trigger warning: Disturbing dubious consent/CNC/forced scene ahead. You might feel heavily drained by the end of it.

note: I was too disturbed during and after writing it. I am so glad I had my forever support @Behindgreeneye for pulling me out of it and reviewing it for me. Often, I am in an extremely dark mental space when I am writing, and I tend to push my boundaries, which is the case with Ares's, too. I am glad I have her around to guide me with her raw feedback on chapters like this one when it's too much. I am hoping I can bank on y'all as well to help me with your raw feedback, as you always do more and more on this chapter. It's the most crucial sequence of the book, and you'll see why.

PS: It's about 10,000 words, but bear with me. I hate writing long chapters. Couldn't avoid this one.

I should've never ignored the premonitions.

All those nagging feelings I'd been swamped with before leaving for dinner, the nauseating gut instincts, that sinking feeling—they were all trying to forewarn me.

But I kept brushing them off—every single one of them.

Now, the weight of that ignorance is seeping into my bones.

I never thought there would ever come a time when there would be a distance between us—a distance that was never supposed to exist between us.

I was wrong.

It does now, and it's not something I can help... not even if I try to.

My mind, body, and heart have lost coordination.

I believed Areston and I were strong enough to sustain any storm. I thought he was the anchor that would always keep me from getting lost in the turbulence of the sea.

The painful realization that I've been severely deluded is making my heart ache and bleed.

I have always believed that my husband is the only person who understands me—all parts of me—the ones I hide from the public and even close ones, and the ones that I don't.

The crushing realization that he doesn't is spreading into my veins like a deadly poison, slowly sucking the life out of me.

I am just a thing he has been driven forever to possess, to own, to control, and the knowledge is tearing me apart since it occurred to me a while ago when he was fighting with Zayd.

No matter how much I prove to him, even if I die in the process, one thing is clear—my husband still doesn't trust me not to leave him again.

He never will.

He couldn't have made it clearer. That truth was radiating off him.

It always has, but I turned a blind eye until I was forced to confront it today. I should have faced it a long time ago instead of letting it hit me like a sledgehammer this evening.

Deep down, my subconscious had known it all along. I could sense its weight in the manner in which he has always looked at me. In the dark possessiveness that clings to his every action when it comes to me.

However, I'm the naive, eternal optimist that he keeps accusing me of being—the two qualities he considers worse than blasphemy.

And so, I chose to believe that he'll come around, that all the love and submission I offer to him is enough to heal the raw scars of our past.

I was wrong.

Nothing I do will ever be enough.

I've been clinging to a fantasy, and it has finally dawned upon me in a way that's impossible to deny.

He loves me with a ferocity that consumes everything, but he will never feel secure enough to believe that I won't repeat the mistakes from my past.

While I had vowed always to trust him, trusting me back was never a part of his vow.

That brutal realization is gutting me the most.

I haven't spoken a word since he helped me out of the helicopter or before that. We have been walking in silence, his fingers possessively clasping my wrist.

I was so lost in my train of thought that I didn't realize my husband was noticing me when I was constantly rubbing the area on my wrist where there used to be deep-cut scars from my suicide attempts.

He immediately quashed it with his fingers closing around that part as if he could sense something alarming.

He has restrained my hand since, refusing to let go.

He hasn't tried to breach the silence either. Neither have I.

I don't have the strength or words to do so; not even his warning of punishment has made me budge.

I can feel fury simmering under his skin; it's on the verge of exploding, but he has been keeping it in check—at least for now.

I don't know what's going on in his mind, and for the first time, I don't care.

He broke something inside me—trampled all over it—that something being my unshakeable faith in my husband never to hurt me. Not deliberately, at least.

He proved me wrong.

My husband is well and truly capable of hurting me and doing so much more beyond it.

He has no problem if his actions leave me as collateral damage as long as they serve his agenda. And it doesn't stop there. He has zero faith in me and will never have. I have been repeating the latter to myself like a broken tape record since I realized it.

When we reach the door of our bedroom, I pause, my hand resting on the handle.

It's when his phone buzzes. He ignores it for the first time. It has been constantly buzzing since our walk up here. He accepts it reluctantly and lets go of my hand at last to move towards the handrail.

I turn around when I'm inside, and our eyes clash. Instead of rushing to the ensuite and locking myself for a shower, I linger by the door, watching him and, for the first time, feeling the weight of actual suffocation.

That beautiful sapphire stare, soulless and cold, that has always brought me so much peace regardless of the situation, now feels like a prison sentence.

He is speaking to someone about addressing some propeller faults. His poker face is on, as usual.

The only time it slipped was when he saw Zayd—and felt threatened even when he had no reason to.

I understood it because if I were in his place, I would have felt the same way or probably worse.

But the fact that he already knew about Zayd's existence in my life, and that's why he tried to keep me from running into him as if... as if I don't know what he thought would happen if I were to meet him again, hurts me so much.

How can the man—not any other man but my husband, who knows everything about me there is to know except one secret that I willingly kept from him—think so low of me?

How dare he think of me as some cheap trollop who might jump from her husband to another man?

Was he thinking I might see Zayd and my old feelings for him would resurface? Despite knowing that I couldn't even bring myself to have sex with that man because I've always been hung up on him?

He ends the call and is about to move when I take a couple of steps in his direction and blurt. "Why did you not want to take me to Zayn's for dinner?"

He tries to touch me instead of responding, but I step back, adding fuel to his already-ignited fury.

His jaw ticks. "You know how livid it makes me when you deny me contact with your skin, tesoro."

"Earlier, when you were busy having an adrenaline-fueled encounter with your best friend, you ignored and dismissed me as if I weren't there. It was as if I was someone insignificant, and it didn't matter. You know I abhor being disregarded like that, and yet you did. If I tolerated it, then you should have no problem tolerating this." I wipe my tears that have started flowing down my cheeks again.

Damn, the water works.

I've been trying so hard to show him zero emotions. It's what he deserves after the agony he has put me through.

"Were you worried that I might have feelings for him?"

No response.

"Did you think that perhaps I might suddenly start craving his cock that I couldn't take in me when we were seeing each other?" I manage in an even-toned voice.

"Twenty," he responds in a brusque tone, reminding me that he has been counting but doesn't take a step forward and remains where he is. "It would be wise to keep that beautiful mouth shut, Belle."

I ignore him. "Tell me, Ares. Is that why you didn't want me running into your best friend—my ex, I mean?"

He regards me with a gaze that might as well burn me as he remains towering over me, his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.

Even now, his tux is in the same place, not one crease. Only the bow is now untied and hanging loose around his collar; he did it during our ride back here.

"I know you don't have feelings for him."

I shake my head as his words pain me more than his frigid behavior. "Yeah, of course, you know that. You're well aware that you're the only one I've ever been hopelessly in love with since I was a child. However, that knowledge isn't enough to remove your insecurity when it comes to me. Is it? It's not even a possessiveness or your territorial nature, which I used to think it was. You lack faith in me... it's insecurity that makes you proprietorial and so controlling, isn't it?" I hate that my throat chokes up and my voice cracks. "I married you, and yet it doesn't qualify me for earning your trust."

I turn around to walk into the bedroom, and he remains in the same place he was when I decide to torture myself again instead of giving him the silent treatment.

"Will you ever trust me?" I ask quietly, my back still turned to him.

"Twenty-one." 

The bastard.  "Will you ever trust me, Areston?" I turn to face him.

He might as well be one of the stunning marble statues of a Greek god in the MET museum, cold and unflinching. His silence confirms what I've already suspected and been thinking about. It breaks whatever pieces of me were barely keeping themselves together. My knees threaten to buckle from the crushing weight of his silent acceptance.

My hand trembles as I put it on my raging heart, and I gasp. "You will never trust me. No matter what lengths I go to prove my loyalty to you, you'll always doubt me. You'll never trust me to leave you again, will you?" I whisper, my voice literally forcing itself out.

"Is that what you were doing today? Proving your loyalty to me by saying all those things to Zayd? You thought I needed to hear it?" Each word is controlled, clipped, and vacant of anything human, with his features remaining perfectly still, no hint of what he's thinking, not a muscle twitching.

It's like he has slapped me.

No, worse.

Those words are more painful than any physical pain could ever be.

I open my mouth, prepared to yell at him and vent out all the fury that has been building in my chest, but nothing comes out. My throat feels dry and raw, and the words die before they even have a chance to form on my tongue.

I swallow, fighting to keep myself from falling apart, and lift my chin in defiance. "What do you think, your highness? Do you believe I'm capable of doing that?"

"You're capable of leaving me. That's all I need to know." The detached indifference in his voice makes my stomach churn from a feeling like nausea.

My fingers ball into fists on my side, and my breath traps itself in my throat.

"Not because of anyone else but yourself. You might wake up one day and decide I am suffocating you with my possessiveness and dark obsession," he adds so casually that one might mistake him for someone announcing the weather report. Even those guys do it with some enthusiasm compared to my husband.

"You still think that," I whisper, barely managing to push the words out. It isn't a question—it's a statement.

"Well, you did it once," he says with a sense of haughty finality that hits me like a bullet piercing my heart.

He's so confident that the past is all the evidence he needs to prove me wrong at every step.

I shake my head slowly in disbelief as I feel the remaining of my insides crumbling. "And you're quite certain I'll do it again no matter how hard I work to make you believe otherwise."

He doesn't respond, and that lack of response is worse than any possible insult he could have hurled my way.

A bitter laugh tears out of me at its out accord, more out of sheer disbelief and agony than anything else.

"You'll never let go of the past. You'll always hold it over me. You'll never believe me. I am going on repeating that same fucking thing like a broken record as if it's going to change anything, but it's not, is it?"

His silence, his cold, goddamn indifference, is tearing me apart.

He's making me feel like he doesn't even care that I am standing here, shattered, and trying to nudge him to hold me out a lifeline—anything, something.

"You know what, Beast?" My voice is trembling from tears choking up in my throat as I turn to leave. "I waited for you even after we broke up. I remained committed to you. There was not a single instance where I wanted to give myself to anyone else. I could've tried with Zayd, but my heart didn't allow it. I used to feel like if I did that, I'd be cheating on you somehow, and that's the last thing I wanted. I always wanted to remain yours regardless of your separation. I stayed dedicated to you."

He doesn't even blink and keeps subjecting me to that hard stare. "I am aware."

"Good. So, you do understand it's pretty hypocritical of you to have trust issues with me—bloody double standards. As far as I can remember, it was not that it was a competition or mutual agreement or anything for you to do the same, but you didn't wait for me. You moved on pretty damn quick, Areston. What if I were to accuse that your so-called love for me was so pathetically weak that all it took was one fucking blowjob from that whore of a godmother of yours to crack it within two months?"

He remains quiet.

"Now, I can understand that she seduced you the first time while you were under the influence of alcohol and drugs, but you were perfectly sane during all the other times you dipped your cock in her filthy, pedophile vagina. You did it because you wanted to and without any force involved... because she apparently made you forget me. Didn't she?"

Absolute silence. No response. Damn him.

"And then, once you were bored of her, you moved on to submissives—a billion of them. You whipped, flogged, and tortured a majority and fucked some. You had them picked upon their resemblance to me and then had them groomed to look exactly like me so you'd think it was me you were fucking or punishing."

My tears keep flowing incessantly, but I don't stop.

Today, I won't.

"I never brought this up before today because I was considerate and never judgemental of your actions—of why you did what you did. I believed you when you told me you didn't actually think of me as the one being punished while hurting those submissives because you couldn't think of hurting me that way—because you loved me regardless of the agony I'd caused you. I never doubted that. I never doubted you despite how sick it was. I trusted every word that came out of your mouth, Beast."

It irks me that he's watching my rant as if I am some wall. There's no response for him.

"Deep down, it was bugging me that you don't trust me, and when you asked me to marry you, I could have said no and made you wait until you started doing so, but I didn't. I trusted you to start believing in me one day, even though I knew it might take some time. I remained hopeful. I did everything to make you trust me. I begged you to keep me in your life. I accepted you back into my life without making you work for it despite the mockery you made out of my love in Sardinia and tossed me out of your life like I meant nothing."

I rub my tears with the back of my hands as I continue.

"I have never slept a night apart since we got back together. I moved in with you without any hard persuasion when I should've waited. I married you despite knowing you don't trust me. I didn't even throw a fit when I vowed to trust you entirely, but you made no such vow," I count on my fingers as I narrate. "I pushed my dream of starting a family at thirty away just because I knew you were ready out of your sheer insecurities. I blindly trusted you to tell me whenever you're prepared to have our own kids despite knowing you're one territorial, jealous, and untrusting man who loathes sharing me with anyone and would do anything in his power. And yet, it's me you can't trust? Do you realize what a fucking hypocrite you are?"

Still, he says nothing—just regards me with that empty, soul-crushing stare. And it's breaking me, piece by piece.

Even now, he is choosing to keep his walls up.

Even after everything that has happened today, especially now, he's choosing to remain quiet.

I am usually okay with his lack of emotions because I know that's who he is, and I can't change that about him—it's his nature.

However, sometimes, just sometimes, in instances like this, I crave for him to be available... to be understanding of emotions and how it feels to be on the side I usually am or the side he leaves me on while I'm dealing with him.

His extreme reticence is asphyxiating, pressing down on me, forcing me to be breathless.

I throw my hands in the air. "You're the last person I ever believed who'd hurt me to this agonizing degree, but I am still here, giving you a chance to fix this mess—to fix us. Don't think I don't notice how every time I have told you I wouldn't leave you again, you'd have one classic response—I won't let you. You never once said I believe you. Not once. Not ever. I thought getting you to admit after so much struggle and anguish that you love me was enough. I wanted it to be enough, but it's not."

I am heaving between my sobs.

"I am going to ask you again, Areston. Please say that you'll start trusting me or at least start trying until you're certain you can. Please give me hope this time. I am done fooling myself by deluding myself over and over again with silly, self-constructed hopes. I am giving you one last opportunity. Tell me, please. Will you ever trust me again? Lie if you can't bring yourself to commit the truth, but say something." I can't believe how pathetic I sound right now, how weak and vulnerable.

He won't lie.

Of course not.

That's not my husband.

He won't even lie to make me feel better after I am devastated right now because of him. This is an admirable quality but one I wish he didn't have.

For the first time, I am hoping I'd have been okay if he were a liar who lied to charm his way in. At least that would have given me some sort of temporary relief from this heartbreak he's causing me.

He takes an intimidating step forward with his hands remaining in the pocket of his pants and I take a step a couple of steps backward at the same time until I hit the back of the door.

"Don't you fucking dare deny me your touch. That's my last warning." He remains in place without taking any step forward to breach the distance between us—as if he's restraining himself from letting the fiery heat radiating off him  consume me.

That rage that has been unfurling inside him that he's holding on a leash by his supreme control is starting to gleam in his sapphire gaze.

He's angry—no, not angry, he's livid—but it doesn't matter to me anymore.

"Is that all you have to say? If so, I am done."

"You can't leave me." His voice is dark, menacing, filled with barely contained need for annihilation—of my will to stand against him and challenge him. However, deep down, I see his insecurity in those words. Even now, when I shouldn't, it's his vulnerability that I see in that arrogant statement—and his lack of distrust in his wife, who has been begging him even to attempt to trust her.

"That's what you're hoping I'd do, aren't you?" I smile sadly, wiping my tears, and take a deep breath. "You've always wanted an opportunity to lock me up on one of your islands and keep me caged forever like some fucking priceless possession of yours. While I loved that fantasy when we joked about it, it's not pleasing me in the current circumstances—it's scary. And it's more scary because I know you would do it one hundred percent if I were even to attempt escaping this relationship or you again. But don't worry. I am not looking for an escape out of our relationship—I never will."

I walk inside the room so we're both on either side of the door. Me, holding the door while he's far away from it.

Now, I am sure why he isn't breaching the distance between us. It's highly unlike him.

Usually, he wouldn't even let me take a step away, especially in a situation like this. He needs to touch me constantly to be able to know we're fine, but right now, he's restraining himself. And he's not just restraining. He's maintaining a distance.

The demons in his head are at their worst stage now, and he's trying not to let them crowd his sanity, making him end up doing something he'll regret.

"Au contraire to what you feel, I am in this for good or worse. I vowed to be by your side always, and while my vows don't mean shit to you because you don't trust me, it does mean everything to me, and I intend to keep every word of it. So, no, I am not going to leave you until death parts us. I am staying, and I am going to force you to live your worst nightmare, your highness—worse than what you're subjecting me to right now and have the whole damn day." Holding the knob, I drag a deep sigh and turn. "I will be shutting you out henceforth until you get your shit straight, Areston. I am done indulging you."

"What the fuck did you say?" He takes a threatening step forward but still doesn't eat up the entire distance.

My grip on the doorknob tightens. "I said I will be shutting you out. We'll stay under the same roof but in different bedrooms on different floor levels. I won't talk to you until I am ready to face you again. It could be days, weeks, or months, depending upon your efforts to fix us. We won't be seeing each other for that period, not even a glimpse. And you wouldn't try to manipulate or change my mind."

"It was a rhetorical question, wife. Since you've clarified your point further, let me make one thing clear to you. I won't allow it," he asserts in a deadly calm voice.

"I fucking am doing it, and I don't fucking care about your approval, Areston," I assert with miraculous fierceness that I don't feel inside. "If you don't start or even attempt to start trusting me now, you'll never do it, and I am not fucking okay with it. While I have tolerated your sheer disregard of my feelings when it comes to your unyielding lack of belief in my vow of never leaving you again so far, I have decided not to any longer. It's insulting even to think that my madly-irrevocably-in-love-with-me husband thinks I might bolt out of this relationship at the first chance I get as if it's not as important to me as it is to you."

"Belle-"

"No," I cut him off. "Either you sort your shit straight or suffer without me and my touch—those two are the most important to you, and I will deny it to you just like your trust in me is important to me, and yet you deny it to me. You'll know I am there beneath the same roof, breathing the same air, but you wouldn't have access to me—just like I have everything but your faith. You'll know how it feels when you're the one going nuts instead of driving it because of your emotional IQ being zero. It cannot always be used as an excuse to veil your heartlessness and insecurities, your highness."

Before he can respond, I slam the door shut so hard that the sound of it echoes through the bedroom, and I walk inside just as a huge sob I've been restraining finds its way out of me.

My knees are about to buckle, and I am about to crash on the floor from the overwhelming grief when his hand comes over my nape, fingers into my skin in a brutal, painful hold, and he yanks me to him.

My breath hitches as his fingers dig into the back of my neck, his grip tight and punishing.

He turns me around, forcing me to look at him.

The strong urge to cry my heart out dies instantaneously as I stare into the eyes of the devil himself that I've awakened—the one my husband has been keeping on leash so far by not touching me.

My skin prickles under the ferocity of his gaze. His tall height towers over me as he confiscates my entire air, overwhelming the space with his scent, his presence, and his blinding, raw fury, which emanates off him like furnace heat.

My heart starts pounding. I try to back up and try to put distance between us, but it's in vain and too late. He already has me in his clutches. "Areston—"

But my voice dies down too, just like my urge to cry, as his other hand wraps firmly around my throat—the touch lacks his sensual finesse—it's rather threatening, murderous even, and unmistakably dominating.

"You will not deny me your touch or you—ever. No matter how hard it gets," he snarls, his fingers clenching around my windpipe just enough to send my pulse racing. "You're mine. Do you know what that fucking means? You don't leave me—not even to go live in a separate room. You don't get to fucking shut me out. Get that nonsense out of your head. Is that clear?"

"Let go of me!" I fume, struggling against his hold, but he's relentless, drawing me closer with a rough tug.

His hand on my nape moves to my waist, keeping me glued to his front.

His massive hard-on twitches against me.

What the hell?

My breath quickens, and despite the wrath simmering in his words, something electrifying and deeply jolting is about the way my pulse flutters into his palm. His grip and his controlling nature are both smothering and intoxicating at once.

I can feel his steady and strong pulse against my skin, and it mirrors the intensity between us.

"I am serious. Let go of me. I have nothing to say to you anymore. Don't touch me!" I manage, though my voice shakes, betraying me.

"You need my touch to make you feel alive, tesoro." His lips hover above mine but do not touch them. The way his eyes burn into mine makes my stomach twist. "Take it back. Take all of it back. Say you won't shut me out."

My throat feels tight, my chest constricting. I want to yell at him, but the words don't come out except one.

"No," I croak, my hands flying to his wrist as I try to pry his hand from my throat, but he's too strong, too rigid. "Stop, you brute. Let go of me."

"Take it the fuck back, Juliette." He never calls me Juliette.

"No."

"Questa fottuta testardaggine è la ragione per cui non riesco a rinchiudere il mostro assetato di sangue dentro di me," he murmurs something angrily in Italian and shoves me back against the bed, thrusting me down onto the mattress with a bruising force of his hand gripping my throat.

The sudden move knocks the air out of my lungs, and it only worsens as he traps me with his weight on top of me, pinning me underneath him.

"Areston—"

"Say you change your mind. Right fucking now," he hisses, his breath hot against my skin, his face barely an inch from mine.

"Say you'll start trusting me," I retaliate. 

He doesn't respond. Instead, he yanks the bow tie draped around his collar, secures my wrists with it, and pins it above my head.

I thrash and struggle as he ties it to the headboard. "Areston, don't do this!"

"Take it back, and I'll stop," he demands, and in one tug, he rips my dress apart, followed by my panties, leaving me naked.

"No. Please, Ares!" I try to thrash again, but he traps me once again with his body.

"You're always fucking challenging me, Belle. I have always been a good sport, but I won't tolerate this nonsense of living separate lives. Do you fucking understand? Good or bad. However it gets, this is it—this is me and us. You vowed to be with me, come what may. Separate living arrangements and shutting me out, don't obey it, and I won't allow you to disrespect our marriage."

"You're the one disrespecting our marriage, you jerk. You don't even know what a marriage is. It was always about making me officially your fucking property. Don't you dare deny it!" I yell at the top of my lungs, all my frustration and pain ripping right out of my chest. "Let go of me. I don't want to deal with you right now. I am exhausted."

"You're never too exhausted to need me." His knee forces my legs apart, and my body jerks in protest, but he doesn't stop.

He leans down, slamming his mouth onto mine, our teeth clashing violently as he grips the back of my neck with both hands, forcing my head still.

His lips crush me, bruising, strangling, leaving no space for air. I try to twist, but his body prevents me, his hands tightening in my hair, fingers sinking painfully into my nape. His teeth tear at my bottom lip, relentless and violent, until my skin splits and the metallic taste of blood explodes into my mouth.

He doesn't stop, doesn't relent—shoves his tongue past my lips, savoring the blood he has drawn while devouring me, sucking, biting, and kissing me with a barbarity that feels like a punishment. I can feel his outrage—hot, uncontrollable, and explosive—pouring into the kiss.

My lips throb with the raw pain only to grow exponentially as his teeth bite down the injured part again, harder, drawing more blood. I am gasping against him, my body attempting to thrash under his weight and failing, and it only makes him deepen the kiss, using the savagery of it to subdue me, to force me into capitulating.

"Your cunt needs me. Stop fighting me," he brushes his mouth against my ear, choking my neck harder.

Stop fighting, slut. You know this pussy needs this toy.

My stomach twists in knots as my mind flashes with panic, the trauma from my past mixing with the present.

But this isn't the same.

It isn't the same.

This is him—my husband—and despite the fear gnawing at me at his savage behavior, despite the way my body is tensing beneath him, my mind wants me to fight and escape.

I don't feel scared... not the way I did back in the rehab, at least. 

"No..." I whimper, my voice is as weak as my body trapped by his brute strength. "Areston, no. Stop!"

His soulless eyes meet my pleading gaze.

"The words no and stop don't exist in our dictionary, wife." He tightens his fingers around my throat, cutting me off my air supply for a brief moment before he loosens the grip just enough to let me breathe. "You don't get to say those fucking words." His mouth travels down my throat, and he bites down hard on my neck, sinking his teeth deep enough in my skin to leave a severe bruise.

"Areston—" I gasp, panicking now, the spirit to fight in me faltering.

He kisses and bites and sucks my throat, leaving hickeys all over as if to ink every inch of my skin with his wrath before capturing my breast into his hand. "You don't get to shut me out, Belle. Not now, not ever," he asserts, his voice dark and raw against my skin, as he chokes me again while at the same time squeezing my breast.

I cry out, arching against the headboard, but his body holds me in place. "Areston, please, don't do this. I can't bear you touching me right now. God, I'm so mad at you for how much you've hurt me today. Please stop!"

"Wrong kind of begging, wife," he snaps, and extracting his hand from my neck, he squeezes it on my mouth to gag me as his mouth latches onto my breast, his teeth biting down hard on my nipple, shooting a sharp jolt of pain throughout my body. "Beg right. You love having my mouth on you."

"Areston, dammit! I don't want this right now." I struggle, pulling at the fabric of his bow tie, but my voice comes out muffled.

I squeeze my eyes shut and cry, tears leaving me, my head thrashing from one side to another as he ravishes me like a hungry predator feasting on its prey, my cries coming out muffled from the pressure of his palm on my mouth. He sucks my nipple into his mouth before biting it harder this time, inking a red welt across my skin and eliciting a sharp, muffled cry from my lips.

His other hand reaches down between my thighs, roughly spreading my folds, his fingers gliding over the damp heat between my thighs, his pupils dilating a shade darker. "Look at you, tesoro. You're soaking wet for me, and yet you're adamant about fighting me. You don't want me to stop."

"I do." I squirm, trying to shake him off, but of course, I am helpless against his brute strength. My body is betraying me, reacting to his familiar touch even as my mind is screaming for him to stop. I hate it—hate how easily he can still reduce me to nothing with his rough touches.

"No, you don't. You like it rough." He sticks his tongue out and licks my tears, relishing the taste of it before crashing his mouth down on me. "You like it when I manhandle you and fuck you like a two-bit whore. When I take you by force and remind you it's me you belong to, and there's no way you can shut me out because we're a part of each other, tesoro."

It's not a kiss—it's an act of absolute domination, a force, his mouth bruising my already sore one with the searing intensity of his rage.

When I try to turn my head and attempt to pull away, he removes his hand from my breast, his fingers gripping my jaw tight to hold my face in place as he ravages me like a savage.

"You fucking want this," he hisses, stroking my clit, up and down, drawing in slow, deliberate circles, teasing me, testing me, edging me, and then plunging two fingers violently into my core, making me almost arch and throw my head back. "Don't fight me."

His fingers are scissoring inside me, roughly, possessively, owning me with each stroke without care for my protests. He breaks the kiss. I am breathless and panting as I try to fight the sensations building inside me, and his own is rugged.

His fingers curl inside me, hitting the spot again and again, making me scream involuntarily.

Tears cloud my vision as he rips me apart, both emotionally and physically. I can feel myself giving in.

He leans down to bite my neck again, his teeth tearing through my hard enough as if he's a vampire thirsty for my blood, making me whimper against his palm.

He comes up and hovers over me for a moment, his eyes wild and dark. The outline of his cock is throbbing against me.

"Ask me to stop, Belle," he says with a tenderness that's alien to him.

I freeze. That's not the brute speaking who seems to have taken over my husband's supreme sense of instinct control. This is my husband. My beast.

"Say the word. I can't fucking stop—," he pauses, "I can't be that sort of a monster..." The one who forces and rapes. "Help me."

That's the first ever vulnerability my husband has shown me openly.

He wants me to use our safe word.

I lay quiet, frozen like a block of ice beneath him, my mind spinning with all sorts of emotional outbursts.

My chest rises and falls rapidly as I study my husband. He has gone still, his fingers not moving, his eyes piercing into mine.

The raw brutality of this moment sinks in, and I feel like I've been both lost and found at the same time.

I don't know whether to cry into his arms, scream at my cluelessness, or disappear. My world has become distorted. There's an emotional turmoil spiraling inside me.

In some twisted, sick manner, I feel found—finally.

I've fought for years to get over my traumatic past, to move past its fears that have always haunted me—and I have now. It's with the only man who could've helped me get past it—the man I love more than anyone else in the world has done it.

No more fear of being subdued by force, to have my cries suppressed, or being forcefully touched.

It doesn't  make sense. None of it does.

The only thing that makes sense is that this is the man I love whom I can trust—even if he doesn't trust me—the man who respects me enough not to violate me even if he has my prior permission.

The man who knows his sanity can take a dark turn if I let him follow through with this and is pleading with me to help him stop—the man who never needs help needs mine—his wife's.

More tears spring out of me as I watch him.

He brought me to the edge of my fears. He forced me to face them, using or abusing the perfect opportunity to drag me through the muck of my agony until I could stand fearless and fierce in the face of it so I could finally move past the ghost that had constantly threatened to swallow me whole.

And now that he has done his job, he needs me to stop him.

"Say the word, Belle," he whispers, resting his forehead against mine, his husk dominant and yet with an undercurrent of a plea.

Areston Augustus De L'Aquila has always been unapologetically unhinged, lethal, ruthlessly manipulative, and controlling to the point he doesn't care about the collateral damage he leaves behind.

He made me one of the collateral damage he leaves in the wake today with the whole Lev issue, but he's not willing to make me it again when it comes to our relationship.

His rage, his mistrust—it's all still there, but he isn't willing to let it consume him. He trusts me enough not to let his darkest side take control of him.

I am sure a man like him who lacks empathy and the ability to process emotions would've given two hoots had it been a submissive he was indulging into this consensual nonconsent deal with.

But with me, he cares, and so much that he doesn't want his ugly side—the rage-driven devil- to worsen our already lingering problems, which is the reason we're here.

He can be livid with me and show me his worst side, but he can never abuse me—not to a point we can never bounce back from.

There's some hope.

I close my eyes, and remain quiet even as he removes his hand from my mouth.

"You won't say the word?" He asks softly.

I don't respond at all. My heart is thundering, and blood is roaring in my ears.

He has to conquer his demons on his own—if he wants to rape me, he can go ahead, and I wouldn't complain even if it destroys me because I am fucked up like that who wants that kink regardless of the situation we're in right now.

If he doesn't want to, then he has to stop by himself. He has to find that force in him to shackle that dark entity just like he always has.

"I... I want you to uh... like I want you to... I mean, I want to try rape fantasy."

"Good girl."

"But it needs to feel real. You can force yourself on me when there's an opportunity, as in, of course, when I'm raging mad at you. I am giving you my consent now in full senses, so you don't have to ask for it then."

"And if you're the worst kind of livid?" His soulless eyes pierce me as if he knows something that's bound to happen that'll drive me to that point.

"Doesn't matter. Even if I am at that point, I'll deal with that topic later with a clear head. It's already clear that I can never stop wanting you. So yeah, there's that. And if I do want you to stop, I know my safe word. I'll use it."

"You've never used it before."

"Who knows? I might. Honestly, I'll only use it when I've hit a dead-end of my patience with your exaggerating whims. It's highly unlikely, but yeah. Not a second before. You can be assured I'll definitely never waste the safe word for sex, no matter how cruel or deranged it gets. You can break me into pieces with your cock or punishments, and I still wouldn't utter it. Think of it as me trusting you to take care of your lifeline—me."

"Fuck, Belle," he hisses, untying my wrists, his breath harsh and unsteady above my face, his gaze locked onto mine.

His eyes are still unreadable and still dark, but I can feel the weight of his regret lingering in them, and he's not someone who regrets anything at all. He might be cold and emotionally unavailable, but I am not blind.

I am able to notice the way he's fighting himself.

But the fact that he still isn't prepared to apologize and won't apologize for how he has hurt me today, and admits that he would at least start trusting me—continues shredding me.

He engineered a situation that he knew was going to hurt me and is refusing to acknowledge it because, to him, it was something he had to do. One negative about him outweighs every other positive.

Climbing off me, he scoops me up in his arms, his touch tender as if he's handling a fragile object, almost cautious as he carries me to the outdoor master bath. "Bath? Shower?"

"Shower," I answer, my voice almost a whisper, my throat constricting as I keep my tears from running down further.

He lowers me under the rainfall showerhead and presses the button that makes the warm cascade of water from the overhead spray. Six body jets gently drench me, washing away my tears but doing absolutely nothing to fade the heaviness in my chest.

I stand still like a statue, my body sore, my insides craving for that orgasm that never came, my mind racing.

Areston says nothing, reaches for the Bvlgari shampoo, pours a generous amount into his palm, and then gently lathers it into my hair. I try not to lean against him and relax as his fingers move through my strands with a startling tenderness, gently massaging my scalp in unhurried circles.

I close my eyes instead as the wave of unexpected and much-needed relief floods through me. Unlike before in the bed, his touch isn't rough, isn't demanding, isn't consuming—it's soothing, almost like a tranquilizer, and so reverent. I let myself sink into it, allowing the tension in my body to ease, causing my shoulders to drop.

He washes me with delicate care, his hands gliding over the bruises.

Dropping the loofah, he gently scrubs those angry marks he left on my skin all over with the light touch of his fingers, never lingering too long. It's as if he's trying to wash away the violence he has inked on my skin, the aftermath of everything that has happened today since noon.

I don't speak, neither does he. The only sound is the water and my occasional gasps and sighs.

Exhaustion is weighing me down, and I just want to go to bed and sleep, but like the hopeless idiot I am, I am still standing here, pining for him to apologize and say the one thing I've been begging him to say. So, I let him continue his ritual, which he often describes playfully as sacred because he gets to worship his goddess at her altar.

When he's finished, I turn around, and he stands there, leaning over me, towering over my frame intimidatingly with his palms planted against the glass wall behind me, trapping me. He doesn't touch me, just keeps me imprisoned, regarding me in silence. It's as if he wants to say something. Or am I just deluded enough to believe he wants to?

His eyes, unreadable and dark, remained locked onto mine, piercing past my thoughts and reading them with finesse as he always does—unfailingly so. Water streams down him, clinging to his hard abs through his soaked white shirt. The muscles beneath it ripple with the slightest movement. Even now, I can't help but marvel at how devastatingly beautiful he is. Devils are always the most handsome kind. That's how they lure victims.

"You would've fucked me out of rage today. Not because you were fulfilling my fantasy. You were livid, and you wanted to take it out on me. Subdue me. You wanted to punish me by taking me against my will, and that's why you wanted me to stop you," I state the obvious.

His stoic facade is there, tightly strapped to his features as he watches me with his hands in the pockets of his pants.

"You wanted me to stop you from raping me." My voice comes as a sob.

He doesn't respond. I am not expecting him to.

The silence is suffocating, but he does nothing to break it. I try to read him, but it's impossible. He's an impenetrable fortress and it irks me—how effortlessly he controls every dynamic between us, how he can see through me, through every wall, but I can never quite see him. I want to look away from him, but I can't. The cruelty is very much there, lurking beneath his surface, so is the extreme darkness and apathy, and yet I catch a flash of something in his sapphire gaze that has bewitched me into its spell—regret.

"I know you're regretting it. I could be wrong, but I am not. I can see it in your eyes, and you wouldn't let me see it if you weren't feeling that way. It's okay, I don't want you to apologize for what happened in bed. I'd given you my consent. But I do want you to apologize for everything else that has happened today—not trusting me with the news of the takeover, not trusting me with the whole Zayd thing, not trusting me in general, and most above all, not being apologetic about any of it."

Still, he says nothing, and the poker face he always wears continues to be part of his skin.

"I know you expected me to go ballistic tonight. You'd planned it. Zayn didn't mention the hostile takeover out of the blues. You'd asked him, knowing quite well what my reaction would be. You'd warned me about fulfilling one of my three major kinks tonight. You wanted me to find out about the takeover from someone else instead of you, which would make me more furious and that would give you the perfect opportunity to fulfill my fantasy—just the way I'd asked you to—when I'm truly livid so that the forced fantasy looks genuine instead of role-play. But you didn't expect the Zayd situation to spring up the way it did—in fact, you'd completely forgotten about it regardless of having tried to change my mind about the dinner because of him. For the first time, you failed to have things go your way, and that drove you livid."

My chest feels like it is caving in.

His face remains unmoved, as frigid as ever. However, there's still regret lingering in his sapphire stare, even if he isn't able to get himself to voice it.

"This—it's all breaking me, Areston." Every breath feels like a chore. Tears start streaming down my face again.

I wipe my eyes again, but tears keep coming. "You're a monster. And today, I've realized that I am, too. I know you don't consider it sick and twisted—but I do for the fact that I wanted to be raped by you today. I could have used the safeword to stop you, but I didn't. Something didn't let me. I've become so fucked up that I've become dependent on you to calm me down, subjugate me with sex, and control me—whether it's for the rational part or the irrational part. I let myself lose in sex so it'd rewire my brain and placate me. It can't continue like that, can it?"

My body sags as I heave a sigh in the middle of sobs.

"Today, you let the monster in you almost rape me for real—the situation would have never turned so bad had you not felt threatened, insecure, or livid because you don't trust me not to leave you again. It all starts and ends with it. I am grateful that you've helped me move past one more trauma tonight, but knowing that my husband thinks I'll always have a foot out the door and that would make him more controlling of my every move has formed a void in me once again—similar to one that made me contemplate my existence on top of the Bacchanal Club. Ours is not a healthy relationship, Areston. Toxic is a word too tame to describe what we have. I love all the deviant, deranged, and fucked up parts about us—but I am not prepared to compromise on one hope that I desperately want—for you to forgive me for the past and move on. Because only then you'll be able to trust me again."

"I am sorry," he finally says, his voice low and rugged.

My heart skips a beat. Did he just apologize?

Isn't that one of the things you demanded tonight? A voice in me snaps.

But he has never apologized. Not once.

"Which one of the things from tonight are you apologizing for?"

"Making you cry." And I know he means it, even if he isn't able to fully grasp the depth of the hurt he has caused me because of his actions.

"That's all?"

"That's all."

I nod. It's like banging my head against an iron wall to continue pleading with him to understand what I want him to do. He's apologetic for making me cry but not for the rest.

"I am beat. I need to go," I whisper, placing my palms on his chest and silently asking him to move back.

"I don't know what to say," he breathes resignedly, cupping my face.

"Then don't. Just let me go." I lower my eyes. "I am at the end of my rope."

"Don't leave me."

"Leave you and go where?" Anxiety constricts in my throat at sensing the desperation in his harsh tone that he does well to mask, but it still fails to escape me. I lift my gaze to meet his burning ones. "I am yours, Areston. I always have. Always will be."

"How do we fix this?"

"We can't. Not until you're really prepared to start letting go of the past and start trusting me."

Areston snakes an arm around my waist, in a possessively firm yet not rough, while his other hand gently cups the side of my face, his fingers sliding in my wet strands. His touch is all too familiar, and I didn't realize how desperately I needed its warmth until now.

He pulls me closer and captures my mouth with a desperation that makes my stomach twist. The kiss isn't tender by any means, it's full of longing, an attempt to wipe the dark space that has formed between us, to reclaim what he feels is slipping through his fingers. I've always been addicted to him as he is to me—more, even. I'm still addicted to him.

I still want him, and I crave his touch, his ruthless handling, his dominance, his desire, and the way he can make me feel alive and happy even when everything else feels dead. But right now, this addiction feels like a cruel reminder of just the kind and volume of power he holds over me without giving me what I cherish the most—his trust.

I momentarily forget everything and lean in, kissing him back, my lips moving in sync with his as he deepens the kiss. He doesn't stop and claims my mouth again and again, but the connection that had once consumed me and set me free now feels hollow—like that lingering void that has formed inside because of him.

I can feel his urgency from the manner in which he's seeking comfort in me, but my body is responding out of instinct more than desire at this moment.

Emotionally, I've checked out, too distant to meet him where he needs me to be. That's a first. It hasn't happened before. It is the first time I have felt detached from him when he's ravishing my mouth with an intoxicating passion, the first time I am unable to lose myself in the way he's claiming me.

And it breaks something inside me.

This is Areston—my husband—my beast—the only man I've ever loved—the one who has always dragged me back from being consumed by the darkness, no matter how worse things might have gotten. But now, I am not even able to meet him halfway. Only because of one reason that has been nagging me more than I care to admit—he hasn't moved on from the past and doesn't want to, so he doesn't trust me now, and he never will.

"I am sorry. I can't," I whisper, my voice too raw, too weak as I  manage to pull back, my heart feeling fractured as I force myself to tear myself apart from the person who's my other half—my significant half.

It's like I am tearing half of my body with my own hands. I love this man—god, I love him so much it's unbearable to even think of my existence without him, but this needs to be done—this distance for him to understand what he has done to me.

"Give me what I want, Ares. Separate living arrangements and everything I asked for."

He shakes his head.

My jaw clenches at his stubbornness and I extract myself from him, surprisingly he lets me. "Can't or won't?"

"Both," he says quietly.

"I didn't want to do this, but you have left me no option, Areston. You're forcing my hand into this, so hear me out clearly, once and for all. I am not suicidal, but I will seriously harm myself, even if not fatally if you try to steamroll me again. Think of it as blackmail; I don't care," I almost yell out of frustration. His eyes harden and turn darker. I know he's suppressing his fury. Good. "I could have gone to Mama and asked her to send me to one of her secret islands where you wouldn't have been able to track me down. But I am staying because, despite everything, I am adamant about showing you what you fucking mean to me. Even when you don't deserve it right now, your highness. You owe me this. I've let you manipulate me with sex, but not this time."

He turns, ready to leave, and I am about to scream at him when he pauses at the door. "I'll have my belongings moved to the other bedroom."

I gasp in surprise. Did he just agree? "That's your bedroom. I'll be the one moving out."

"Don't push me, Belle. I am already giving you more concessions than I can."

I swallow. "Fine. I also want us to fly home tonight."

"Already made the arrangements. We leave in an hour." And then he's gone.

How was the chapter?

What's your favorite part?

What was your second favorite part?

What are your thoughts on Juliette's stand in this chapter?

What are your thoughts on Areston's stand in this chapter?

When comparing the post-Zayd encounter between AresBelle from this version to previous, which one did you like the best and why?

Do you believe Areston will give up so easily?