𝐂𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐲 𝐕𝐨𝐰𝐬

Chapter 49

•••
"He touched her like a prayer..
violent, unholy, and unanswered."

•••

She lay there, unmoving, though her veins still throbbed with the heat of fury. Not the loud, burning kind but the quiet, cold kind. The kind that simmered beneath the skin like coals beneath ash.

With trembling hands shaking from rage, fear, or something far more complex she reached down and corrected her dress. His betrayal, imagined or not, had carved something jagged into her chest. Not even the cold air from the vents above could numb the sting of it.

Across the room, Osman removed his suit jacket in one slow movement, muscles coiling under the fine fabric. He loosened his tie, but the moment his eyes caught hers, he froze.

She was stepping down from the table.

Her face a portrait once painted with fear, duty, and unspoken loyalty now held nothing. Not even hatred. Just hollowness.

A void where something sacred once lived.

His voice sliced through the tension like a blade. “Where do you think you're going?”

She didn't answer. Didn’t even flinch.

Her silence was louder than any scream.

She turned toward the door, each step deliberate, as though walking away from a battlefield she never agreed to fight in.

And it made his blood boil.

In a blink, he was behind her.

He grabbed her wrist, tight, and yanked her back. Her spine collided with his chest, hard and unforgiving, as though the very walls had come alive to trap her.

Still, she didn’t speak. Didn’t struggle.

That silence ignited something dangerous in him.

His fingers curled tighter around her wrist, forcing a hiss from her lips. His mouth lowered to her ear, breath hot, voice a dark caress.

“I asked something, wifey.”

The endearment coiled around her like a serpent.

She could feel his breath grazing the delicate skin of her neck, the heat of him pressed against her spine. Her skin broke into goosebumps, a traitor to her resolve. Her heart raced, but not just with fear.

With the ache of everything she couldn’t name.

And the battle between fury and surrender raged on.

“Maybe… to the Yusuf or some other man... who will actually love and respects me…” she whispered, her voice trembling, but not with fear. It was defiance now. “Unlike you.”

She hadn’t meant for it to cut so deep. She only wanted him to feel it, to understand that he wasn’t the only man in the world. That she, too, was capable of being wanted. That he, with all his money, power, and cruelty, wasn’t her only fate.

But the words struck him like a dagger, clean through bone.

Something dark and volatile stirred within him. His breath hitched. His jaw tightened. And then, he hissed... low, like a beast just before it strikes.

Without realizing, his grip on her wrist tightened to the point of pain. He pulled her back harshly until her soft curves pressed against the hardness of him. The contact was unforgiving, jarring and she cried out, “Ahh,” a moan laced with both pain and helpless rage.

“Repeat it,” he growled, voice like cracked steel. A command, not a request. A threat dressed as a dare.

And she... wounded, heart bleeding, yet proud...looked him in the eyes and began again, trembling but unrelenting. “I must also go to the guy who...”