Chapter 63: Chapter 63

Lysander’s pov

"Come here," Drake ordered.

I froze beside the marble island. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs as I looked at his dark figure looming over the foyer.

At his feet still Gideon lay collapsed on the dark slate, his shoulders shaking, his high-pitched sniffling the only sound in the vast room.

No, my mind screamed. Stay back. Stay by the stove.

Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to keep my distance and cling to the marble counter, to protect the fragile illusion of safety I had built while wearing his oversized shirt. I tightened my fingers around the fabric at my thighs, digging my nails into my palms, desperately trying to root my bare feet to the stone floor.

"Sit on the chair," Drake commanded. His glowing crimson eyes shifted toward the arm chair in the center of the living room.

"Sit and watch."

The words made me frown.

Immediately, an invisible, suffocating pressure washed over my thoughts. It felt as though a cold, suffocating wave of thick water had invaded my head, drowning out my own willpower, crushing my ability to say no. A sudden, intense tremor ran down my spine, and my knees buckled under the sheer force of his voice.

Fight it, I told myself, teeth grinding together as a hot ache bloomed behind my eyes. Don’t move. You don’t have to obey him like a dog.

I willed my legs to remain still. I tried to pull my gaze away from his red eyes, to focus on the flickering light of the stove or the rain streaming down the windows. But my body was no longer entirely mine. My mind answered his call. His order pulled against my mind, snapping every thread of my resistance one by one.

My left foot moved forward against my will. Then my right.

"Drake... please," I choked out, a ragged gasp tearing from my throat as I tried to force my limbs to stop. My breath bloomed in a faint white mist between us, my head spinning with the dizzying, intoxicating pull of his authority.

It was useless.

The mental wall I tried to build crumbled into dust beneath the absolute weight of a master’s command. My body betrayed me, moving across the polished floor in smooth, rhythmic steps. I felt detached from my own skin, a helpless passenger inside my own frame as my legs carried me to the leather sofa.

I sank down onto the edge of the plush cushion. My hands placed themselves flat against my knees. My chin lifted, my eyes forced wide open, locked directly onto the scene unfolding in the foyer.

I couldn’t move. Drake had positioned me in the chair like a piece of furniture, my hands gripping the wooden arms so hard my knuckles ached white. He wanted me to see this. No-he needed me to see this.

Gideon was on his knees on the living room floor, and he was already crying.

Drake stood over him, fully dressed, his hand fisted in Gideon’s hair, wrenching his head back at a painful angle. When Gideon tried to speak, Drake’s free hand cracked across his face with a sound like a gunshot.

"Quiet," Drake ordered. "You don’t speak unless I allow it. You don’t breathe unless I allow it. You exist right now because I haven’t decided to end you."

Gideon’s lip split, blood dripping down his chin. He whimpered, and I watched that sound transform in Drake’s eyes-watched my professor, my vampire, my master drink in the fear like wine.

Drake looked at me.

His eyes were crimson, and when they locked on mine, I felt it in my gut.

Watch, Lysander. Remember this.

"Take off your clothes," Drake told Gideon.

Gideon hesitated. One second of defiance, of the arrogance I’d known my whole life. Drake didn’t hit him again. He simply stared, and I saw something invisible press against Gideon’s throat, cutting off his air. My stepbrother clawed at his neck, gasping, eyes bulging, and only when his fingers fumbled desperately at his shirt buttons did the pressure release.

He stripped naked on the floor of the living room, shivering, pale, utterly exposed. I should have felt something-pity, maybe, or the residual horror of watching family debase themselves. But I felt nothing except a terrible, rising heat low in my belly, because Drake was looking at me again, and his smile was sharp as knives.

"Good boy," he murmured-to me, not to Gideon. "Keep watching."

He unbuckled his belt slowly and Gideon flinched at the sound. But Drake didn’t use it on him. He dropped it to the floor with a heavy clank and unzipped his trousers, and I couldn’t look away from the raw power of him in this movement.

"Do you know what you are?" Drake asked, stepping behind Gideon. He grabbed a fistful of my stepbrother’s hair again and forced him down, cheek pressed to the hardwood, ass raised in offering. "You’re nothing. Less than nothing. You thought you could touch what’s mine. You thought you could threaten him, degrade him, ruin him, and face no consequences."

Gideon sobbed into the floor. "Please-"

"Did I say you could speak?"

Drake thrust into him without warning, and Gideon’s scream tore through the room. It was brutal-raw and violent and merciless, exactly what Drake intended. He set a punishing pace immediately, each snap of his hips driving Gideon’s face against the wood, each stroke a claim of ownership not just of Gideon’s body but of the entire situation, the power dynamic, me.

Because Drake wasn’t looking at Gideon. His crimson eyes were fixed on me the entire time.

"Look at him, Lysander," Drake commanded, his voice calm despite the way he was splitting Gideon open with ruthless efficiency. "Look at what happens to men who think they can take what’s mine. Look at how easily I reduce him to this-tears and begging and broken pride."

I was shaking. I couldn’t stop shaking. My cock was hard in my pants, straining against the fabric, and I was horrified by my own arousal, by the dark thrill watching this conquest sent through me. Gideon had hurt me, violated me, blackmailed me, made my life a waking nightmare. And now Drake was punishing him for it. I was sick with gratitude.

"He’s nothing," Drake repeated, and his voice dropped to a register that vibrated in my bones, ancient and inhuman. "He thought he had power over you because he knew your secrets. But I know everything, Lysander. I know every shameful thought, every desperate fantasy, every dark corner of your soul. And I still want you. I still own you. This-" he drove particularly hard, and Gideon wailed, "-this is what I could do to you if you ever tried to leave me. This is how thoroughly I could destroy you. Remember that."

I nodded frantically, tears streaming down my own face now. "Yes, master. I remember. I won’t-I won’t ever-"

"Good boy," Drake purred, and the approval warmed my blood, my hole leaking with arousal. He turned his attention back to Gideon, who was barely coherent now, reduced to gasping sobs and broken pleas.

"You," he said conversationally, still fucking him with mechanical cruelty, "are going to forget you ever knew Lysander Vane. You’re going to forget his secrets, his shame, his face. When you leave this house, you will remember only fear. Every time you think of crossing him, you’ll feel my hands on your throat, my cock splitting you open, my voice telling you that you’re nothing. Do you understand?"

Gideon managed a strangled sound that might have been an agreement.

"Say it," Drake demanded. "Say you’re nothing."

"I’m-" Gideon choked, snot and blood and tears smearing his face against the floor. "I’m nothing. Please, I’m nothing, I’m sorry, I’m-"

Drake came with a low growl that wasn’t human, his head thrown back, crimson eyes blazing like hellfire in the dim room. He held himself deep in Gideon’s body for a long moment, letting the silence stretch, letting us both feel the weight of what had just happened.

He pulled out with a wet sound and stood, adjusting his trousers with the same care he’d shown undressing Gideon in the first place.

He stepped over my stepbrother’s trembling, naked form and walked to me. His fingers-warm, impossibly warm-brushed the tears from my cheeks.

"Did you watch carefully, my beautiful boy?" he asked softly.

I nodded, unable to speak.

"Good boy," he whispered, and pressed a kiss to my forehead that felt like a brand.

Gideon was still sobbing on the floor, curled into a ball of humiliated flesh, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. Because Drake’s arms were around me, and his heart was beating against my cheek.

He turned to Gideon who was trembling, "Get out of my house."

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