Page 136 of Monsters Wear Crowns
His laugh was ice and venom, his breath hot against my cheek. “Now you threaten my empire.” His fingers bit into my wrists as he wrenched my arms behind my back, forcing me down, my cheek pressing hard against the cold surface of the desk. The air left my lungs in a sharp gasp.
“Rafe–”
His teeth scraped my jaw, a cruel drag that sent my body into a riot of terror. I thrashed hard, but his grip only tightened.
“No,” I spat, bucking against him, my skirt riding up as I fought.
But he was stronger. So much stronger. His fingers wrapped around the back of my throat and lifted me, then slammed me back down. My heart was a wild drumbeat of panic. His hands yanked me back, forcing me flush against the brutal line of his body. His knee wedged between my legs, pinning me in place. A chill skated down my spine as fabric tore, the sharp sound slicing through the air.
Oh fuck.
Fuck.
Was he really about to–?
“Stop!” My scream was raw, my nails digging into his wrist.
He didn’t answer. The whisper of leather slipping through belt loops and the metal clink of his buckle was deafening.
“Rafe!” I flailed, desperate, my foot connecting with his shin. He barely flinched. I knew we weren’t playing a game rightnow, but I still had to try. “Seriously!”
His body pinned mine, his fury a wild animal that had finally broken its chains.
I gasped his name again, realizing with horror that he was ignoring the safeword. No one would save me. His men feared him.I feared him.And in that excruciating moment of vulnerability, I was...alone.
The cold barrel of the gun pressed against my cheek, stealing the breath from my lungs. My wild, frantic thoughts shattered into jagged pieces, leaving only the harsh reality of what he was about to do.
Slowly, I turned my body toward the gun, toward him, letting that unforgiving steel scrape against my skin. My lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile or a snarl.
“Is thisreallywhere we are now, Rafe?” My voice came out wrecked, a bitter, half-hysterical laugh spilling from my throat. “Pointing fucking guns at each other?”
His silence was a storm held tight, the eye of a hurricane moments before it made landfall and tore everything to ruin. He was a predator, cold and methodical, a beast that wouldn’t be satisfied until he had finished me. There was no pleading. No negotiating. The Rafe I came to know was fucking gone. He no longer existed within the gaze of the man towering over me.
He was going to do this.
The barrel pressed harder against my skin, but I refused to flinch. I met his eyes–those dark, merciless eyes that had always watched, consumed, and owned me. And in them, I saw it. The fracture. The war inside him. His breathing was ragged, his grip on the gun like a vice. I swallowed the terror rising in my throat. I let my body relax, hoping that doing so would make it hurt less.
My hand lifted until my fingers wrapped around the barrel of the gun. The metal was cold, a mirror of the man holding it. I guided it down, and Rafe didn’t move. He didn’t resist. His chest heaved, his fingers trembling almost imperceptibly around thetrigger.
“Go on, then,” I whispered, my voice steady, lethal. “Pull the fucking trigger. Kill me, Rafe.End it.”
His jaw tightened. A flicker of pain and hesitation cut through the fury in his gaze.
I pressed forward, forcing the gun lower, down to my chest, over my heart. “You want to kill me?Do it.”
He glared at me, the silence almost painful. Then, the gun fell from his grip. A sharp clatter against the floor. A primal snarl ripped from his throat as he violently spun me around and bent me over his desk again.
I writhed against his hold–a grip as hard and relentless as iron. I couldn’t stop him when he tore my underwear down my legs and drove into me, nearly ripping me in two and tearing a broken yelp from my throat. Every attempt to free myself was met with another harsh thrust. I tried to hold back screams, to not give him the satisfaction of hearing my pain, but eventually, the force became too much. My cries, jagged and involuntary, mingled with the savage rhythm of his forceful thrusts.
During the assault, as the pain morphed into a numbing haze, disbelief warred with a stubborn defiance. I couldn’t fucking believe he was doing this to me. Fuck him. I wouldn’t allow him to know how much this hurt. His hold was so crushing that I was certain my hips would soon bear the bruises of his aggression. Usually, every sound he made would make my heart soar. But now, his guttural, angry grunts were breaking it.
“Look at you, still fucking wet for me,” he taunted, his voice a twisted mixture of lust and cruelty as he drove into me without pause. I hated how my body betrayed me, how it responded even in this moment of violation–and yet, in a distorted way, I was grateful for that small reprieve from the overwhelming ache. It helped, likely preventing worse pain. Or perhaps I was just numb.
Time dissolved into an indistinguishable blur as I closed my eyes, retreating inward in a desperate effort to shield myself fromhim. I tried to shrink away, to dissolve into nothingness, but his powerful, muscular frame held me captive, denying every escape. My manicured nails broke as I tried to claw away from him. His body was so large compared to mine that it was useless to even fight.
He just yanked me back even harder. Leaning in close, his mouth brushed my ear, and in that instant, his low, menacing growl sent shivers down my spine: “You’ll never fucking betray me again, will you?” His words, delivered between brutal, demanding thrusts, were as much a vow as they were a command. “Will you, little doe?” he asked again in a growl. I flinched as his fingers tangled in my hair, pulling my head back.
Tears blurred my vision, stinging with an agony I refused to voice. I offered no response, only the silent, hollow acceptance of the nightmare that continued to unravel within me. I let him continue to fuck me until his hips finally slammed into my ass, spilling deep inside me. I winced, listening to his feral, satisfied groan, his cock pulsing while he forcefully filled me.
