The word echoed through my mind, primal and possessive.
Morpheus looked at me, his expression hard. “You ready?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Because I wasn’t just ready.
I was starving.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex
The concrete was cold against my knees. Sharp. Unforgiving. The impact had sent a jolt of pain through my legs, but I barely felt it.
Because I couldn’t look away from him.
Don’t look at him. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
But my eyes wouldn’t obey. They stayed locked on Nano, tracking every micro-movement, every shift in his posture, every flicker of expression that crossed his face.
He stood across the basement, maybe ten feet away. Close enough that I could see the tension coiled in his shoulders, the way his hands flexed at his sides, opening and closing as if he were imagining wrapping them around something.
Around me.
Around my throat.
My pulse kicked up, hammering so hard I could feel it in my temples, in my wrists, in the bruised column of my neck where his fingerprints were still branded into my skin.
Look away. Look at Morpheus. Look at the floor. Look anywhere else.
I tried. God, I tried. I forced my gaze to shift left, toward the president standing a few feet away, his arms crossed, his expression cold and assessing.
But within seconds, my eyes dragged back to Nano. Like gravity. Like a compulsion I couldn’t control. It was magnetic. Involuntary. The same way my body had responded when he choked me, against every rational thought, against every instinct for self-preservation. My body didn’t care about logic. It only knew what it wanted.
And what it wanted was him.
No. No, that’s not true. That’s the trauma talking. That’s Michael. That’s—but the thought died as Nano’s gaze locked onto mine. His eyes were dark. Predatory. Pupils dilated so wide there was barely any color left, just black hunger staring back at me with an intensity that made my skin burn. He wasn’t just looking at me.
He wasseeingme.
Seeing through the defiance, through my fear, straight down to the fractured, broken thing inside me that wanted this. That craved the violence and the pain, and the terrible, shameful release that came with it. My thighs clenched involuntarily. Heat flooded through me, sharp and vicious, pooling low in my belly as it spread outward until my entire body felt like it was on fire. My skin prickled, hypersensitive, as every nerve ending screamed.
It hurt. The arousal hurt, building and building with nowhere to go, no outlet, just pressure and heat and a wet ache between my legs that made me want to press my thighs together harder.
Stop it. Stop responding like this. He is going to kill you.
But my body didn’t care. It was already preparing itself. Already slick and ready, betraying me the same way it had upstairs when I came while he choked me.
Nano’s nostrils flared.
He could smell it. I knew he could. The same way he had known upstairs, the same way he had seen the wet spot on my jeans and understood exactly what it meant. He knew I wasaroused. Knew my body was responding to the threat of him, to the violence radiating off him in waves.
And his eyes—fuck.
They told me everything. They told me exactly what he wanted to do to me. How he wanted to hurt me. How he wanted to watch me break and beg and come while he destroyed me piece by piece. The promise was there, written in the predatory stillness of his posture, in the way his jaw clenched, in the barely restrained violence thrumming through every line of his body.
He was going to choke me again. He was going to wrap his hand around my throat and squeeze until I couldn’t breathe, until my vision went dark, until my body convulsed and I came while he watched.
