Chapter 3: You're *mine*, Serena

Julian's POV

I watched her the entire night.

I was the one who'd put her in that maid's uniform and sent her out there without underwear. The whole point was humiliation — I wanted to watch her struggle, wanted to see that polished composure finally crack under the pressure of it.

Instead, she walked into that crowd carrying a serving tray like she belonged there.

She knew every guest by name. She remembered their preferences, their habits, the small social landmines each of them carried into a room. The people who'd shown up half-hoping to watch her fall apart drifted back toward her within the hour, pulled in whether they intended to be or not.

Winslow had never once given my father his undivided attention — too proud, too self-important to bother with the effort. Yet Serena leaned close, pressed a drink into his hand, said something quiet and precisely calibrated, and the whole awkward moment simply dissolved. I stood at the top of the staircase watching it happen and felt something sharp move through my chest that I couldn't name. As long as she was standing in that room, she was still the most flawless daughter the Kincaid name had ever put forward.

Then Holt stepped in front of her.

I watched his eyes drop to her chest first, then travel down the length of that skirt — too short, too thin, nothing underneath. I was the one who'd dressed her that way. My punishment to give. That didn't mean other men had any right to look at her like that.

The first time Serena turned and walked away from him, Holt's expression curdled. He went after her and grabbed a fistful of her skirt.

My hand locked around the banister.

"Bale."

My butler appeared at my shoulder without a sound.

"Go tell Holt his father is waiting in the sitting room. My father wants to discuss next quarter's partnership terms." I kept my eyes fixed on that hand below. "Then bring Serena to the study."

Bale followed my line of sight for half a second, then turned and went downstairs without a word.

I could have gone down myself. Faster, more direct. But the moment I descended those stairs, every person in that room would know that anything involving Serena was enough to make me lose my head — and I wasn't willing to hand them that.

Serena was no longer my sister. The blood-type report from three months ago had settled that cleanly enough. But she had called me her brother for eighteen years, and eighteen years don't vanish because a medical document says they should.

When my parents moved to have her removed from the estate, I was the one who produced the three-million-dollar invoice — every expense itemized, every resource accounted for down to the last line. It bought her the right to stay until graduation. Everyone assumed it was punishment. She almost certainly believed the same.

Only I knew what it actually was.

A debt she could never realistically repay was the only thing I had to keep her from walking out of my life entirely. That was all it had ever been.

A knock at the study door cut through my thoughts.

"Sir. Miss Serena is here."

"Come in."

Serena stepped inside. "Sir. Bale mentioned there's a mouse problem in the study."

I caught her wrist and pulled her to the desk in one motion, bent down close, and put my mouth near her ear.

"You want to pay off that debt, don't you? Graduate early, claw your way back up on your own terms?" I kept my voice quiet. "Show me how serious you are, Serena."

She turned her head slightly — not pulling away, just a small deflection. I reached up and undid the top button of her uniform.

She didn't stop me.

I held still and looked at her. "Say no."

She met my eyes. There was a faint trace of mockery in them, cool and unhurried.

I undid the next button.

Her breath fell against my wrist in slow, warm pulses — maddening in their steadiness. I'd been with women before. But nothing had ever felt quite like this — like undoing two buttons was equivalent to dismantling something explosive.

She was too good at this. No tears, no pleading, just a measured compliance — giving me just enough permission, then watching me with those eyes that said everything without a word:

Look at yourself, Julian. You're the one coming apart.

I hated it. I also wanted to ruin her for it.

The fabric slipped from her shoulder. I bit down where her neck curved into it, and with one hand yanked her skirt up — exposing the pale, smooth length of her thighs.

She wasn't wearing anything underneath.

I dragged my mouth down and bit into her inner thigh, hard enough to drag my teeth across the skin, hard enough to leave marks. Serena exhaled sharply, her body giving a small, involuntary shudder — and then, deliberately, she let her thighs fall open a little wider, the inside of her knee pressing gently against my shoulder.

"Is this punishment?" Her voice was soft, slightly mocking. "Or is this something you've been wanting to do for a long time?"

I lifted my head. Something in my chest felt like it was tearing.

I hated her. I hated the way she still said it — Julian — like the word itself was a trap I'd already walked into.

I lifted her legs onto the desk and pinned them on either side of my hips.

"Open." My voice came out rough.

Serena tilted her head and looked at me with that familiar curve at the corner of her mouth. She let her knees fall apart slowly, heels resting at the desk's edge, baring the soft, flushed, already-wet heat of her. I reached down and parted her with two fingers — spreading her open, curling deep.

"Ah —"

She arched hard off the desk, both hands locking onto the edge. I worked her for a moment — just long enough to feel how slick she already was — then pulled my fingers free and pressed them to her lips.

"Taste yourself."

Serena closed her mouth around my fingers and sucked, slow and deliberate, her eyes staying perfectly calm. "What exactly are you planning to do next?"

I was done waiting. I shoved my pants open, freed myself, and pressed the head of my cock against her entrance.

"Eyes on me."

I gripped her hips and drove in — all the way, no pausing, no easing into it. She was tight and scorching and her body gripped me like it was made for exactly this. Serena bit her lip, arched her back slightly, and rolled her hips forward to take me deeper.

I started fucking her. Every thrust hard to the hilt, the desk slamming rhythmically against the floor.

"Harder —" she breathed, her voice going soft and wrecked in a way that made it worse, not better. "Don't hold back. Don't treat me like I'm your little sister."

I drove in harder.

"You filthy little —" I was growling the words against her hair, sweat dripping from my jaw to her face. "You're not my sister. You never were. You're just mine — you're just something I own —"

She laughed — actually laughed — and hooked her arm around the back of my neck. "I wonder what your guests would think if they could hear this right now. Julian Kincaid, fucking his own sister in the study."

Something in me snapped.

I wrenched her hands off the desk edge and pinned both wrists above her head.

"You are not my sister."

I fucked her harder — deep, punishing strokes that lifted her heels off the desk entirely. Her body jolted with every thrust, her legs too unsteady to wrap around me properly. I shoved her thighs up onto my shoulders, changed the angle, and drove straight into the deepest point I could reach.

"Julian — I can't — I'm going to —"

Tears were gathering at the corners of her eyes. It made it worse — made it better — made me slam into her faster.

"You're mine, Serena —" I was barely coherent, my hips working on pure instinct now. "From right now — only me. No one else gets to —"

I couldn't hold it. I came with a low, broken sound, buried to the hilt, pouring into her in long, searing waves until she was full of me, dripping with me, and I had no more left to give.

I slumped forward, breathing like I'd run a mile.

Serena looked up at me with wet eyes and a slow smile.

"You know, Julian — right now? You look even more disgusting than Holt did."

I caught my breath. Then I shifted my hips, pressed what was still inside her deeper, and felt her breath stutter. "Shut up."

She smiled against my jaw. "Then don't stop."