Chapter 56: The Choice To Be With Him

Chapter 56: Chapter 56: The Choice To Be With Him

Alexander kissed her, a raw and intense claiming that ignited a matching fire within her. There was nothing tentative about this kiss. The moment Iris gave in and kissed him back, something inside him seemed to loosen, as though the part of him that had been holding himself rigid for weeks had finally been given permission to breathe.

He felt the yielding, the subtle pressure of her lips answering his, and a profound, dangerous joy blossomed in his chest.

But beneath the thrill, the desire, the instinctive pull that seemed to sharpen every sensation whenever she was near him, a gnawing unease persisted. He wanted her here, not just her body succumbing to instinct, but her entire being, freely given.

He craved her soul, her fierce spirit, everything that made her Iris, and he would not have it through force or manipulation.

He wanted her choice, and he wanted her to remain because she wanted to remain...to be there with him.

"Iris," he breathed, the sound thick with an emotion he was wrestling to hide. he pulled back just enough to speak, his voice a low, a gravelly hum against her ear.

She leaned back against the cool wall, her eyes, wide and still clouded with passion, searched his. She hadn’t expected him to stop, not then, not when the air between them had been crackling like a live wire.

His hands still anchored at her waist, his forehead pressed to hers. Their breaths mingled, ragged and uneven. A surprising sense of loss flickered within her at the broken contact, a testament to how deeply he’d already burrowed under her skin.

"I know that part of your actions right now are a fervent response to what your body demands, Iris," he murmured, his voice a low thrum against her, laced with a potent desire that he was visibly striving to rein in. His thumb traced the curve of her hip.

"My body craves yours with an animalistic hunger I haven’t known for years. But I need us to be crystal clear about something."

He pulled back then, a subtle shift, just enough to create a sliver of space. The absence of his full proximity was a sudden, chilling draft against her heated skin, a tangible void. His hand, which had braced the wall beside her head, now dropped.

"I’m angry, Iris. Two weeks of searing, impotent rage since you bolted from my penthouse." His jaw tightened, a visible clenching of muscle. "But what I will not do is weaponize that anger to trap you, to back you into a corner you didn’t choose."

Iris blinked, the words cutting through the haze of sensation.

"I want you," he stated, his voice flat, honest, stripped bare of any pretense. "You know this. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, not anymore."

His blue eyes, usually an ocean of calm, now burned with an intensity that demanded her gaze, holding it captive without apology.

"But you need to understand, Iris, the door to this office is behind you. The lock is on your side. If you wish to walk out of here, if you never want to speak of this again, tell me now. I will call you Miss Carter for the rest of the semester, mark your papers fairly, and never utter another personal word."

She stared at him, the weight of his words pressing down.

"I mean it," he insisted, his voice barely a whisper, yet resonating with an undeniable truth. ℯℯ𝑙.

Of course, he couldn’t possibly mean it, not in the absolute sense. He was Alexander. He wouldn’t let her go, not after the connection that bound them.

She was his fated mate, a truth he carried in his very essence, even if she remained blissfully, infuriatingly ignorant of it. She was the one he had yearned for, searched for across countless moons, and the thought of truly letting her go was anathema to his very being.

But he was offering her the illusion of escape, a carefully constructed sense of security, because the memory of her running away from him two weeks prior was a wound still fresh. He couldn’t bear another rejection, another flight born of regret. He needed her to choose this, to choose him, of her own violation.

The silence stretched, thin and taut, shimmering with unspoken desires. Iris was acutely aware of her own hammering pulse, the strange, insistent warmth radiating from the base of her neck, right where that peculiar mark rested.

Her body, she realized, had been incrementally leaning towards him since he’d first stepped into her space – like an involuntary, almost embarrassing and intoxicating gravitational pull, like a sunflower compelled towards the sun.

She knew she should be rational, she should have been considering the immense power imbalance, the academic implications, all the perfectly sound and rational arguments she’d meticulously rehearsed on her way here.

But she was also terrifyingly aware that every one of those arguments had dissolved into dust approximately five minutes ago, the moment his lips had claimed hers.

"What did you mean," she began slowly, her voice a little breathy, "when you said... ’especially when you’ve marked them?’"

The memory of his earlier, fleeting comment, now resurfaced, carrying a peculiar weight. Perhaps, just perhaps, it held a key to this bewildering mark on her neck

A flicker of something complex and ancient crossed his features, a shadow of an untold history.

"That," he said carefully, his gaze dropping briefly, possessively, to her parted lips, "is a longer conversation. One I owe you, entirely. But not... not like this. Not now."

"Why not now?" she pressed, a sudden defiance bubbling up.

"Because if I begin to explain that now," he confessed, his voice dropping to a raw, honest rumble, "I will lose whatever fragile chance I have of you staying in this room, here with me, of your own free will. And I find that I—" He broke off, the muscle in his jaw working furiously. "I find that your willingness to stay matters to me more than any explanation."

Iris studied him, a long, searching gaze. The mark on her neck burned, a persistent flame. Her body awakened and was alive, she craved his touch with an intensity and pervasive need that dwarfed the constant hum of longing she’d felt back in Spokane.

A longing so potent it had, shamefully, led her down paths she’d never imagined, even... watching pornography, only to find the faces of the strangers had invariably morphed, blurred, until only his breathtakingly handsome features, the chiseled planes of his jaw, the piercing intensity of his eyes, remained.

She unconsciously rubbed her thighs together, seeking some friction, a grounding sensation against the overwhelming tide.

"I want to touch you, Iris," he said, his voice transforming, still controlled, but now a taut string stretched to its breaking point. "I want to do so many things to you, with you. But I need your consent, your enthusiastic permission, to do them. So please tell me what you want Iris."

"I don’t know what’s happening to me," she breathed, pressing her palm flat against his chest. His heart thundered beneath her hand, a rhythm far faster than his composed exterior suggested.

"I don’t understand why my body responds to you, or even the thought of you, the way it does. I don’t know what this mark is, or why I can’t stop thinking about you, why leaving your penthouse that morning felt like tearing something vital from myself."

She held his gaze, her own eyes wide and vulnerable. "I don’t know any of it. But I know what I want right now...." She paused, forcing herself to articulate the truth, "I want what we had that night. I want it again. I feel... I feel like if I don’t do something with you right now, my body might simply combust."

Her voice was ragged, mirroring his own heavy breathing. "So... kiss me. Please."

The last remnants of his restraint shattered. Alexander bridged the small, deliberately created space between them in an instant, his lips crashing down on hers. This wasn’t the careful, controlled pressure of a man making a point; it was deep, immediate and desperate.

Like a parched man finding water after an eternity. Iris pressed herself flush against him, meeting his intensity with an equal, desperate hunger.

His hands framed her face, warm palms cupping her jaw, tilting her head back as if she were something precious he’d been carefully setting aside, and was now, finally, finally allowed to hold properly.

She kissed him back with every fiber of her being, her hands fisting in the expensive fabric of his suit jacket. A low, guttural sound, not quite human, not quite not, rumbled in his chest, vibrating all the way down to her spine.

Amidst the intoxicating chaos of the kiss, she fumbled with his suit jacket, pulling it from his broad shoulders. He lifted her effortlessly, as if she weighed nothing, his inhuman strength apparent even in this moment of passion.

She wrapped her legs around him and he navigated the space between them and his formidable desk by memory or pure instinct.

His hands moved with possessive sureness to her waist, then beneath her blouse, exploring the curve of her ribs, everywhere at once.

When the backs of her thighs met the hard edge of his massive, expressive mahogany desk, he lifted her onto it without a whisper of effort, as if he’d done it a thousand times before and fully intended to do it a thousand more, then stepped between her knees, anchoring himself against her.

"The room... people will hear me," she whispered against his mouth, a sudden awareness piercing through the haze of desire.

"It’s soundproofed," he murmured, his words warm against her lips, his fingers already unbuttoning her blouse with practiced ease.

"Had it redone, just for this kind of... deed." His hands, now free to roam, found her ribs, her waist, tracing paths of fire across her skin. "No one will hear you, love. Not a soul."

His thumbs grazed over the lace of her bra, a feather-light touch that sent shivers through her. Then, with a slow, deliberate pressure, his hands squeezed the soft mounds of her breasts through the fabric.

A raw, choked moan escaped her, the heightened sensations spiraling, pushing her further into the exquisite edge of arousal.