Her fault,His Dark obsession (Dark romance, Erotic billionaires)

"You should be grateful I married you after college. Who else would have wanted to marry a poor, stinking girl like you?" Draven sneered, his lips curling in disgust.

Ariel stared at him, disbelief and heartbreak warring inside her chest.

"I should be grateful?" she repeated, her voice trembling with anger. "While everyone was enjoying campus life, I was working double shifts just to keep you in school. I paid your tuition when you couldn't afford it. I paid for your tutorials. I skipped meals so you could buy textbooks."

Draven's jaw tightened, but Ariel wasn't finished.

"And when the bills became too much, I dropped out of college so you could continue your education without worrying about me."

Tears burned in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

"I sacrificed my dreams for you, Draven. I gave you everything I had my time, my future, my love. I stood beside you when you had nothing but ambition and empty pockets."

Her voice cracked.

"And now that you're successful, you look down on me ."

Draven scoffed. "Everything that went wrong in my life started the moment I married you."

Ariel's heart clenched.

"No," she said quietly. "Don't you dare put that on me, "Losing our son was not my mistake. It was yours."

"Your mother refused to let me use the car when our baby was struggling to breathe. I begged her. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn't listen

"And where were you? I called you over and over again."You didn't show up at the hospital until after he was gone."

"The saddest part is that I actually believed you loved me."

A bitter smile tugged at her lips.

"But if helping you become the man you are today is what made me worthless in your eyes, then marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life."

"You poverty-stricken thing!" a shrill voice suddenly rang out. "How dare you insult my son!"

Before Ariel could react, Draven's mother stormed across the room and slapped her hard across the face.

Smack!

Ariel staggered backward as pain exploded across her cheek, Neither of them looked surprised. It was a routine she knew too well.

Ever since she married Draven, his mother had treated her like a servant rather than a daughter-in-law. Nothing Ariel did was ever good enough. She was called a burden, a curse, a jinx who had brought misfortune into their family, And Draven had never once defended her.

Ariel slowly raised a hand to her burning cheek. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall in front of them.

"Look at her," Draven's mother sneered. "Acting like a victim when she's the reason this family has suffered."

Without another word, she turned and walked away, She climbed the narrow staircase and headed toward the tiny room at the end of the hallway. Room. The word almost made her laugh.

It was little more than a storage closet filled with old boxes, broken furniture, and a narrow single bed pushed against the wall. A dump would have been a more accurate description.

While Draven slept comfortably in the master bedroom, Ariel spent her nights in this forgotten corner of the house.

The only time he ever allowed her into his room was when he wanted her body. Once he got what he wanted, she was sent back to her tiny room like an unwanted guest, As Ariel closed the door behind her, the silence wrapped around her like a blanket.

(Laurent Mansion)

Andrew didn't knock a second time. He'd learned that lesson three assistants ago.

"Sir." He stood in the doorway of the study, tablet pressed against his chest like a shield. "I just got off the phone with Mrs. Dumont's office."

Vincent Laurent didn't look up from the quarterly reports spread across his desk. His pen moved in slow, deliberate arcs signatures that would shift millions before the markets opened tomorrow. "And?"

"She can't supply anymore. Doctor's orders. Something about her iron levels."

The pen stopped.

The silence that followed was the kind that made Andrew's back teeth ache. He'd worked for Vincent for fourteen months now longer than any of his predecessors and he'd learned to read the quiet the way sailors read a dropping barometer. This was the kind that preceded a storm.

Vincent set the pen down. Slow. Careful. When he looked up, his eyes were the color of slate after rain gray and cold and utterly empty.

"I have a freezer full of expressed breast milk in my private fridge," he said. His voice was quiet. That was worse. "Do you know why I have that, Andrew?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know what happens to me when my supply runs out?"

Andrew's throat worked. "Yes, sir."

"Then I don't need to explain why 'she can't supply anymore' is not an acceptable answer." Vincent leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked. "Find me another source. By end of day. Before the current stock runs out."

"Sir, the medical specifications are very particular. The donor needs to be"

"I don't care if she's a circus performer who eats nothing but kale and prayers. Find someone. Pay her whatever she wants. Make it happen."

Andrew nodded once. "Yes, sir."

He left.

The door clicked shut.

Vincent sat in the silence for exactly twelve seconds. Then he picked up his phone, scrolled past three numbers, and pressed call.

"Send her in," he said. And hung up.

He didn't bother with pleasantries. Didn't bother with clothes.

By the time her back hit the wall, his hand was already wrapped around her throat.

He could feel her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her dress rabbit-fast beneath his palm.

"On your knees," he said.

She dropped.

He watched her hands work his belt. Watched her mouth part. Watched her look up at him with that practiced submissiveness that cost her nothing and gave him even less.

Boring.

He pulled her up by the elbow before she could finish.

"Turn around."

She faced the wall. He grabbed her hip with one hand, the nape of her neck with the other, bending her forward until her palms pressed flat against the cold plaster. His free hand found the hem of her dress, pushed it up, pushed everything else out of the way.

He didn't ask if she was ready. He didn't care.

The first thrust drove the air from her lungs in a sound that was half gasp, half cry. He didn't pause. Didn't gentle. He set a pace that was pure brutality each stroke a punishment he hadn't realized he needed to deliver until this moment.

He pushed harder. Faster. The woman beneath him made a sound hurt or pleasure, he couldn't tell, didn't distinguish between the two anymore.

"Take it," he growled, his hand coming down on her ass with a crack that echoed off the study walls. "Take that cock like the bitch you are. Bounce on that dick."

"Oh, shit. Fuck. Ahhh"

Her voice broke. He reached past her, grabbed the glass of whiskey he'd left on the side table, and took a slow sip while he kept driving into her. The burn of the liquor matched the burn in his thighs, his hips, his chest.

She was saying something. He caught the tail end of it.

"that enough, sir?"

He didn't answer. Didn't slow down.

Enough? He hadn't even started.

He pulled out, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her across the room. She stumbled. Her knee hit the edge of the coffee table and she hissed, but he didn't stop. Couldn't stop. There was a roaring in his ears now, the familiar tide of something dark and hungry that only ever went quiet when he did this when he took and took and took until there was nothing left of whoever was beneath him.

He threw her onto the leather sofa. She landed on her back, hair splayed across the cushions, dress twisted around her waist. Before she could catch her breath, he was on her. Inside her. Pounding into her with the same relentless, mechanical fury that had built Flinch Tech from a garage startup into a billion-dollar empire.

His hand found her breast. Squeezed. Hard.

"You're pathetic," he sneered, watching her face contort. "I was told you were the best at this. Why are you so fucking slow?"

Her mouth opened. Closed. She didn't have an answer.

He didn't need one.

He kept going. Kept driving. Kept taking what he needed until the roaring in his ears began to quiet, replaced by the wet sound of skin on skin and the ragged, broken sounds she was making beneath him.

It was the tears that finally did it.

He pulled out. Stood up. Reached for his whiskey.

"Get dressed," he said, not looking at her. "There's an envelope on the desk. Take it and don't come back."

She scrambled off the sofa, gathering herself with shaking hands. He heard the rustle of fabric, the click of her heels on the hardwood, the soft sound of the door closing behind her.

He drained the rest of the whiskey.