Sold To The Reaper

Gettout!

Breakfast was already waiting when Lilian came out, She ate slowly anyway, forcing every bite down.

After breakfast, she wandered the penthouse simply because she had nothing else to do with the hours stretching emptily ahead of her, and the place was quiet in a way that felt almost unnatural.

Room after room unfolded as she walked and she sank down near the glass with the new phone Alexandro had given her still clutched in one hand, Kyle’s name staring back at her from the top of her favorites list.

She had no idea what she would even say to him,

‘Hi, I’ve been auctioned off, legally purchased. I signed a contract and I belong to someone else now. But how are you?’

She stared at the screen until the letters blurred together, aching to hear his voice and terrified in equal measure of what that voice might do to her if she let herself listen to it. In the end, she didn’t call. She simply couldn’t make herself do it.

The sun dipped low outside the windows and eventually she drifted to sleep curled on the smooth leather sofa, the phone still clutched against her chest.

The knock that woke her was soft and a maid offered a small, formal bow.

“Master requests the signed contract”

She slipped a silk robe over her nightdress and gathered the folder from the table, the fabric clinging to her skin in a way that felt far too intimate, the lace neckline dipping lower than she had the energy to care about correcting.

Maybe he wouldn’t even look at her closely enough to notice. She walked toward his room the way a person walks into a gathering storm, bracing herself without quite knowing what she was bracing against.

He sat on the edge of the bed when she entered, elbows resting on his knees and his head bowed low, as though some enormous weight had settled across his shoulders sometime during the night. His black shirt hung unbuttoned halfway down his chest, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a drink dangling loosely from one hand while his jacket lay discarded somewhere on the floor behind him.

Her plan had been simple enough walking in, drop the contract, turn around, leave before he could say anything at all but the plan dissolved the instant she noticed the dark, drying stain marking the collar of his shirt.

It was blood.

Her body moved before her mind could catch up to it, her hand lifting toward the cut visible along his neck without her ever deciding to reach for him, some instinct overriding the part of her brain insisting she shouldn’t care whether he lived or died.

Was he hurt? Was it deep?

The questions tumbled through her thoughts faster than she could organize them, and she had just brushed two fingers lightly against the fabric near the wound when everything went wrong in the space of a single heartbeat.

He caught her wrist, fast and absolute, and in one fluid motion she found herself pulled forward and off-balance, her body slamming against the solid heat of his chest before she could even gasp.

“Don’t touch me,” he murmured, low and rough, “unless you’re ready to be touched back”

“I didn’t mean…,” The words died in her throat as the world tilted sharply and she found herself flat against the bed, pinned beneath the full weight of him before she’d even registered being moved. Her gasp caught somewhere it couldn’t escape, her heart seeming to leap clean out of her chest in horror at how quickly the room had rearranged itself around her.

He didn’t say anything right away, only stared down at her with an expression she couldn’t read.

She froze beneath him, words abandoning her entirely, the proximity alone enough to steal what little breath she had left, and then he leaned in closer still, his breath warm and unbearably close against her cheek.

“You walked in here,” he murmured, “in silk, tight and sweet like you wanted something”

“I didn’t,” she breathed, desperate for him to believe her, “I just came to…,”

“Bullshit”

Her robe slipped at the worst possible moment, and his gaze dragged downward like a match finding gasoline, something dark and hungry sparking behind his eyes.

“If you didn’t want me,” he said quietly, “you wouldn’t have come dressed like that”

“I didn’t choose this,” she snapped, her voice cracking under the weight of everything she’d swallowed since the auction. “It’s what your staff put me in. I only wanted to drop the contract and leave”

He ignored what she said and caught both her wrists in one hand and pinned them above her head, his body pressing fully into hers, the scent of expensive liquor sharp and bitter on his breath as it invaded her senses without mercy.

Her legs trembled uselessly beneath him, every attempt at movement swallowed by the sheer immovability of his weight.

He bent his head slowly, his mouth ghosting first over her collarbone and then trailing higher toward her throat, and she gasped at the first press of his lips against her skin, the sting of a kiss landing far too close to places that made her whole body go rigid. He continued anyway, lower this time, his tongue leaving behind a trail of heat that sank straight through her skin and settled somewhere she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“No,” she said, though it barely escaped as more than a whisper.

He kissed the side of her throat again, teeth scraping lightly until a small bruise bloomed just above the rapid flutter of her pulse. She squeezed her eyes shut against everything rising inside her at once, not only fear and not only shame but something far heavier, a helplessness tangled together with guilt that felt like it might split her open from the inside.

Kyle’s face burned behind her closed eyes, his laughter, his promises, the quiet certainty she’d carried for years that she was meant to wait for him, meant to belong to him eventually, and now here she was instead, pinned beneath another man entirely.

The tears came before she even realized she’d started crying, silent at first and then breaking loose all at once, a full and uncontrollable sob tearing free from somewhere deep in her chest. It was the sound of it, finally, that made him stop.

His eyes locked onto hers, something shifting behind them like fog clearing just enough to let a sliver of clarity through, and he cursed low under his breath before pushing himself off her entirely.

“Get out,” he said, his voice dropping low and rough.

She couldn’t move at first, sitting up slowly instead and dragging the robe tighter around herself with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, the tears still falling freely down her face.

“Now, Lilian”

She stood, though her legs barely felt like they belonged to her anymore, and the contract slipped from her fingers to the floor without her sparing it a single thought. She walked out the door without looking back, and this time, he didn’t say a single word to stop her.