Chapter 139: She Wouldn’t Let Go

Elias Kane felt the air leave him again.

This time, it did not hurt in the same way.

Earlier, the suffocation had been blunt and ugly, all panic and instinct, like being shoved underwater and held there until the body forgot dignity. Now it felt stranger, softer, and more dangerous for that softness. It was as if he had fallen into syrup made from light and sugar, drowning not under pressure, but under something sweet enough to pass for tenderness until it closed over his head.

When Serena Blackwood finally let him breathe, the thin line between them was no longer a single trace.

Several glistening threads stretched in the small space before breaking silently. There was nothing dirty about the sight, nothing crude enough to let either of them pretend it was only physical. It carried a kind of intimate provocation that spoke directly to instinct, and even Elias, who had long since built a professional relationship with absurdity, had to admit Serena knew how to use silence.

The threads snapped.

Elias breathed slowly at first, then harder, his chest rising beneath the last loose remnants of the bandages. His eyes were unfocused. His throat moved once as he swallowed, taking down the breath and warmth that still seemed to belong to Serena.

"Eli."

Serena whispered beside his ear.

At that moment, her affection sounded like something from a beautiful nightmare. Low, patient, and full of temptation, the kind of voice a devil might use if it had learned to speak gently enough that a person walked into the trap on their own.

"I want you."

Elias’s lashes trembled.

His half-open eyes held a faint daze. At her words, he slowly closed them.

The gesture was an answer.

But Serena did not want an answer from his body. She did not want silence dressed as consent, not this time. She wanted his mouth to give it to her. She wanted him to say it where there could be no convenient escape afterward.

She had already made her decision.

Deception, betrayal, performance, calculation. None of it changed the rule.

What belonged to her had to belong to her completely.

Body, mind, inside, outside. Every part.

Even if one day she grew tired of Elias and threw him aside without mercy, that day had not come. Until it did, she would not allow anyone else to touch what she had claimed.

"Can I?"

Serena’s mouth stayed close to his ear. Each word arrived with a breath warm enough to feel like it might leave a mark.

Elias’s ear reddened under her voice. The color spread quickly, staining his cheek until he looked almost drunk from it, pink and dazed and unfairly inviting.

Serena lowered her cold eyes and watched the change happen.

Could even a body’s reactions be faked?

If so, keeping him as her lover was almost wasteful. He should have been winning every acting award in the country.

Her long fingers moved down and began unwrapping the bandages from his legs.

A faint warmth rose from him once the layers loosened, the heat trapped beneath the fabric carrying the dampness of sweat. Serena’s hand closed with deliberate gentleness.

"Can I?" she asked again.

This time, it sounded less like a question and more like pressure wrapped in velvet.

Elias’s eyes opened at once.

A thin layer of moisture had gathered there. He looked at Serena with a face full of grievance and accusation, as if asking whether his silent permission still was not enough for her. Did she really need to force him to say it out loud? Did she have to shame him all the way down to the bone before she would stop?

His lips pressed together tightly.

Even with their relationship pushed to this point, saying such a thing on his own still seemed too humiliating for the role he was playing. His pride, or the shape of pride he had chosen for this particular trap, could not easily cross that line.

Serena did not give him the usual path.

Before, she would have prepared reasons for him. She would have wrapped coercion in logic, built him an excuse, and let him "reluctantly" agree while pretending his surrender had been forced by circumstances rather than desire.

Not now.

Real or fake, it did not matter.

In this moment, she wanted him to hand himself over. From flesh to thought. From the surface to the hidden places.

Willingly.

The truth of Elias’s nerves could always be read from his toes.

His bare feet tightened against the sofa, all ten toes curling together with obvious conflict. His face twisted slightly, not ugly, not uncontrolled, but strained by restraint. He looked as if he had been pushed to the edge of something and was forcing himself not to fall too quickly.

Finally, beneath Serena’s touch, Elias broke.

His lips parted by the slightest margin. His voice trembled, thin and wet around the edges, almost like begging.

"Y-yes."

Serena still did not spare him.

Her voice softened further. "Yes to what?"

Tears slipped from the corners of Elias’s eyes.

At last, he surrendered to her.

At least in this exact moment, he did.

"Take me."

Serena finally smiled.

She should have felt the full satisfaction of taming a wild cat. She should have tasted victory so richly that the suspicion in her chest dissolved under it. Instead, only a thin line of accomplishment rose inside her.

It was enough.

Serena looked down at Elias’s dazed face and thought, You had better not disappoint me.

By the time it ended, the window had gone dark blue.

Outside, the moon had risen into a sky scattered with a few pale stars. Evening had settled over the Blackwood residence, turning the glass, metal, and polished stone of the house into quiet reflections. The office no longer looked like a place for contracts and decisions. It looked like a room that had witnessed something and chosen, like the staff downstairs, to remain silent.

Serena and Elias lay together, held close in a kind of embrace neither of them would have imagined at the beginning.

It almost looked like lovers resting after tenderness.

Almost.

Then a low sound broke through the quiet.

Elias froze.

Serena looked down.

The sound had come from his stomach.

"Hungry?" she asked.

Elias immediately withdrew the arms he had around her and tried to turn away, but Serena held him too firmly for escape. He could barely move under her arm.

He had no choice but to glare at her, teeth clenched. "Whose fault is that?"

Serena deliberately teased him. "What did I do?"

Elias opened his mouth.

Whatever he had almost said stopped behind his teeth. His face shifted from anger to embarrassment, then back to fury because embarrassment needed somewhere to go.

"You bastard."

It came out as if he had searched his entire vocabulary and found only the same few stones to throw.

Serena had heard Elias truly curse before.

When he wanted to, he could be vicious. He could slice a person up with words and make it sound effortless. This repetition, this limited, almost childish anger, raised the question again.

Had he really fallen for her?

Or had he noticed even this detail and adjusted the performance accordingly?

Serena studied him for a long moment. "Are you saying I didn’t feed you well enough?"

Elias stared at her with open disbelief, his expression asking what kind of nonsense she thought she was saying.

The next instant, he opened his mouth to bite.

Serena knew at once that he meant it. The teeth marks on her cheek still throbbed faintly when she touched them. She controlled him before he could reach her, then lowered her head and kissed his soft black hair.

"I’ll have the staff make something."

Elias’s cheeks puffed slightly. He muttered, "That’s more like it."

Serena got out of bed to give the order.

As she walked, she replayed the scene that had just passed. Every moment looked, on the surface, like the kind of intimacy shared by people who loved each other deeply. The closeness, the anger afterward, the way Elias curled against her and then lashed out because he could not bear the vulnerability of it. If someone had watched only the ending, they might have mistaken it for a relationship.

But whether Elias loved her did not matter.

Serena did not love him.

So she did not need anything sincere from him. She did not need true devotion, true tenderness, or some clean and foolish promise from his heart. She needed him here. She needed him obedient enough to return. She needed him unable to mistake anyone else’s touch for freedom.

[Serena Blackwood favorability increased. Current: 72%.]

What she hated was betrayal.

Or to put it another way, if Elias had done something with Giselle Frost, Serena might not have been this angry. The thought was unpleasant, but she could admit the logic of it. Giselle was an outsider, a rival, another woman in a world where rivals were expected to reach.

Liora was different.

Liora was her sister.

Her only remaining family.

If Liora betrayed her, Serena could not imagine what shape that would leave behind.

There was one point that gave Serena a sliver of comfort.

She knew Liora’s intelligence was no lower than her own.

If their parents’ old favor had not hung between them, if Liora had not stepped back voluntarily, the Blackwood Group would inevitably have had a place for her at its center. Liora still held shares, but she had surrendered the right to command with brutal completeness.

That was why their relationship had remained intact all these years.

And because Liora was that smart, if she truly had done something with Elias, why would she sell Serena such an obvious flaw?

Why hand her the thread?

While Serena went to arrange food, Elias showered in the bathroom.

He stood beneath the spray with his head tipped back, letting the water strike his face, his neck, his shoulders, and the long line of his body before running down into the drain. The heat filled the room with steam. Droplets moved over his pale skin, bright under the bathroom light, leaving him looking almost unreal in the glass and tile.

He was not thinking about Serena’s tenderness.

He was thinking about Liora.

Liora’s favorability had climbed fast. Too fast, if judged by ordinary standards, though Liora had never been ordinary. Her greatest weakness and greatest danger came from the same place. She liked amusement. She liked risk. She liked watching people walk into situations they thought they controlled and then discovering that the floor was gone.

Right now, she was cooperative.

That meant nothing permanent.

Once Liora lost interest in cooperation and decided it would be fun to see him die without a grave, she might sell him out without blinking.

After all, Liora almost certainly had a way to leave the board clean.

Elias did not.

[What do we do?]

System Theta sounded alarmed.

Elias shook water from his hair. Droplets scattered across the glass and sink. He planted both hands on the edge of the vanity and looked into the mirror.

Wet hair framed his face. His lips were still red from what had happened before, his teeth white when his mouth curved, his skin flushed lightly from the shower. The reflection looking back at him was beautiful in a way that did not look safe for anyone involved, including himself.

He lifted one hand, pushed wet hair back from his forehead, and smiled.

She won’t be able to let me go.

The smile deepened by the smallest degree.

None of them would.