The sound of his voice snapped the last string of Clare's composure.

Tears spilled over her eyelashes, burning her flushed cheeks. She gripped the phone with both hands.

"Elysium," she choked out. Her throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. "VIP lounge. Help me."

There was a fraction of a second of silence on the line.

"Stay."

Just one word. Then the line went dead.

Clare let the phone fall to the carpet. She didn't know if he was actually coming. She didn't know if he even cared.

She forced her heavy body off the sofa. She needed to lock the door. She dragged her feet across the thick rug, her vision tilting dangerously to the left.

Before her fingers could touch the brass lock, the handle turned.

The door pushed open.

Brianna stood there. Behind her were two men. They smelled of stale beer, cheap cologne, and violence.

"Clare, honey, what's wrong?" Brianna asked. Her voice was back to that sickening, sugary pitch. "These gentlemen are friends of mine. They said they can give you a ride home."

The two men stepped into the room. Their eyes raked over Clare's flushed skin and trembling legs. One of them licked his lips.

Clare backed away. Her spine hit the edge of a mahogany table.

She stared at Brianna. The drug made her dizzy, but her hatred was crystal clear. "You did this."

Brianna's fake smile vanished. Her face twisted into a sneer. "So what if I did? You perfect little princesses need to know what hell feels like."

The larger of the two men stepped forward. He reached out a thick, dirty hand toward Clare's bare arm. "Don't be scared, sweetheart. We're going to take real good care of you."

Clare opened her mouth to scream.

A deafening crash shattered the air.

The heavy velvet door didn't just open. It was kicked off its hinges. It slammed into the wall with the force of a bomb.

Aurthur Bolton stepped into the room.

He wore a perfectly tailored black Savile Row coat. Behind him stood four men in dark suits, their faces devoid of any human emotion.

Aurthur's presence sucked all the oxygen out of the room. His jaw was locked. His dark eyes swept over the two thugs like they were already dead.

The thugs froze. The larger one puffed out his chest, trying to hide his sudden terror. "Who the fuck are you? Mind your own business."

Aurthur didn't speak. He didn't even blink.

He simply raised one finger.

Two of his bodyguards moved. They were a blur of calculated violence. In less than three seconds, both thugs were face-down on the carpet. The sickening crunch of a dislocated shoulder echoed in the room. One of the men screamed in agony.

Brianna shrieked. Her knees gave out, and she collapsed against the wall, her face drained of all blood.

Aurthur ignored the bodies on the floor. He ignored Brianna.

He walked straight toward the corner where Clare was trembling.

Eight years had carved his face into something harder, colder, and infinitely more dangerous. The sheer physical pressure of his gaze made Clare's lungs stutter.

He stopped right in front of her. He crouched down.

Without a word, he stripped off his expensive coat.

He wrapped it around Clare's shoulders. The heavy wool was still warm from his body. It smelled sharply of cedar and clean winter air.

His hands gripped the lapels, pulling the coat tight across her chest, hiding her exposed skin from the world. The movement was aggressive. It left no room for argument.

Clare's mind was a chaotic mess of chemicals and terror. But the moment his scent hit her, a violent shiver ripped through her spine.

Aurthur slid one arm behind her back and the other under her knees. He stood up, lifting her effortlessly against his chest.

Her head fell against his shoulder. She could hear the slow, steady, terrifying thud of his heartbeat.

He carried her toward the door. He didn't look down at the men groaning on the floor.

As he passed Brianna, he didn't stop walking. He simply turned his head slightly toward the lead bodyguard.

"Call the police," Aurthur's voice was like crushed ice. "Defamation. Aggravated assault. Attempted rape. Have the Bolton family legal team take over immediately."

Brianna let out a strangled gasp. "The Bolton family..." She slumped completely to the floor, her eyes wide with absolute despair.

Aurthur carried Clare out of the club. The cold night air hit her face, but she was burning up inside his coat.

A black Maybach was idling at the curb.

The driver threw the rear door open. Aurthur placed her gently onto the leather seat, then slid in right beside her.

He looked at the driver in the rearview mirror.

"Dr. Evans' private clinic," Aurthur ordered. "Now."

The heavy door slammed shut. The chaos of the street was instantly silenced. The Maybach glided smoothly into the dark Manhattan night.

The back of the Maybach was massive, but Clare felt like she was suffocating in a sealed box.

The drug was no longer a slow burn. It was a raging forest fire in her blood.

Her skin felt like it was melting. Her rational mind was crumbling piece by piece. She writhed on the leather seat, her legs kicking out weakly.

She clawed at her own throat. The collar of her dress felt like a noose. She grabbed the lapels of Aurthur's coat and ripped them open, exposing her flushed chest to the cool air of the car.

Aurthur's throat bobbed. He jerked his eyes away from her skin and stared straight ahead.

"Stop moving," he commanded. His voice was harsh.

The cold authority in his tone didn't sober her. It acted like gasoline on the fire.

Driven entirely by the chemical demanding relief, Clare's body sought the only source of cold in the car. Him.

She dragged herself across the seat. She slumped against his side, pressing her burning cheek directly against the crisp, cool cotton of his dress shirt.

Aurthur's entire body turned to stone.

His muscles locked so tight they trembled. Eight years of burying his obsession, eight years of forced distance, were being tested by the heat of her skin through his shirt.

He grabbed her shoulders. His fingers dug into her flesh as he tried to push her away.

"Clare," he ground out, his voice turning ragged. "Wake up."

Clare blinked. Through the haze of the drug, the sharp scent of cedar filled her lungs. It dragged a memory up from the dark. A quiet afternoon in his study. Safety.

She looked up. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. She stared at the sharp line of his jaw.

"Why did you leave?" she whispered.

The question was a physical knife twisting in Aurthur's chest. He stared down at her. He couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't tell her about the threats, the NDA, the Swiss facility.

His silence stretched out, heavy and suffocating.

To Clare, the silence was an answer. It was rejection. It was cruelty.

A sudden, violent wave of grief mixed with the drug's pure lust.

She surged upward. She grabbed the front of his shirt and crashed her lips against his.

It wasn't a romantic kiss. It was a collision. It was desperate, angry, and entirely uncoordinated.

Aurthur's brain short-circuited.

Every wall he had built shattered into dust.

He didn't push her away. He let go of her shoulders and buried his hands in her hair. He took control of the kiss, turning it from a clumsy assault into a brutal, devouring possession. He kissed her with eight years of starved desperation.

Clare gasped against his mouth. The sheer force of his response terrified her. A tiny sliver of reality pierced through the drug.

She shoved her hands against his chest and tore her mouth away.

She fell back against the opposite door, panting heavily. Her chest heaved.

"You bastard," she sobbed, confusion and shame burning her eyes.

She grabbed the door handle, yanking on it wildly. "Stop the car! Let me out! I would rather find a random man on the street than be here with you!"

The air in the car instantly froze.

The invisible string holding Aurthur's sanity together snapped with a loud, violent crack.

A random man.

He had lived in a cage for eight years to keep her pure and safe, and she wanted to give herself to a random man on the street.

He lunged across the seat. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them together with one massive hand. His grip was painful. His eyes were entirely black, devoid of any light.

"You will not," he hissed through his teeth. The words were a lethal threat.

He reached forward and slammed his hand against the intercom button.

"Change the route," Aurthur barked at the driver. The command was absolute.

"Yes, Mr. Bolton," the driver said smoothly.

"Where are we going?" Clare cried out, struggling against his iron grip.

"My penthouse," Aurthur said.

The Maybach took a sharp right turn, abandoning the route to the clinic.

Clare stared at him in pure horror. The drug was pulling her under again, making her limbs heavy and useless. She couldn't fight him. She was trapped in the dark with a predator who had just decided to stop playing by the rules.

The private elevator doors slid open directly into the penthouse.

Aurthur didn't let Clare walk. He carried her out of the elevator and into the massive, cold fortress of his home.

Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the glittering skyline of Manhattan, but the beauty was dead to Clare. The apartment felt like a high-altitude prison.

He carried her down a long hallway and dropped her onto the center of a massive king-sized bed in the master bedroom.

Clare scrambled backward, her hands sinking into the dark silk sheets. She tried to slide off the other side.

Aurthur caught her ankle and dragged her back to the center. He pinned her down, his hands planted on either side of her head. He loomed over her, a dark shadow blocking out the city lights.

"Before you go looking for 'any random man'," Aurthur said, his voice a deadly whisper, "you are going to do one thing."

He pulled his phone from his pocket. He tapped the screen and hit dial.

Clare stared at him, her chest rising and falling in rapid, terrified breaths.

The call went straight to voicemail. Jaren was still busy comforting Bailey.

Aurthur pressed the phone against Clare's lips. The cold screen shocked her heated skin.

"Tell him you are with me," Aurthur ordered. "Tell him you are done."

Clare's eyes widened. This was humiliation. This was him forcing her to burn her own bridges while she was completely helpless.

She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head, tears spilling down her temples into her hair.

Aurthur's fingers moved from the mattress to her jaw. He squeezed, not enough to bruise, but enough to show his absolute physical dominance.

"Or," Aurthur said softly, "I can call him myself. I can invite him over to watch."

The threat hit her stomach like a cannonball. Bile rose in her throat. She couldn't survive that level of degradation.

She closed her eyes. The drug was making her head spin violently.

"Jaren," she whispered into the phone. Her voice shook, but the words were clear. "It's me. We are over."

She paused. A sudden, twisted spike of anger at Jaren pierced through her fear. She looked up at Aurthur's dark eyes.

"Because I found someone better," she added.

It was a reckless provocation. A self-destructive lash out.

Aurthur's eyes flared. He pulled the phone away and ended the call. He tossed the device across the room. It hit the wall with a sharp crack.

He looked back down at her. The satisfaction in his expression was terrifying.

"Good," he murmured. He lowered his head, his lips brushing against her tear-stained cheek. "Now, you are mine."

The drug, the heartbreak, the sheer exhaustion of fighting him-it all crashed down on her at once. Clare stopped pushing against his chest. Her hands fell limp onto the sheets.

The lights in the room clicked off automatically. The city outside was the only witness.

(The night blurred into a feverish haze of heat, pain, and surrender. The boundaries of right and wrong dissolved in the dark.)

The next morning, the sun stabbed through the glass windows, hitting Clare directly in the eyes.

She woke up with a pounding headache. Her mouth tasted like ash.

She stared at the unfamiliar gray ceiling.

She turned her head. Aurthur was asleep beside her. The harsh lines of his face were smoothed out in sleep. His bare chest rose and fell evenly.

Memories slammed into her brain like a freight train.

The kiss in the car. The forced voicemail. The dark bedroom.

She sat up violently. The silk sheet fell away, exposing the dark bruises blooming on her collarbone and arms.

Her stomach violently cramped. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stop a sob.

She had slept with Jaren's uncle. She had slept with the man who abandoned her.

Shame burned her alive. It was a physical acid eating through her chest. Her life was completely destroyed. She had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.

She had to get out.

She slid off the edge of the bed. Her legs shook so badly she almost collapsed onto the hardwood floor. She held her breath, moving like a ghost, desperate to escape the scene of her own ruin.