke’s access… pulled some things for myself. As insurance. Just in case everything went to hell.” He pauses, his eyes locking with mine, dark and unreadable, holding something that twists between defiance and reluctantvulnerability. His breath catches, then he speaks again, the words dragged out like a wound being opened fresh.
“There’s an offshore server, hidden under Meridian’s shell firms. That’s where the original Echo protocols are stored,” he rasps, his words slipping out between shudders.
I hum softly, dragging my fingernails down his chest.
“Where?”
“Coordinates… encrypted in the old archive wing. Sublevel two. The key is inside my personal drive.”
I smirk. “Of course it is.”
He shudders again, his hips twitching involuntarily as I trail lower, ghosting my touch along his sensitive cock.
His body strains, every nerve alight.
“And who else knows?” I press.
His breath stutters. “Rourke. A few board members. They kept it compartmentalized, but they all want it. They think they can restart everything if the clinic falls.”
I tilt my head, my voice smooth when I say, “But not if I erase it first.”
He groans, helpless beneath me, every confession dragging him deeper under. “No. If you take it, they lose everything.”
I lean down, my lips grazing his throat. “And you just handed it to me,” I murmur.
His voice is hoarse, but there’s something raw beneath it. “I was yours the moment you bound me,” he breathes.
I bite down lightly, enough to make him flinch, enough to remind him that I’m not finished. “Not yet,” I whisper, pressing another kiss to the mark.
I want him wrecked. I want him emptied.
And I’m not stopping until I’ve taken everything.
