I can feel the walls closing in as Marco’s deep green eyes darken to the color of a thunderstorm. He knows and he’s angry with me, claims he’s going to punish me. I should run, but my body betrays me, a flush of heat crawling up my neck despite the danger closing in.
I back up until my spine presses against the wall now. There’s no escape. He doesn’t touch me, not yet, but the energy in his body feels like a live current, buzzing under his skin, waiting to strike.
Marco leans closer. “Aria.” His fingers graze my cheek so gently that I feel my lips part in a gasp. “I could recognize you anywhere. I knew it was you the moment I saw you again today. Your scent. Your eyes. The expressions on your face…”
His body cages me now, his arms on either side of my head. He towers over me, his six-foot-three frame blocking out the light, making me feel small and trapped, but I don’t flinch.
He brings his face close to mine, and I can smell the whiskey on his breath. “Did you enjoy making a fool of me?”
“I didn’t…” I stammer, my heart hammering against my ribs from how close he stands, from how my body reaches for him without permission. “I was trying to—”
He cuts me off with a finger to my lips. “You know what happens to people who lie to me?”
I nod slowly. Not out of fear. But because I want this. I want him to want me—desperately, violently. I want him to take me like he did the first time, when we were strangers tangled in shadows and heat, nothing but skin and need. Not feeling him since then has been its own kind of torture. I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long. Craved it in the quiet hours when sleep wouldn’t come. I don’t want mercy. I want him to own me. To brand every inch of me with his name until there’s no doubt I’m still his. To leave marks I can feel even when he’s not there.
He watches me for a beat, his expression unreadable. Then he asks, ever so softly, “Is this what you want, Aria?”
I shiver at the way he says it, and his grip tightens.
My pulse is thunder in my ears. My body is already giving me away, and without thinking, I reach out and clutch his shirt between my hands.
“I…” I breathe. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t mean to fall into your world.” My voice drops to a whisper. “But I’m here now. I choose to stay.”
He leans in, his hand curling around my waist, pulling me into him like gravity.
“I want you,” I whisper, trembling.
“I… I tried to forget.”
My eyes find his, searching for something—permission, forgiveness, maybe even hope.
“But all I’ve done is ache for more.”
“I don’t know how to do this… but I trust you.” I look up at him, breath unsteady. “Show me what it means to be yours.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw, as if he hadn’t expected me to admit it out loud.
“And if you want me to stop?” he asks.
The question floors me. It sobers the heat blazing inside me just enough to prove this isn’t some fever dream.
“Then I say it. I tell you to stop.”
His mouth curves, and the next thing I know, his mouth crashes against mine, not a kiss but a claiming. His teeth nip at my bottom lip hard enough to sting, and I gasp, giving him the access he wants. His tongue invades my mouth, dominating, exploring, taking what belongs to him. Because in his world, that’s what I am now—a possession. A debt to be collected.
He breaks the kiss only to whisper against my ear. “You remember that night I fucked you senseless and you were moaning like a little whore beneath me?” His words are crude, disrespectful, but they send a shameful heat pooling between my thighs.
“I remember,” I say, knowing I shouldn’t lie anymore.
“Good,” he hisses, and his hands find the neckline of my dress. With a swift, violent motion, he tears it down to my waist, the sound of ripping fabric echoing in the quiet room. Cool air rushes against my exposed skin, raising goosebumps across my chest.
I cry out, covering myself out of instinct, but my hands stop moving halfway. He’s watching with such careful detail, and I want to see all of his anger, all his retribution, so I let my hands drop to my sides and stare right into his eyes.
His eyes darken, and he inches closer, catches my wrists, and pins them above my head with one strong hand.
“You can stop this anytime,” he reminds me, voice low, close to my ear. “Say it now if you want me to stop.”
“I don’t want you to stop,” I whisper.
His free hand cups my breast, gentle but possessive.
“Look at you. So proper and innocent in front of everyone else, but I know the truth now, don’t I? I know how you like it when I’m on you.”
A perverse thrill races through me. My nipples harden under his touch, betraying the very idea that a punishment means suffering. The way he handles me, like I’m both precious and worthy of being spoken such dirty things to simultaneously, awakens something dark inside me that I’ve tried to keep buried since that night.
“Please,” I whisper, not even sure what I’m begging for. For him to keep going? To take more? My thoughts are a mess, but my body knows exactly what it wants—and it’s no longer asking.
“Please what?” he murmurs, his thumb grazing over my nipple, making me arch into him with a gasp. “Please forgive you? Let you go?” His mouth curves into a wicked smile. “Or… please don’t stop?”
He stills, waiting.
I bite my lower lip, breath shaking. “I want more,” I whisper. “I need all of you.”
His hand travels down my stomach, fingers splaying across my bare skin like he’s mapping territory. My dress hangs uselessly at my waist, my breasts exposed to his hungry eyes. All I feel is a desperate, clawing need.
“You need to be taught a lesson,” Marco says, his hand continuing its journey downward. “About what happens when you lie to a man like me.”
His fingers reach the hem of my dress where it’s bunched at my waist, then slide beneath it, tracing the lace edge of my panties. I squirm against him, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“Stand still,” he commands, and my body obeys before my mind can process the order. “Good girl. Maybe you can learn after all.”
His fingers dip beneath the lace, finding me embarrassingly wet. The smirk that spreads across his face tells me he’s discovered exactly what he expected to find.
“Soaked,” he whispers, his voice dropping an octave. “You wanted this all along, didn’t you?”
Just being in the same room with him makes my knees tremble and my center pulse. Instead, I arch into him, my back pressing against the wall, my pelvis moving against his.
An utterly delighted smile crosses over his face, and one finger circles my entrance teasingly before pushing inside without warning. I gasp, my hips bucking against his hand involuntarily.
“That’s it,” he encourages, his voice suddenly gentler though no less commanding. “Show me how much you want this punishment.”
He adds a second finger, stretching me, the slight burn only intensifying the pleasure. His thumb finds my clit, applying just enough pressure to make my knees weak. If he weren’t still pinning my wrists with his other hand, I’d have collapsed.
“Marco,” I breathe, hating how needy I sound, how quickly he’s reduced me to this quivering mess.
“Say it again,” he demands, curling his fingers inside me to hit that spot that makes stars explode behind my eyelids. “My name.”
“Marco!” This time it’s louder, more desperate. He rewards me by increasing the tempo of his fingers, pumping them in and out with a rhythm that has me climbing rapidly toward release.
“You’re mine now, Aria,” he says, his lips against my ear, his stubble scratching my sensitive skin. “Every inch of you belongs to me. Your debt, your body, everything. And I won’t stop until you admit it.”
His fingers move faster, harder, his thumb circling my clit with precise, merciless strokes. I’m trembling, my thighs quivering, my breathing ragged.
“I can’t—” I start to say, the pleasure building to an almost unbearable peak.
“Are you done, Aria?”
I shake my head in refusal, my whole body buzzing. I’m not.
One hand still clenches my wrists above my head, holding me still. The other is still between my legs, torturing me slowly.
I gasp, writhing under him.
“Keep right there,” he commands. “Don’t move unless I tell you.”
My wrists struggle for release, desperate for something to hold on to.
“You want to come, don’t you?” he murmurs.
I nod frantically, tears of frustration and arousal pricking at my eyes.
“Too bad.”
He withdraws his touch just when I start to pant in earnest, when my hips start to roll helplessly against his hand. I make a sound, a broken whimper of need.
He chuckles low in his throat, the sound vibrating through my entire body.
“That’s your punishment, Aria,” he says, his voice a silken whip. “You’re not allowed to come until I say you can.”
Tears of anticipation blur my vision as he slides his hand back under my panties, this time slipping a single finger inside me. I cry out and turn my face to the glass, my cheek resting there as my body gives in again by arching towards him, clenching around him shamelessly.
He adds another finger, stretching me, working me slowly now, methodically. His thumb brushes my clit just enough to tease, to drive me higher, but never enough to tip me over the edge.
“So wet for me,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “So ready.”
I writhe against his hand, desperate for more, desperate for release.
He keeps me right there, balanced on the knife’s edge of pleasure and frustration, his fingers moving inside me with a precision that feels cruel.
Every time I get close, he pulls back, leaving me gasping and aching and empty.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Please, Marco…”
“Please what?” he demands, his mouth brushing the shell of my ear.
“Please don’t stop,” I whimper.
He presses his body against mine harder, his erection pressing into my lower stomach, a silent promise of everything he’s holding back.
“You don’t get to come yet,” he growls. “You haven’t earned it.”
Tears begin to well in my eyes, my body shaking, my legs barely holding me up.
And still, he teases me. His fingers find that spot inside me again, rubbing slow, deliberate circles against my clit, making my whole body tense with need.
“You’re mine now,” he says, his voice a dark, brutal promise. “Every inch of you. Every sound you make. Every tear you cry. All mine.”
I nod, tears spilling down my cheeks, my body betraying me completely as I ride his hand, desperate, wild for release.
Finally, finally, his fingers press harder, faster, relentless.
“Now,” he says, his mouth against my ear. “Come for me, Aria. Now.”
The crude command pushes me over the edge.
My back arches, my body convulsing as waves of pleasure crash through me.
It’s different from that night in the dark, when I had some control.
This is surrender. Submission. A pleasure so intense it borders on pain.
My inner walls clench around his fingers as he continues to thrust, prolonging my orgasm until I’m sobbing his name, begging him to stop because I can’t take any more.
But he doesn’t stop. He drives me higher, keeps me suspended in that exquisite space between pleasure and madness. My vision blurs, my throat raw from cries I didn’t realize I was making. My entire body is a live wire, sparking and dangerous.
“Oh my god,” I sob, not recognizing my own voice.
“One more,” he demands, his fingers relentless. “Give me one more, Aria.”
And impossibly, my body obeys, fracturing into a second orgasm that eclipses the first. It’s as if every nerve ending ignites simultaneously, a wildfire racing through my veins. I scream his name, my wrists straining against his grip, my hips grinding shamelessly against his hand. The pleasure is so intense, it’s almost like dying.
When I finally come down, trembling and gasping for air, Marco releases my wrists. My arms fall limply to my sides as he withdraws his fingers from me with deliberate slowness. My dress is still bunched at my waist, my breasts naked to the eye. I’m a wreck, and he looks immaculate except for the prominent bulge in his tailored pants and the flush high on his cheekbones.
He brings his glistening fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean, his eyes never leaving mine. It’s the most obscene, erotic thing I’ve ever witnessed, and despite everything, I feel a fresh pulse of desire.
“Sweet as I remembered,” he says, his voice rough with his own unfulfilled need. “But this was just the beginning of your punishment, the beginning of what you owe me, little liar. We have a long way to go.”
I should feel degraded. Instead, I feel marked, claimed in a way that goes beyond physical. I’ve survived brutal foster homes, protected my twin sister through hell, kept us both alive on the streets—but nothing has ever made me feel as vulnerable, as alive, as the way Marco Bianchi just made me come apart with only his fingers and his words.
He turns and walks to the door, pauses with his hand on the knob. “I’ll be sleeping in another room tonight. And Aria? Next time you lie to me, I won’t be so merciful.”
He leaves without a backward glance. But I hear the sharp click of the door like a breath he didn’t want me to hear.
I slide down to the floor, my legs unable to support me any longer. My body still tingles with aftershocks, my mind reeling from what just happened.
The worst part isn’t that he used me for his pleasure—it’s that he didn’t. He gave without taking, dominated me completely while denying himself release. And I now know I owe him even more than before.
