The world didn't come back all at once. It leaked in through the edges of my vision like spilled ink. Dark, thick, and wrong.
My head felt like it was stuffed with wet cotton. When I tried to move my arms, they felt like they belonged to a mannequin, heavy and unresponsive against the silk sheets beneath me. I wasn't in the living room anymore. The cold marble had been replaced by a mattress that felt like it was trying to swallow me whole.
I blinked, my eyelids heavy as lead. The ceiling was a dark, polished expanse, reflecting the dim, amber glow of a single lamp.
"Finally," a voice whispered.
The bed shifted. A weight settled between my legs, pinning my hips down. I looked up, my vision blurring and refocusing, until I saw him. Julian.
He had shed the silk robe. He was bare-chested, his skin pale and slick with a fine sheen of sweat. The purple bruise I'd given him stood out like a brand on his cheek, a trophy he seemed to be wearing with pride.
He was hovering over me, his hands planted on either side of my head, looking down at me with an expression that made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
"You have no idea how beautiful you are when you're quiet," he murmured, his voice thick and uneven.
I tried to pull my hands up, to scratch his eyes out, but my fingers only twitched feebly against the sheets. "You... you prick..." I tried to say, but my voice was a slurred, broken ghost of itself. My tongue felt like it was three sizes too big for my mouth.
"Don't fight it, Alina. Just feel," Julian said.
He leaned down, his mouth tracing the line of my jaw before burying itself in the crook of my neck. I felt the sharp scrape of his stubble, the wet heat of his tongue as he licked a path toward my collarbone. I don't know what it was. If it was the drug or my stupid body. But it made me shiver.
He wasn't being a "gentleman." He wasn't being "polite." The mask was gone, replaced by a desperate, frantic hunger.
He reached down, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of my uniform. He didn't unbutton them; he ripped them. The sound of plastic snapping and fabric tearing echoed in the quiet room. He shoved the shirt open, his breath hitching as he saw the curve of my chest.
"Silas saw this," Julian hissed, his eyes dark and dilated. "He touched this. He thought he could keep you."
He cupped my breast, his thumb raking over my nipple with a brutal intensity that sent a jolt of unwanted sensation through the fog of the drug. He wasn't looking for a response; he was looking for ownership. He leaned down, his mouth closing over me, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin until I let out a low, involuntary moan of pain and confusion.
"That's it," he whispered against my skin.
"Sound like that for me."
His hand slid down, moving over the denim of my skirt, his palm pressing hard against my mound. I tried to buck my hips, to throw him off, but the drug made my movements sluggish and weak. He laughed, a jagged, breathless sound, and hooked his fingers into the waistband of my underwear, yanking them down.
The cool air hit my skin, followed immediately by the suffocating heat of his body. He was hard. A blunt, heavy weight pressing against my thigh. He didn't wait. He didn't ask. He positioned himself between my legs, his knees forcing my thighs apart.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice cracking.
I looked. I had to. His face was a mask of pure, obsessive madness. He looked like he was being electrocuted.
He slammed forward, entering me with a dry, punishing thrust that made my breath choke up in a sob. I felt the stretch, the friction, the raw power of his need.
A unwanted heat blossomed on my gut.
He wasn't moving with rhythm; he was moving with a frantic, desperate violence, his hips slamming against mine as if he were trying to merge our bodies into one.
"Mine," he panted, his hands sliding up to grip my wrists, pinning them against the headboard. "You're mine now. Not Silas's. Not the diner's. Just mine."
I stared at the ceiling, the dark reflection of our bodies blurring as tears finally spilled over my lashes. The witty insults were trapped behind a wall of chemicals. I was just a girl in a glass cage, being broken by a man who mistook his own sickness for love.
He increased the pace, his breathing turning into ragged, animalistic grunts. Every thrust felt like a claim, every bruise he left on my skin a signature. "Jesus fuck." He groaned, his eyes wide and manic as if he just discovered the holy grail.
And I didn't know why my body was getting slicker each thrust. Betraying me.
He buried his face in my hair, his body shuddering as he reached his peak, a guttural cry of triumph escaping him as he emptied himself into a condom.
He didn't pull away. He collapsed on top of me, his heavy, sweaty chest crushing the air out of my lungs. He stayed there, his heart hammering against mine, his fingers still digging into my wrists.
"No one is coming for you, Alina," he whispered into my ear, his voice sounding satisfied and terrifyingly sane. "The doors are locked. The world is gone. There's just us."
I closed my eyes, the darkness of the drug finally winning. I waited for the sound of a door crashing open. I waited for the roar of a mountain man.
But the only sound in the penthouse was the hum of the city forty floors below, and the steady, possessive breathing of the monster who had finally won.