His Voice Alone

Chapter 16

Leia’s POV

I didn’t dream of it. I couldn’t have, the ache is too real.

I don’t go to class, and I won't check my phone. I let every message rot unopened. Every knock at the door is just another reminder that no one really knows where I am anymore, not really.

I stay in bed, naked beneath the sheets, sweat drying on my skin.

The ropes are gone, but I feel them, the tension biting at my wrists, the blade dragging over my hip. Ezra hasn’t come back since that night.

Since he left me tied, panting, undone.

He didn’t fuck me, but he didn’t have to. My thighs still twitch when I move. My hips still ache where he held me down. The bloodied X above my hip is fresh, stinging with every brush of fabric.

When I finally stand, I don’t dress. I walk to the mirror, shirt dangling from my fingers, and lift it slowly. I stare.

The bruises on my wrists are fading, but the hickeys remain, stark, scattered, deliberate. Like fingerprints dragged across my skin and left behind as warnings.

I drag my fingers over one and flinch. Then I found it, the mark. A shallow cut, clean and precise, just above my hipbone. One small X.

When I touch it, my breath catches in my throat and I catch myself whispering to no one. “You marked me.”

I don’t pretend this time, I want it.

His voice. His hands, and his rules. I want the way he tells me to stay still and my body just obeys. The way he looks at me like I’m already undone, like I was made for him to ruin.

I want the silence he drags me into. The way he doesn’t beg, he takes, and makes me need it.

My voice is low, breathy, as I trace the scar. “Why does it feel better when it hurts?”

I think about the orphanage.

The cold beds, the broken glass, the nights I crawled into his bunk without a word. I remember how he’d just hold me, quiet, still.

And that one time… just once… I swore I heard him whisper my name.

Now I know I didn’t imagine it. Because nothing feels like a dream anymore. I lean in closer to the mirror, my fingers drift across the mark again, I press.

“Fuck…” I breathe. The sting is beautiful.

My chest tightens, my nipples pebble beneath my shirt. My body reacts like he never left, and I don’t look away as I studied myself.

The bruises, the flushed chest, the red mark. The way my thighs shift, tight, aching.

I’m dripping already and I haven’t touched myself. A whisper leaves me unbidden. “Come back for me…”

And then I feel him. Hands, wrapping around my waist coldly.

I freeze, and gasp. Fingers slide under my shirt, palms splaying across my stomach, dragging up, slowly. I feel him behind me, solid heat pressed to my spine.

My eyes snap up, he’s there Ezra. No sound, no warning. Just there, his face is half-lit in the mirror’s reflection. His mouth is close to my ear, breath warming my skin.

“Couldn’t stop thinking about how you looked when you whispered ‘yours.’” I whimpered. “Say it again,” he commands, voice gravel and sin.

My lips part and my breath is shallow. “Yours,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I’m yours.”

He drags me back against him. I feel the thick hardness pressing into my lower back. His mouth brushes my ear again.

“You’ve always been.”

My head tips back against his shoulder. “I thought you left,” I breathe.

“I did,” he says. “But you never stopped calling me back.”

His hand moves lower. Skimming over my hip. His fingers hover just above the cut. “You miss it?” he asks, almost gently.

I nod. Swallow hard. “Yes.”

“You miss being scared.”

I don’t answer, I can’t. But he already knows. His hand cups my jaw. Forces me to look at myself in the mirror.

“You see this?” he growls. “This is what obedience looks like.”

My eyes flutter, my knees wobble. And then, he’s gone.

Just like that. The air behind me is empty, no hands, no heat. But the pressure on my skin remains.

The ache, the echo of his voice. I press my palm to the mirror, trying to steady myself. My reflection is flushed.

Wrecked. Wanting. And when I whisper again, my voice is steady. “I want more.”