Bound by Obsession

Chapter Seven

The ride back from the gala was wrapped in silence, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that offered peace. It was the type that pulsed, sharp and heavy, the kind that fills your chest until you can’t breathe properly. I sat with my hands clutched in my lap, staring out the tinted window as the lights of Manhattan blurred by, trying to pretend I didn’t feel Alexander’s eyes burning into me.

His mood had shifted at the gala. He’d played the perfect host—smiling, shaking hands, charming investors with a half-smirk that sent women sighing into their champagne glasses—but underneath it all, I could feel the storm brewing. He had hated the way one of the men at our table kept leaning in toward me, his laugh too loud, his compliments lingering just a moment too long. Alexander’s hand had been firm on my thigh all through dinner, possessive, almost bruising, a warning to me and everyone else at that table: Mine.

Now, with the city falling away behind us and only the two of us trapped in the backseat of his car, that storm was about to break.

“Are you going to ignore me all night, Alina?” His voice was low, smooth, but edged with steel.

I didn’t answer immediately. I knew better than to poke at his temper carelessly. My heart was already racing, but part of me—the part that had been unraveling since the moment I’d stepped into his world—thrummed with anticipation.

“I’m not ignoring you,” I said finally, my voice quieter than I intended.

He leaned forward, bracing his elbow against the back of the seat as he studied me. In the dim interior light, his eyes looked darker, sharper, cutting into me like blades. “You’ve barely said a word since we left. That tells me you’re sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” I muttered, but my tone betrayed me.

His lips curved into something dangerous, the shadow of a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “You think I didn’t see the way he was looking at you? The way you smiled back at him?”

Heat shot up my neck. “I was being polite,” I snapped, finally turning to face him. “You can’t expect me to scowl at everyone you introduce me to just to feed your ego.”

His eyes flashed. “You think this is about ego?” He reached out suddenly, his hand closing around my jaw, tilting my face up so I couldn’t look away. “No, Alina. This is about possession. When you wear my name, when you sit at my table, when you walk into a room on my arm you don’t smile at another man like that. You don’t let him think for a second he could have you.”

My pulse was a drumbeat in my ears. “You don’t own me,” I whispered, though the protest sounded weak even to my own ears.

He leaned in until his mouth was barely an inch from mine, his grip on my jaw tightening just enough to make my breath hitch. “Don’t I?”

The car pulled smoothly into the underground garage beneath his penthouse, but neither of us moved until the driver came around to open the door. Alexander released me abruptly, smoothing his expression back into calm, collected control, as if the fire between us had been nothing more than smoke.

I followed him out, my legs unsteady, my chest heaving like I’d just run miles. We rode the elevator up in silence, but the air was charged, thick with everything unsaid. When the doors opened to the sleek, glass-walled expanse of his penthouse, I barely had time to breathe before Alexander was on me.

The door clicked shut behind us, and then his mouth was on mine rough, hungry, demanding. I gasped, and he swallowed the sound, pressing me back against the cool steel of the elevator doors. His hands slid down my body, gripping my hips hard enough to bruise as he pressed his body against mine.

“You drive me insane,” he growled against my lips. “Do you know what it does to me, seeing another man look at you like he could touch what’s mine?”

I moaned into his mouth, my body betraying me even as my mind screamed that I should push him away, tell him he was being unreasonable, possessive, unfair. But my hands tangled in his hair instead, pulling him closer, desperate to feel the fire he ignited in me burn hotter.

He dragged his mouth down my throat, biting hard enough to make me whimper, then licking the sting away as his fingers tangled in the slit of my gown, ripping the delicate fabric without hesitation.

“Alexander this dress” I gasped, but he cut me off with a dark chuckle.

“I’ll buy you a hundred more,” he murmured against my skin, his voice low, almost a growl. “But right now, I need you.”

His words sent a shiver down my spine. There was something terrifying about the way he wanted me, but it was also intoxicating, addictive. Every time he touched me, I lost a little more of the walls I’d spent years building around myself.

He lifted me suddenly, effortlessly, my legs wrapping around his waist as his mouth crashed back onto mine. I could taste the expensive scotch on his tongue, feel the unyielding hardness of his body pressed against me, and I knew just like every other time that fighting him was pointless.

“You belong to me,” he whispered harshly against my ear, carrying me across the room and slamming me down onto the cold marble countertop of his kitchen. “Say it.”

My lips trembled as I tried to hold onto some shred of defiance, but his hand slid up my thigh, his fingers stroking in a way that made me arch against him involuntarily.

“Say it, Alina,” he demanded again, his voice a command wrapped in heat.

My body betrayed me, my voice breaking into a moan as I whispered, “I belong to you.”

His eyes blazed with triumph, and he kissed me again, rough and possessive, as if sealing the words into me. His obsession was terrifying, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. The truth was, I wanted him just as fiercely as he wanted me and that was the most dangerous part of all.