Chapter 3
Serena's POV
The moment my clothes were torn open, cold air pressed against my burning skin, and it was as if someone had wrenched open a valve inside me. The feverish heat that had been churning for so long surged violently to its peak.
I didn't want this.
But my body was no longer mine.
My hands hooked around Winston's neck, my upper body pressing flush against his, and then I kissed him.
The drug had dredged up the deepest desires I'd buried in my heart, stripped away every pretense and restraint, leaving nothing but raw instinct.
The instant my lips crashed into his, a voice in my head screamed Serena, you've lost your mind—but my tongue had already slipped into his mouth, finding his.
Winston didn't respond.
But he didn't refuse either, letting me trace the contours of his lips and teeth with my tongue, letting me suck on his lower lip.
The blaze inside me was driven to new heights by that kiss. I'd lost all control entirely—like a valve wrenched wide open. My back arched, my knees clenched together then fell apart involuntarily, the insides of my thighs already slick.
The drug surged in waves. My hand traced down along the muscle lines at his waist, and when my fingers touched his belt buckle, Winston finally moved.
He caught my wrist and pinned it back to my side.
Then his other hand descended.
His fingers slid down from my collarbone.
When the callused pads of his fingertips passed over my chest, my back arched off the bed, a moan caught in my throat.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, trying to swallow the sound back...
Don't make a sound. Absolutely no sound. As long as I stayed silent, I could pretend this was all the drug's fault—not that I was enjoying it.
His fingers continued downward—past my waist, past my lower abdomen—and everywhere they passed, my skin erupted in fine tremors.
My body was honest to a shameful degree beneath his hands.
When his fingers finally settled on that burning center, he barely curled them and my hips lifted of their own accord, rising to meet his touch.
Broken gasps and whimpers leaked through my clenched teeth, growing denser, more erratic.
I pressed the back of my hand over my mouth, but there was no hiding my body's reactions. Deep inside, a sharper emptiness was screaming.
The more precisely his fingers teased the surface, the more intense that hollow hunger within became.
I didn't want to say it.
But my body ground my reason to dust.
"Winston..."
The word escaped from behind the hand covering my mouth, hoarse beyond recognition. Every syllable made me want to bite off my own tongue. "I need you... inside... please..."
The second those words left my lips, I wanted to die.
My face burned to the extreme, even my earlobes were on fire, but the words couldn't be taken back.
My body became even more sensitive because of what I'd said, as though the shame itself had become part of the aphrodisiac.
Winston's fingers paused for a beat, then quickened. His fingertip circled rapidly over my most sensitive spot, and when I teetered on the edge of collapse, he pressed down decisively.
The first orgasm hit fast and hard. My entire body felt like it had been yanked violently from underwater, convulsing uncontrollably.
But... why wouldn't he enter me?
That question tormented me more than the drug.
His body had clearly responded—yet he'd rather use his hand than take me.
He hadn't even undone his own belt. From start to finish there was only that one hand, precise and restrained, working over my body.
Did he think I wasn't worthy?
That touching me was beneath him?
Or did he think of me as Leo's woman—that using his fingers counted as helping, but anything more would be betraying his brother?
The second before the next orgasm hit, I sank my teeth into his shoulder, biting into the taut muscle until I tasted a faint hint of iron. He let out a muffled grunt, but his hand didn't stop.
"Why won't you give it to me..." I whimpered against his ear, my voice cracking with tears. "This isn't enough... it's nowhere near enough... I still need..."
He didn't answer. He simply pressed two fingers together and slid them gently inside me, his fingertips grazing along my inner walls.
The floodwaters crested the dam in that moment.
Pleasure detonated from where his fingertips rested, radiating outward like fireworks from the core to every extremity. My body arched taut as a bow in that instant—toes curling, spine lifting off the bed, every sense pushed to its absolute limit in the same second.
Tears slid from the corners of my eyes.
Not from pleasure—from the overwhelming emptiness that crashed over me after the orgasm, mingled with the sting of rejection, drowning me completely.
Release had come, but inside I was still hollow.
My body had found relief, yet the void in my heart had only grown larger.
"Do you think I'm dirty?" I looked up at him. "Because I've been married... you think I'm tainted..."
His hand stilled.
"I never slept with him..."
My voice was shaking, fingers gripping his arm so tightly they'd gone white. "Leo never touched me. I'm still a virgin... Why do you still find me repulsive..."
Something shifted in Winston's eyes.
His gaze became complex, unreadable. Then, the next second, he lowered his head.
His lips traced a path downward from my collarbone.
Over my chest he barely grazed, his tongue leaving a damp trail. At my waist, his teeth nipped lightly, sending a shudder through my entire body.
Then lower still—past my abdomen—until his mouth settled on my clit, sucking gently.
My entire body felt simultaneously scorched by fire and doused in ice. Shame and pleasure exploded in the same instant.
Yet my body was hatefully honest—my legs clamped around his shoulders beyond my control, my fingers threading into his dark hair, unsure whether I was trying to hold him in place or push him away.
Waves of orgasm rolled over me one after another, like surf that would never cease, each one pushing me higher and dropping me harder.
I cried out loudly, "Winston, do you think I'm dirty?"
He didn't stop. His tongue shifted angles, and my moans tangled with my accusations. "Leo never touched me... not once... did you hear me..."
The pleasure was climbing, but my mouth wouldn't stop.
As if I would die if I didn't say these things aloud, I repeated those same words over and over—telling him Leo had never touched me, that I was clean, demanding to know why he didn't want me.
The more I said, the more wronged I felt. The more I said, the more I hated. By the end I couldn't tell whether I was interrogating him or indicting myself.
"You're even more disgusting than Leo!"
The moment I spat those words through clenched teeth, his tongue ground over that most devastating spot.
The orgasm struck so violently that my mind went blank for an instant.
My body arched up and crashed back down, my vocal cords releasing a sharp, involuntary cry beyond my control.
Through all of it, Winston hadn't said a single word in response.
He simply, patiently, helped me ride out the drug's waves, again and again.
I don't remember how many times I came. The fevered heat gradually receded, and pale gray light was already seeping through the gap in the curtains.
My entire body felt as though it had been pulled from water. The sheets beneath me were soaked through.
In my last moments of consciousness, I felt someone wiping my body with a warm towel—gently, from my forehead to my neck to my collarbone to my limbs—and then a dry blanket settled over me, wrapping me completely.
When I woke again, it was a different room.
The air carried a faint scent of bergamot perfume.
Not Winston...
I turned my head and saw Willow sitting in the chair by the window.
When she noticed I was awake, she stood immediately and came toward me. "Serena..."
I looked at her, and my eyes burned.
Everything collapsed at once. Tears poured out like floodwater that had been dammed all night, finally finding a breach—impossible to stop.
Willow sat on the edge of the bed, pulled my head into her arms, and patted my back with one hand.
"I know everything, sweetheart. Don't cry. What do you want to do next?"
I lifted my head from her embrace. "I want a divorce."
My voice was still shaking, but every word was clear. "I want to leave this place."
Willow nodded. "Okay. I'll be with you."
Then I remembered what Leo had warned me about last night—that under no circumstances could Lady Lydia find out about the divorce.
My grandmother in name only.
"But..." My fingers clenched the corner of the blanket, nails digging into the fabric, my body trembling involuntarily again. "Willow, this—Lady Lydia absolutely cannot know about this."
