Chapter 225: Chapter 225: Held by Hatred
Chapter 225: Held by Hatred
One sentence poured ice over the part of Serena that had almost softened.
The reversal nearly made her choke.
Worse, it made perfect sense.
Of course Elias had not held her wrist because he wanted her to stay. Of course that sweet, low invitation had not been tenderness. It had been a reminder, sharpened and placed exactly where it would hurt.
When Serena looked at his slightly parted lips again, they no longer seemed tempting.
They looked mocking.
He was reminding her of everything she had done to him. The contract she had never truly destroyed. The arrangement that had been rotten from the first line. The relationship that had begun wrong and somehow found a way to keep getting worse.
Serena forced down the pain twisting through her chest.
Her face went expressionless, cold and beautiful in the way a statue could be beautiful if someone locked it behind glass.
"Sleep," she said. "We’ll talk about that later."
Elias saw the escape at once.
When people faced a problem they did not know how to solve, their first instinct was to avoid it. That much was ordinary. Seeing it happen to Serena Blackwood, the woman who ran Blackwood Group without blinking, was almost amazing.
Inside, Elias laughed.
Had he pushed Serena so hard that her brain had crashed?
Still not enough.
The favorability had not moved. If she thought she could run tonight, she had misunderstood the kind of employee the Bureau used to send into trash plots.
Elias gave a soft scoff. "What, you can’t do it?"
Serena ignored him.
So he reached for the sure kill.
"Those women were better than you any..."
He did not finish.
His back hit the bed.
Serena pinned him down hard enough that the mattress sank beneath him. Her fingers caught his chin, forcing his face up. Pain flashed through his jaw.
This time, she did not show the slightest pity.
Frost seemed to gather in her eyes. She looked as if she wanted to crush his jaw between her fingers.
"I told you not to bring that up again." Her voice was low and dangerous. "Whether I take you or not is not your decision. The initiative is in my hands. You are nothing but something I use to satisfy myself. Do you understand?"
The familiar insult fell over him.
A glimmer of amusement passed through Elias’s eyes.
"Been a while since Streetlight Serena cursed at me like this," he told the system. "It’s kind of comfortable."
System Theta was shaken so badly it forgot caution.
[System Theta: Host, are you... are you a masochist?]
The moment it asked, a long string of its data nearly scrambled.
Elias actually thought about it.
"No," he said. "But if I don’t finish this world quickly, I might become one."
Who truly understood the power of Pain Conversion?
No wonder the skill had been so strong and so cheap. There had to be a problem hidden inside the discount. Had other employees bought it, suffered under it, and slowly turned into that kind of person?
Elias now had another reason to clear this world as fast as possible.
Retirement was one thing.
Personal safety was another.
As the pleasure sharpened under the pressure on his jaw, Elias bit down on his lower lip to keep from making a sound.
Serena saw his brows draw tight. His lashes trembled. His small, sharp canine teeth sank into the pink of his lip, obvious and stubborn.
She knew that expression too well.
At the beginning, when she had forced him and he had hurt but refused to make a sound, he would do exactly this. Bite himself. Endure. Turn pain into silence because even a sound felt like giving her more.
Did it hurt?
Good.
Only when she saw pain on Elias’s face could Serena lie to herself that he still loved her.
But she did not let it continue for long.
Her fingers released his chin.
The cracked ice inside her seemed to freeze over again, leaving her face calm.
"You’re talking nonsense. Sleep. Now."
Elias let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
He had not noticed before.
Streetlight Serena could be a little cute.
Even now, when everything had collapsed around them, she was still diligently maintaining her abusive CEO persona.
So cute.
Which meant he should make sure she had no peace at all.
Elias stayed quiet for a few seconds, then said, "This is your bed. I’m not sleeping here."
Serena’s expression did not change. She looked almost used to his unreasonable demands by now. "Then go back to your own room."
Elias pushed himself half upright. The T-shirt she had forced over him hung loose, riding up enough to leave a large section of his pale waist and abdomen exposed.
Serena’s gaze dropped there once.
She wanted to pull the shirt down for him.
In this atmosphere, that kind of care would only make her look more pathetic. So she did not move.
Elias stared at her, his eyes full of coldness. "You’ve slept on this floor. I’m not sleeping anywhere on it."
[System Theta: ...]
The host was pushing his luck so openly that System Theta felt Serena might explode in the next second.
Serena did not explode.
"Then sleep on another floor," she said.
Elias stepped directly onto her last line. "You’ve slept in this entire house."
Serena bent over him so fast that the bed dipped. One finger stopped almost at the tip of his nose.
"Impossible," she warned. "The sky can fall, and you’re still staying in the Blackwood residence. Are you sleeping or not? Keep acting up, and you won’t sleep at all tonight."
Before, Elias would have known where to stop.
Now he was determined to drain Serena dry. After everything he had done, he refused to believe he could only squeeze one percent of favorability out of her.
He grabbed the finger Serena was pointing at him and opened his mouth to bite.
Serena pulled back in time.
Judging from the way he had opened his mouth, that bite would not have been light.
Her anger returned. "You really are a dog."
Despite saying that, she bent down and lifted Elias from the bed by the waist.
While she had him in her arms, she finally tugged the T-shirt down, covering the exposed skin she had been pretending not to see.
[System Theta: She really... I’m moved.]
"Go sleep in your own room," Serena snapped.
Then she inhaled sharply.
The little dog in her arms had missed the first bite and gone for a second.
Elias sank his teeth near her collarbone and held on. Hard. His bite fixed there with vicious intent, as if he meant to tear the flesh from that place.
Serena made only one sound.
Then she shut her mouth.
She carried him down the hall like that and into the room he had used before. She placed him on the bed.
The movement forced Elias to let go.
Serena looked down.
In the faint light from the hallway, two neat rows of teeth marked the elegant line near her collarbone. Two punctures were deeper than the rest, left by his sharp canines. Blood slid slowly from them.
At first glance, the wound looked savage, almost like something left in a horror movie.
Serena looked only once.
Then she withdrew her gaze and started to straighten.
She could not.
The boy on the bed had wrapped both arms around her neck. Not satisfied with that, he hooked his smooth legs around her waist as if he refused to let her leave.
The gesture looked like clinging.
The meaning was the opposite.
There was no love in it. No reluctance. No longing for her to stay.
Only fierce malice.
A deliberate attempt to wound her with the shape of being wanted.
The heaviness returned to Serena’s chest, blocking her breath like something sour and trapped. Yet her face smiled.
Beautiful brows. Ruined clothes. Blood near her collarbone. A smile so dazzling it looked almost wrong in the dim room.
"Looks like you’ll be uncomfortable all over if I don’t take you tonight."
Her fingers tightened against him.
"So cheap."
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