Incapable lips

Incapable lips
Vinorca Jona POV 

“Sit here, Vinorca.” He pointed to the sofa, then dropped into the oversized chair across the table, claiming it like a throne.

I was still knotted up from whatever had just happened. My head throbbed, thoughts slipping and colliding, but I sank onto the cushion where he’d indicated. My body moved on its own, even while resentment coiled tight in my chest.

My eyes stung, lids puffy and raw from all the tears. Beneath that ache, anger simmered, thick and unspent.

This man had driven me right to the brink, twisting every nerve until clear thought felt impossible.

The memory clung to me, refusing to fade. The heat of his cock, that unmistakable hardness pressed against my palms through the fabric of his pants.

My fingers curled without permission, then froze. Disgust and shame surged through me in alternating waves. I hated that my body held onto the sensation long after my mind tried to shove it away.

My heart still hammered, each beat loud enough that I swore he could hear it, thudding against my ribs. I swallowed, throat scraped raw. “What do I need to do?”

I didn’t want to give him a single word. Every syllable felt dragged out of me. But he’d hauled me in here, cornered me with that same unyielding grip, and now I had to know why. What work could possibly justify this?

“You can do something?” His voice cut across the space, sharp and dismissive, mockery threading through it like he found the whole idea laughable.

My spine straightened. Fresh heat flared behind my eyes. “And what exactly do you mean by that?” The words snapped out, edged with the last scraps of my patience.

He was the one who’d dragged me here without a word of explanation. He was the one who wouldn’t let go. And now he sat there, questioning whether I was worth anything at all, like I was some inconvenience he’d stumbled over.

Of course, he thought I could do something for him. That was the only reason he’d been so damn relentless.

“Other than crying, I don’t think you can do anything,” he said, the certainty in his tone slicing straight through me. Then, quieter, crueler: “Or maybe you can. Maybe sucking with those incapable lips is still manageable.”

The words landed like a slap. I stared at him, breath caught somewhere between shock and rage. He’d just said that—after pushing me until I broke, after watching me fall apart—he couldn’t even grant me a moment’s reprieve.

He narrowed his eyes, waiting.

“You are a monster, Dante.” The name left my lips like venom, low and trembling with everything I hadn’t yet screamed.

“I won’t deny that.” His voice dipped, a velvet blade sliding across my skin, that familiar dark amusement curling through every word. “But the correct word is ‘your monster,’ Vin.”

He turned his gaze to the computer screen, dismissing me without another glance. Fingers already moving over the keys, he added, “You never could be anything for me.”

The words sank into me like teeth, sharp and deliberate. I sat there, heat crawling up my neck, anger and something far more twisted tangling in my gut.

“Figures.” He didn’t even look up as he typed, the soft click of keys filling the silence he’d left for me. “Now go fetch a file.”

I wanted to snap back, to hurl something worse enough to wipe that smug calm off his face. But the words stuck behind my teeth. “From where?”

“Floor twenty-nine.” His tone was flat, bored, like he was sending a dog to retrieve a stick. “Take the same lift we used to come up here. My beta’s office is there.”

The mention of the elevator slammed into me. My stomach lurched, memories flooding back uninvited—the confined space, his body too close, the way he’d pinned me with nothing but presence and cruelty until I shattered. My pulse kicked hard, breath thinning.

He glanced up then, hands pausing mid-motion. Those dark eyes pinned me in place. “Go, Vin.” A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. “Didn’t you ask what you could do? Here’s something useful. Don’t waste my time.”

I hope you trip and break your neck every single time you take a step.

That’s gonna be you, my conscience whispered, soft and traitorous.

I exhaled a slow, shaky breath and pushed to my feet, legs numb and heavy beneath me. “I’m going, then.”

“Do it fast.” He didn’t even glance up, already lost in the glow of his screen, fingers moving again like I’d never been there.

I walked out on deliberate steps, each one measured, as if the floor might crack open if I moved too quickly. The door clicked shut behind me, sealing him in his kingdom of glass and steel.

One burning question gnawed at me the entire way.

How does an Alpha like him end up with an office this massive, a building that scrapes the sky? What the hell does he actually do here?

I’d always pictured him on the front lines—blood, borders, wars. Commands barked across battlefields, claws and teeth settling disputes in the pack.

This, though… this felt too ordinary. Too human. Spreadsheets and files and his beta on the twenty-ninth floor, doing work too?

Who gives orders to a man like Dante? Even if he sits at the top, someone, somewhere, must feed him work.

The thought twisted in my gut.

He was a mystery wrapped in arrogance, and I hated how desperately I wanted to unravel him.

“Focus, Vin,” I muttered under my breath. Thinking about him is useless. It only drags me deeper into the mess.

I stepped into the elevator anyway, the doors sliding shut like a trap. The trauma from earlier replayed in my head.

And beneath the dread, fear coiled tighter. Dante’s beta was Amy’s brother. I’d never met him, never even seen his face, but the bad feeling sat heavy in my gut all the same.

Who knew what kind of man he’d be? His sister was bad—cruel, spoiled, always getting away with every worse thing she did at university because her brother wore the beta title and their father had once held it too. Blood like that didn’t run clean.

The elevator slowed. Ding.

The doors parted, and I stepped out into the hushed corridor.

“Vinorca?”