The Brand
381 Words
Chapter 15 – The Brand
Alesia woke with soreness between her thighs, bruises down her sides, and a strange stillness in Nico’s bed.
He wasn’t beside her.
Instead, he stood at the window, shirtless, a small object in his hand—a slim, golden branding tool shaped like a serpent coiled around a rose. The same symbol that adorned the gates of his estate.
Her heart sank.
“What is that?” she asked softly.
He turned, eyes unreadable.
“A reminder.”
He approached her slowly, knelt at the edge of the bed, and brushed her hair from her shoulder. “You said you’re mine. But words fade. Scars don’t.”
She swallowed hard. “You want to hurt me?”
“I want to keep you.”
He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, soft, reverent. “Forever.”
She trembled. “Where?”
He smiled darkly.
“Just above your heart.”
She didn’t move as he marked the spot with a red-inked fingertip, right over the thudding pulse of her chest. Then he laid her back, held her wrists gently but firmly, and whispered, “Breathe.”
The iron hissed as it was heated.
The moment it touched her skin, fire tore through her.
She screamed.
But she didn’t pull away.
Because she saw the look in his eyes—the way he watched her, as if she was a sacred object being sealed by ritual. The pain became power. The scream turned to a moan. And when it was done, he kissed the wound like it was holy.
“You wear my mark now,” he said, voice low and thick. “You’ll carry me inside you until your last breath.”
Tears streaked down her cheeks.
And when he made love to her that night, it wasn’t rough. It wasn’t fast.
It was slow, obsessive, and devastating.
He touched her like she was made of glass—but glass he wanted to shatter and piece together again, over and over, until she was nothing but a reflection of his hunger.
And when she came undone beneath him, her fingers clutching his name into the sheets, she whispered:
“I’ll never leave you.”
Not because she couldn’t.
Because she didn’t want to.
- Writer
