HIS TO CLAIM

Chapter thirteen: His Command, My Undoing

Marcelo disappeared up the stairs, swallowed by the violet lights and thick shadows of the club—but his presence didn’t. It clung to the air like smoke, like danger, like a warning my body was too stupid to obey.

I tried to shove the thought of him away.

I came here to be free. To breathe. To exist.

So when Sophie grabbed my hand and yelled over the music, “Luce, relax! We’re in Cuba, baby!” I forced myself to laugh. Forced myself to sway with the rhythm, feel the percussion in my bones, let bodies brush past mine, let the night swallow me whole.

But every few seconds, something tightened inside me.

A prickle at the back of my neck. A heat under my skin.

A pulse that was not the music.

He’s here.

I couldn’t ignore it. His presence felt like a wire looped around my ribs, tugging, drawing me in even as every rational part of me screamed to run.

I excused myself before Sophie could protest.

“I’ll be back. Just need a second.”

My heart was sprinting by the time I slipped into the bathroom. I leaned on the marble counter, gripping its edges.

My reflection stared back at me—flushed cheeks, red lips, pupils too wide, like prey that had already spotted the predator.

Get it together, Lucia.

I fixed my lipstick and smoothed my hair.

I stepped out—and froze.

Two large men in black stood outside the door like shadows made of muscle.

“Miss Lucia.” One bowed his head slightly.

“Our boss would like a word.”

My stomach twisted.

“No.” I tried to walk past. “Tell him I’m busy.”

The second guard blocked me with one arm. Calm. Unmoving. Deadly polite.

“We were instructed to bring you. Respectfully… or by force.”

My pulse plummeted.

I hated how fast I crumbled. How my feet turned on their own and every step toward the stairs felt like marching back into a cage I’d escaped.

They led me up, past velvet ropes, past balconies overlooking the party, up to a darkened hallway that hummed with power.

At the end of the long hallway, one of them opened a door and jerked his head for me to enter.

Marcelo stood inside.

Looking like sin carved into flesh. Suit jacket discarded with his sleeves rolled up and jaw shadowed. His eyes were black with something too dangerous to name.

The air shifted when he saw me.

“Leave,” he told the guards.

They obeyed instantly.

“And close the door, Lucia.”

The way he said my name… low, rough, full of eight months of silence and tension… it crawled down my spine.

I closed the door.

The moment it clicked shut, the energy between us tightened—thick, electric, consuming.

I folded my arms. “What do you want now?”

Marcelo didn’t move. He didn’t need to. The room bent around him.

“You’re going back with me,” he said simply, as if it were already decided.

I barked a laugh. “The hell I am.”

His jaw ticked. “Your debt is not paid.”

“f**k you.”

I turned to leave—but I didn’t make it two steps.

Marcelo moved.

One heartbeat he was across the room; the next, he was pinning me to the door, his body hard, tall, unyielding.

His fingers wrapped around my throat. Possessive. Claiming.

My knees weakened instantly.

His breath brushed my cheek.

“You think running to an island would change what you are to me?”

I swallowed, which only pressed my throat deeper into his palm.

“You don’t own me,” I whispered.

His lips curved—slow, dangerous.

“Then why,” he murmured, leaning down to graze the edge of my jaw with his mouth, “do you melt every time I touch you?”

My breath broke.

I hated that he was right.

I hated that my body arched into him instead of away.

He lowered his face into the crook of my neck and inhaled.

A shiver wrecked me.

“I’ve gone insane without this,” he whispered against my skin.

“Without you. Without your scent. Without the way you tremble for me.”

Then his lips touched my skin—one soft kiss, drawn out and deliberate.

I melted.

“Stop…” I whispered, but it wasn’t conviction. It was plea. Need. Fear.

His mouth brushed lower, lips tracing a path that made my head tilt without permission. His hand slid to my waist, gripping firmly, pulling me closer to the heat of his body.

I gasped when I felt him—hard, unrestrained, pressed against me.

“Marcelo…” My voice broke.

His response was a dark, low groan.

“You feel what you do to me?”

The world blurred.

His other hand slid down, fingers tracing the inside of my thigh—slow, intentional, maddening—lifting the hem of my dress inch by inch. He stopped at my panties and through it, stroked my p***y with a finger, my head rolled back at the action.

Then, he shifted the panties to the side and worked his fingers in, every action deliberate and pleasurable. Each stroke would earn a moan from me. I melted into his arms, my eyes rolled back, breath hitched and pulse thundered.

“You think I didn’t dream of this?” he murmured against my throat.

“Of you coming apart for me… just like this?”

I tried but couldn’t stop the soft, involuntary sound escaping from me.

He dragged his lips back up my neck, leaving heat and unsteady breaths in their wake. His touch grew firmer, more claiming. My legs threatened to give out, and he felt it—his hand gripping my hip, pulling me tightly against him.

“You want me to stop?” he whispered.

I tried to speak. I couldn’t.

He felt my silence.

And smiled against my skin.

“I didn’t think so.”

Then something in him snapped.

His mouth crashed onto mine, devouring, hungry, as if all the months apart detonated in one violent, breath-stealing kiss. I felt myself drowning in him—his taste, his hands, the way he kissed like he spent months starving.

I barely realized when he lifted me, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carried me to the desk. Papers and objects clattered to the floor as he set me down, his lips never leaving mine.

I pulled at his shirt, desperate to feel him. He broke the kiss just long enough to rip it over his head.

My breath caught.

His body… his muscular body, sculpted lines, heat radiating from his skin. Shadows clung to every cut of his torso, making him look carved from desire and danger.

His dark eyes locked on mine. “You like what you see?”

I shouldn’t have nodded. But I did.

My fingers traced down his chest, following every line, feeling every breath he took sharpen under my touch. His muscles tensed, his eyes darkening further.

When my hand reached the edge of his belt, his breath hitched—not softly, not gently, but like a man barely holding himself together.

“Lucia…” he warned, voice strained.

I didn’t stop. I removed his belt and pulled the zipper down. I nervously reached inside his trousers and cupped his hardness—warm, firm, throbbing hardness. It was big. Very big.

I worked my finger to the tip and brushed my thumb over it.

And then he reacted—his breath grew shallow, when his eyes closed in something raw, primal and unguarded—it made heat rush through me so fast I felt dizzy.

I felt something electric rush through me—power, boldness, a kind of reckless hunger I didn’t know I still possessed. Slowly, deliberately, I increased my pace, watching the tension coil through his body. Marcelo’s breath hitched, his jaw tightening, his eyes going impossibly darker… like I had just flipped a switch inside him.

And God, I loved it.

With a teasing curl of my lips, I sank to my knees before him. He watched me like he couldn’t look anywhere else—even blinking felt like too much distance between us.

Holding his gaze, I leaned forward and took him into my mouth.

Heat.

Hardness.

The intoxicating taste of him.

A soft, involuntary moan escaped me at the warmth, vibrating against him. His head tipped back, a low growl tearing from his chest.

“Lucía…” he rasped, like my name alone was unraveling him.

I took him deeper, letting my lips slide slowly, tightly around him, sucking with a deliberate intensity that made his hips twitch forward. Each stroke of my tongue, each hollow of my cheeks, earned a deeper, rougher sound—groans ripped straight from somewhere he couldn’t control.

His hand slid to the back of my head and I looked up at him through my lashes, still moving, still devouring, still in control.

I had him trembling.

I had Marcelo Dominique—the most feared man I knew—coming undone beneath my mouth.

And he knew it.

He felt it.

He couldn’t hide it.

“Holy—” he choked out, cutting himself off with another sharp breath.

“Look at you… making me lose my mind.”

His voice was tight, ruined, furious with pleasure.

And I took him even deeper.

The loss of control on his face…It was intoxicating.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, voice thick with desire. “You’re… f*****g beautiful.”

His words burned through me.

“You’re mine, Lucia.” His voice was pure dark hunger.

Reality smashed back into me.

I shoved him away and stood up, my chest heaving, lips swollen, pulse frantic.

“f**k you, Marcelo.” My voice cracked from everything—anger, desire, shame, want.

“I’m not a toy. And I’m not going back with you.”

His eyes burned slowly, dangerously as he straightened.

The game had changed. And we both knew it.

“Then run,” he said softly.

“But I will come for you.”