CONTRACTED TO THE ENEMY

The Ride Home

The gala ended after midnight.

Elena sat in the back of the Maybach with Adrian’s come still slowly leaking out of her, the red silk of her dress sticking slightly to her thighs. She kept her knees pressed together and her gaze fixed on the dark city sliding past the tinted windows. Her body felt used. Claimed. And worst of all, still hungry.

Adrian sat beside her in silence, one arm stretched along the back of the seat, the picture of calm. He had returned to the ballroom as if nothing had happened—smooth, polite, untouched—while she had spent the rest of the night smiling with the taste of him still in her mouth and the evidence of him between her legs.

The privacy partition was already raised.

After several long minutes, his voice cut through the quiet.

“You’re very quiet, wife.”

Elena didn’t look at him. “What do you want me to say? Thank you for f*****g me in a public restroom like a cheap secret?”

“You weren’t cheap.” His tone remained even. “You were expensive. And very wet.”

She finally turned her head. In the low light his face looked carved from something hard and cold. Only his eyes gave him away—they were still dark, still hungry.

“I hate you,” she said, and the words came out rawer than she intended.

Adrian studied her for a moment. Then he reached over, took her left hand, and slowly ran his thumb across the platinum band he had placed there.

“I know,” he said quietly. “That’s why it feels so good when you come for me.”

Something inside Elena twisted. The anger was still there, sharp and familiar, but underneath it was a growing panic. Because the more he touched her, the harder it became to remember where the hate ended and the wanting began. She had signed a contract to save her mother. She had not signed up to lose herself.

The car turned onto the private road that led to the estate. Tall trees swallowed the streetlights. Darkness pressed against the windows.

Adrian’s hand left hers and settled on her thigh, sliding upward beneath the slit of the dress until his fingers brushed the bare, sticky skin high between her legs. He didn’t push inside her this time. He just rested his hand there, possessive and still, feeling the mess he had left.

“You’re still open,” he murmured. “Still soft from me.”

Elena’s breath shuddered. She hated how her body reacted—how her thighs loosened slightly instead of clamping shut, how heat flared low in her belly at the simple weight of his hand.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” His fingers stroked once, slow and deliberate, through the wetness. “Don’t remind you that less than an hour ago you were bent over marble moaning my name while I filled you? Don’t remind you that you came so hard you shook?”

“Stop.”

Adrian leaned in until his mouth was close to her ear. His voice dropped into something darker, almost intimate.

“Tell me to stop again and mean it, Elena. Tell me you don’t want my fingers back inside you right now. Tell me you don’t want me to make you come one more time before we reach the house. Say it like you mean it… and I’ll take my hand away.”

The car was silent except for the low hum of the engine. Elena’s heart slammed against her ribs. She opened her mouth, but the words that should have come—cold, clear rejection—wouldn’t form. Her body was still thrumming from the gala, still sensitive, still traitorous.

Adrian waited.

When she said nothing, he made a low sound of dark satisfaction and pushed two fingers inside her.

Elena’s head fell back against the seat. A broken, helpless noise left her throat as he began to move—slow, deep strokes that forced her to feel every inch. His thumb found her oversensitive c**t and circled it with cruel patience.

“Look at me,” he ordered softly.

She forced her eyes open. His face was close, eyes locked on hers while his hand worked between her legs. There was no softness in his expression, only possession and a frightening focus.

“This is what the contract really is,” he said, voice rough now. “Not the paper. Not the money. This. You hating me while your cunt grips my fingers like it never wants me to leave. You can keep telling yourself it’s only for your mother. I’ll keep proving it’s already more than that.”

Elena’s hips moved against her will, chasing the pressure. Shame burned through her, hot and dizzying. She was going to come again—in the back of his car, with his come still inside her from earlier, while he watched every flicker of her face.

“Adrian—” His name cracked on her tongue.

“I know.” His fingers curled, hitting the place that made her vision blur. “Let it happen. Give it to me.”

The orgasm tore through her with almost violent force. She cried out, thighs clamping around his hand, body shaking as pleasure and self-loathing crashed together. Adrian worked her through it with ruthless care, slowing only when she became too sensitive to bear it.

When the last tremor faded, he slowly withdrew his fingers. Once again he brought them to her mouth.

This time Elena didn’t wait for the order. She opened her lips and cleaned them, eyes stinging with something that felt dangerously close to tears.

Adrian watched her in silence. Then he leaned in and pressed the softest, briefest kiss to the corner of her mouth—almost gentle, and somehow more devastating than anything else he had done.

“We’re home,” he said quietly.

The car had stopped in front of the estate. The heavy doors of the mansion waited.

Elena stared at him, breath still uneven, heart racing with a fear that had nothing to do with physical pain.

Because for the first time since she signed her name, she realized the real danger wasn’t that Adrian would break her body.

It was that he might already be breaking something deeper.

And the worst part was the quiet, terrifying suspicion that part of her wanted him to finish the job.