Chapter Fourteen: The Other Side of the Mirror
610 Words
The message came in through Rafael—an encrypted voicemail sent through a dead drop server. Aria recognized the voice instantly.
“Aria. It’s Mom.”
She froze.
“If you’re hearing this, then you’ve learned the truth about your father. There are things I never told you. Things I couldn't. But I’m alive. I’m hiding. And I have information that can expose him—and the people he works for.”
There was a pause. A shaky breath.
“I need to see you. Alone.”
The message cut off.
Lucien stood across the room, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. “We can trace it. Set a trap.”
Aria shook her head. “No. I need to know if she’s telling the truth. And if she’s alive… I can’t risk losing her.”
He stepped toward her. “I won’t let you walk into danger alone.”
Aria’s chin lifted. “Then don’t let me. Come with me. But don’t try to control me.”
Lucien’s eyes darkened. His restraint cracked—just slightly. “You drive me insane.”
“And you make me feel like I can burn the whole world down and still be forgiven.”
The tension between them was a live wire.
He closed the distance, caging her against the wall with his arms, his breath brushing her lips. “Do you know what you do to me, Aria?”
“Tell me.”
“No,” he growled. “I’ll show you.”
He kissed her hard, rough, his tongue pushing into her mouth with a hunger that had simmered for days. Her hands clawed into his shirt, pulling him closer, feeling the thick heat of him pressing against her stomach.
Lucien broke the kiss only to lift her onto the marble table, knocking papers and files aside with reckless impatience. She gasped as he spread her legs, slipping between them.
“I’ve tried to go slow,” he rasped, lips dragging along her throat. “Tried to be patient. But the way you look at me when you fight… the way you taste when you surrender—”
“Then stop pretending,” she whispered, tugging at his belt.
He groaned as her hands freed him, his body pulsing against her palm. He pushed her panties aside and ran his fingers along her slick folds, smirking at how ready she already was.
“You’re always like this for me,” he muttered. “So wet. So f*****g sweet.”
“Then take me,” she gasped.
He did.
He slid into her in one slow, brutal thrust that left them both gasping. She clung to him as he drove deeper, each movement purposeful and possessive. The table rocked beneath them, their moans tangled with the sounds of desperation and power.
He bit her shoulder to muffle his growl, and she arched her back, giving him everything.
“Mine,” he whispered. “Say it.”
“Yours,” she gasped. “Only yours.”
And when her release tore through her, it shattered something in both of them—something that didn’t need words.
Lucien stayed buried inside her as he came, holding her tight, his lips at her ear.
“If your mother’s alive, we’ll find her,” he said, voice ragged. “But nothing—not your past, not your father, not the world—is going to take you from me.”
And in the silence that followed, with her body trembling around him and his heartbeat crashing into hers, Aria knew the truth:
She was already his.
But if they weren’t careful, it might cost them everything.
- Writer
