Page 9 of Safe Word

The muffled rip of the dress at my chest broke the silence, each thread conceding to the blade. I felt his gaze following its path, its weight as tangible as any touch. He wasn’t just stripping away fabric – he was peeling back every layer of me, leaving nothing hidden under the merciless gaze of the chandelier.

And just like that, the forbidden memories that had haunted me evaporated, replaced by the heat of his breath and the chill of the weapon. He had managed what years of therapy couldn’t – a single moment of freedom, of release, where ghosts of my past held no power.

The lace clung to my waist in tatters, sheer and useless like the last defence of a fortress already conquered. His gaze travelled over me as if he was memorising every inch he had claimed.

I shifted, my throat labouring to catch air.

‘Is something wrong?’ I murmured when he lingered too long, suddenly too aware of my body.

His gaze lifted, and when it met mine, it felt as if he were surfacing from someplace dark and indulgent.

‘No,’ he breathed. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’ A pause. ‘You need to learn something.’ He crouched, his mask level with my breasts, barely hidden behind the blue lace. ‘This… what I am doing… what I am not yet doing… is restraint.’

His knife ran down the slope of my breast without touching. His breath ghosted over my collarbone even through the fabric of his mask.

‘Something tells me you haven’t known it.’

I pressed my lips tighter.

‘I don’t want to rush this,’ he whispered. ‘You have no idea what it takes not to mark you… Not to bend you over and erase any doubt you ever had about yourself.’

My mouth slid open slowly, the ache throbbing low between my thighs.

Fuck, I cursed inwardly. He was killing me.

‘Mark me… how?’ I whispered, desperately needing him to at least say it.

His gaze dropped to my breasts and stayed there. Raising the sharp tip of the knife, he lifted his head to look at me with a silent question.

‘Green.’ It left me on a breath, a plea almost slipping alongside the word.

The blade made contact to the right, its tip circling the lace over my nipple.

‘Here… Teeth. Just a little,’ he rumbled, inclining his head sideways as if to get a better view. ‘Then tongue, to soothe what I’ve taken.’

I wanted this. The pain. The pleasure. All of it.

‘I’d mark you where only I’d know to look. And every time you moved, you’d feel me there.’

My skin pebbled as the blade descended further, slicing through the centre of my dress with a soft, decisive sound. The knife paused as it reached the lace below.

His body went rigid as he stared over me. The quiet thickened, his gaze lingering longer than expected on that spot, longer than I could endure.

I was burning, fighting the urge to look away, but the tension in the room kept me locked to him. I could see the muscles in his neck working, a subtle betrayal of the battle he waged within himself.

The sight sent a surge of satisfaction through me. Could I truly affect him so much?

The contract we’d signed suddenly felt like a cruel boundary, a line neither of us could cross. Yet the unspoken promise in his every movement, the way his hand flexed on the hilt of the knife, left me yearning for more.

I wanted him to break me further, to take every fractured piece of me and break it into nothing until there was no trace of the person I used to be. My chest heaved, my breathing quickening again as I watched him wrestle with his own restraint.

‘I won’t touch you,’ he murmured, more to himself.

‘Do it,’ the whisper came, breathless – too eager.

‘It isn’t allowed.’

‘I won’t tell.’