Chapter 135 The Friction of the Present
Mila’s POV
The closet was a mothball-scented coffin for my father’s lies.
Huddled behind scratchy winter coats, I pressed my palms against my ears, but I couldn't drown out the kitchen. This wasn't my father’s usual pathetic, drunken pleading. It was a new voice—cold, jagged, and sounding like crushing gravel.
"You’re out of things to sell, Mark," the voice grated. I knew him the way children know the dark: Vane. "Jersey doesn't trade in promises. You said the shipyard heist was a sure thing."
"The manifest was real!" my father shrilled, his desperation making the air feel oily. "The sirens started early—we had to dump the crates in the marsh. I can get them back! Just keep the girl quiet."
"The girl is a distraction." A fist thudded against the table, vibrating through the floor and into my six-year-old bones. "You double-crossed the wrong people, Mark. You tried to skim off a shipyard heist. If you don't deliver by tomorrow, the debt becomes biological. We start with the things you love."
I curled tighter, my knees knocking against my chin. My parents were career criminals—clumsy, short-sighted, and greedy. They had botched a job and tried to skim off the top, and now the monster was in our kitchen to collect the difference. The darkness of the closet began to warp, the walls stretching until the floor fell away. Suddenly, I wasn't six anymore. I was suffocated by the grey dust of a memory I had tried to bury.
“He knows you’re in there,” the shadows whispered. “He’s coming to collect what your father stole.”
The closet door didn't open—it exploded into white light.
I gasped, my lungs burning as if I’d been underwater for years. I expected to see the linoleum and the bald man. Instead, I felt a massive, crushing weight pinning me into the silk sheets of the penthouse.
"Mila! Look at me!"
The voice wasn't gravel. It was silk and steel. It was Nate.
I couldn't find my voice. I was still half-submerged in the closet, the phantom scent of mothballs competing with the sharp, expensive cedar of the room. My heart was a frantic bird hitting the cage of my ribs, and my skin was slick with a cold, terrified sweat. I couldn't tell if the man pinning my wrists above my head was my savior or the next monster in the sequence.
"Stay here," Nate growled, his face inches from mine. His eyes were dark, predatory, and filled with a lethal intensity. "Don't you dare go back to that place."
He didn't wait for me to answer. He buried his face in my neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin over my pulse. The sharp sting was the first thing that felt real. It was a physical bite that snapped the last thread of the nightmare. I let out a jagged breath as his tongue traced the salt on my skin, his heat bleeding into my frozen limbs.
"Feel me, Mila," he muttered, his voice a vibrating rasp. "I am the only thing that is real."
The transition was violent and beautiful. He released my wrists and cupped my face, his thumbs forcing my jaw open as he kissed me. It was an invasive, primal act. He tasted of mint and dark intentions, his tongue filling my mouth, forcing my senses to realign with the friction of his skin.
I felt him shift, straddling my hips. The heavy, pulsing weight of his arousal pressed against me through the thin silk of my nightgown. I reached for him, my fingers clawing at his back, my nails seeking purchase on the hard muscle of his shoulders. I needed the weight. I needed him to be so loud that the world went silent.
The sound of my nightgown tearing was like a gunshot. I didn't care. I wanted the silk gone. He stripped it away, exposing me to the cool air of the room before his hands—large, rough, and hot—covered me. He gripped my breasts, his thumbs rolling over my nipples until they were aching points of fire. He touched me as if he were trying to brand me, his palms demanding and possessive. Every sweep of his hands was a layer of armor, a promise that no one could reach me through him.
"Whose are you?" he demanded, his voice a low growl.
"Yours," I gasped. "Nate... please."
He didn't waste another second. He hiked my hips up, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my thighs as he positioned himself. When he drove into me, I let out a cry that was pure, visceral shock. He was massive, stretching me, filling the hollowed-out parts of my soul with a raw, carnal power. The closet was gone. There was only the rhythmic, punishing thud of his pelvis against mine and the wet, slapping sound of our skin meeting.
The eroticism was overwhelming. I watched him in the amber glow of the skyline, his jaw set, his muscles corded as he worked. I was obsessed with the way he looked—a beautiful, lethal architect of my safety. I arched my back, meeting every thrust, my breath hitching as he hit my center with a relentless, driving force.
He didn't hold back. He was feral, his movements turning more aggressive as he watched my eyes roll back. He reached down, his fingers finding the sensitive bundle of nerves between us, circling and pressing with a frantic precision while he continued to hammer into me. The dual sensation sent a bolt of white-hot electricity through my spine. I was screaming now, my voice raw as he drove me toward a cliff I couldn't see.
"Don't go back," he hissed, his teeth baring. "Stay in the light, Mila. Stay with me."
I was locked into him, my body clenching around his as the world finally shattered. The release was a violent, rhythmic explosion that felt like it was purging the grey dust from my veins. He let out a guttural groan, his own body tensing as he flooded me, his weight crushing me into the mattress as he found his own dark, heavy oblivion.
I clung to him, my voice finally failing me as I buried my face in his chest, sobbing into the heat of his skin. The nightmare was dead, buried under the raw weight of the man who owned me.
But as I lay there, my heart slowing, the words from the dream remained. The shipyard. The marsh. My parents hadn't just been unlucky; they had been thieves who stole from the wrong shadow. I knew Nate had heard my whimpers. I knew the war wasn't over. I had been found in the dark, but Vane was still out there, realizing that the "Stone girl" was finally back in reach—and that the man holding her was a far more dangerous monster than he would ever be.