Page 178 of Fractured Devotion
Chapter 51 – Kade - The Burning Room
The moment she leaves, the air collapses around me.
I can’t move. My body aches in ways I’ve never known. She stripped me bare, and not just my skin. I am emptied out and hollowed, every piece of me laid bare under her hands and words.
The cuffs are off, but I feel them still, like ghosts pressing into my wrists, mocking me.
I sit there, breathless, staring at the space she left behind.
How did it get this far?
How did I let her undo me so thoroughly?
I trace the feeling back, hunting for the moment I lost control, but everything blurs together in a haze of her voice, her touch, her bite.
Was it when I first saw her eyes? When she leaned in close and whispered threats like they were love songs?
Or was it long before that, in the first breathless moment I realized I wasn’t studying her at all? I was already hers.
Somewhere along the line, I stopped steering.
And now I’m drifting fast toward something I can’t escape.
I realize, with a bitter, sinking weight, that I don’t want to escape.
I am already too far gone.
I taste her on my tongue.
I watch the door for long minutes after it shuts, half-hoping she’ll return, half-praying she won’t.
The weight of her promise sinks deeper with every breath.
She owns me now. And not just my body.
My mind. My secrets. My loyalty.
“You’re going to take me there,” she had whispered, her voice curling around me like silk, a command I couldn’t escape.
You’re going to unlock every door and hand me every key. Then you’ll watch me burn their empire to the ground.
Her words loop through my mind, sinking deeper and scorching everything in their path.
I drag myself off the bed, my every muscle protesting. My hands shake as I dress, the marks of her nails burned into my chest, hips, and throat.
I should hate her for it.
But I don’t.
Instead, I crave more.
I stumble to the terminal, my heart racing with the same dizzying mix of lust and dread.
The drive is still there. Untouched.
But it doesn’t matter. It was never mine to wield. Not anymore.
I run my fingers over the cold metal casing, hearing her voice echo in my skull.
