Chapter 3: Claimed
“Tell me how it feels.”
Jane’s words dropped into the silence of her hallway like stones into a still pond. They rippled through her, touching the raw, burning nerve at her core. For a single, arrested second, she was paralyzed by the directness of it, by the unbearable intimacy of the question. Then the dam of her composure, already cracked and leaking, gave way completely.
“No.”
The word was a whimper, a plea. She stumbled back, her heels catching on the polished floor, until her shoulder blades hit the cool, unforgiving wall of the living room entrance. The impact jarred her teeth. “Please, Jane. Just… leave. Get out. Now.”
He didn’t move. He remained perfectly still a few paces away, a statue in rolled-up sleeves, his gaze locked on her. The practiced neutrality had bled away, replaced by something older, heavier. “I can’t do that.”
“I need to go to the hospital.” The sentence tumbled out, a lifeline she desperately clung to. She wrapped her arms around herself, fingers digging into the rough wool of her sweater, trying to physically hold herself together. “There are tests, they can flush this… this thing out of my system. Just take me.”
He shook his head slowly, a gentle, damning motion. “It won’t work.”
“Why not?” Her voice rose, fraying at the edges.
“He protected his work,” Patrick said, his tone low and deliberate. “The hypnotist. He put in a powerful post-hypnotic suggestion, a deep command, to keep his victims from seeking medical help or talking to a professional. You’d walk up to the ER doors, and your mind would find a reason to turn around. A panic attack. A sudden conviction you were fine. You’d never cross the threshold.”
The truth of it seeped into her bones, cold and confirming. She remembered standing at her own front door earlier, wanting to run, to drive somewhere—anywhere—for help. And she’d made coffee instead. The urge had simply… evaporated, replaced by the gnawing, static need. A sob hitched in her chest. Her legs gave out.
She slid down the wall, the plaster catching on her sweater, until she was crouched on the floor, a compact ball of misery. Her whole body trembled, a fine, constant vibration that felt like a current running just under her skin. She could smell him from here—the faint, clean scent of his soap, the hint of starch from his shirt. It was an agonizing perfume. Her mind screamed at her to reach for him, to claw at his clothes, to beg for the rough, anonymous friction her body craved. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against her knees, forcing her thoughts into a loop of procedure, of logic, of control. Override. Override.
“Take me to the hospital,” she stammered into the fabric of her jeans, the words muffled and desperate.
“I can’t,” he repeated, and she heard the genuine pain in it.
She turned her face to the wall, her cheek pressed against the cool surface, eyes clenched so tightly she saw bursts of colour. “Can you… can you find it? The trigger? You told me once there was… was a trigger that made it…go away.”
Patrick’s sigh was a soft exhale in the quiet room. “It could be anything. A smell. A tone of voice. A specific gesture. Remember years ago with Rigsby? The hypnotist nearly had him throw me off a roof until I tricked her into showing me his trigger. To find yours, with no starting point, and the hypnotist dead…” He let the sentence hang. The unspoken conclusion was clear: it would take days, weeks of systematic, invasive probing. Time she didn’t have.
She didn’t hear him move, so absorbed was she in the internal war, but she felt the shift in the air. A presence, closer. He’d taken a tentative step forward. She kept her eyes closed, as if hiding from a monster.
His voice was quieter now, a confidential murmur in the space between them. “The notebooks… they were clinical. Disgustingly so. He documented everything. The hormone cocktail, the hypnotic reinforcement… and the exit strategy.”
Teresa held her breath. A tear escaped her sealed eyelids, tracing a hot path to her lip.
“It’s physiological, at its base. The drug creates a feedback loop, a constant demand. But according to his notes, after a person has… has engaged in coitus the right number of times, reaching a specific, sustained peak of satiation, the chemical compound breaks down. It’s purged. The body resets.”
She didn’t respond. Couldn’t. Another tear fell, then another. They were silent, scalding.
“The hypnotic suggestion is tied to the chemical state,” he continued, his voice unbearably gentle. “When the drug clears, the mental cage should unlock as well. The two are woven together.”
Teresa choked, the sound wet and broken. She lifted her head, staring at the blank wall through a blur. “So you’re telling me… the cure… is that I have to go out and fuck… and fuck a lot? Until some magical quota is met?”
Movement, very close. She sensed him lowering himself, the whisper of his trousers, the warmth of his body now at her level. He had crouched down beside her, an arm’s length away on her living room floor. She could feel his scrutiny on her profile.
He was silent for a long moment, the only sound her hitching breaths. When he spoke again, it was with careful, detached practicality that felt more intimate than a touch. “Are you seeing anyone?Even casually? Someone you could… explain this to?”
A sharp, bitter laugh burst from her, turning immediately into a ragged sob. She shook her head violently, her wet hair sticking to her cheek. “No. God, no.”
Another pause. She could almost hear him thinking, sorting through options like a chessboard. “What about… picking someone up?A bar. Or, if the idea of that is… perhaps a professional. Someone discreet, who would follow your instructions.”
“No.” The word was flat, absolute. She finally turned her head to look at him. His face was so close, shadows carved deep under his eyes, his expression one of pained focus. “Don’t you get it? Look at me, Jane.” Her voice dropped to a raw whisper. “In this state, I am not in charge. I am vulnerable. I’m a fucking lightning rod for predation. If I went to a bar, I wouldn’t be picking anyone up. I’d be the easiest mark in the city. I’d follow some stranger to a bathroom or an alley and I’d let him do whatever he wanted. I wouldn’t say no to anything. I can’t… I can’t trust myself to set boundaries right now. It would just be… it would be letting him win. All over again.”
The truth of it hung in the air, ugly and undeniable. She was a prisoner twice over: by the drug, and by the professionalism, the caution, the very personality that made her who she was. She couldn’t solve this by becoming the monster she imagined on her run.
Patrick listened, his gaze never leaving hers. He absorbed her words, her terror, the implicit trust in her confession. The clinical detachment in his eyes finally shattered. Something raw and decisive rose to replace it. He looked, for the first time since he’d entered, not like a consultant solving a puzzle, but like a man facing an impossible choice.
He slowly reached out, not touching her, but placing his hand flat on the floor between them, a bridge. “Then there’s only one person you can trust.”
Her breath stopped. Her whole world narrowed to the space between his hand and her trembling knee, to the stark, terrifying meaning in his eyes.
“Jane… no…”
“It’s not ‘Jane’ right now,” he said, his voice suddenly thick, stripping away the last veneer. “It’s Patrick. And you’re Teresa. And you’re drowning.”
“You can’t… you don’t want this… I’m a mess…” The protests were weak, automatic, even as a fresh, devastating wave of heat flooded her, centering with a deep, throbbing ache that made her thighs clench.
“You have no idea what I want,” he said, and the rawness in his voice shocked her into silence. “But I know what you need. And I love you too much to watch you suffer one more second of this hell.”
The word—love—detonated in the sterile room. It wasn’t a romantic confession; it was a fact, a foundation, a weapon. It broke the last of her resistance.
A ragged moan escaped her lips. The war inside her ended. The need won.
She uncoiled from the floor with a sudden, desperate lunge. Her hands flew to his face, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling his mouth to hers. The kiss was not gentle. It was a collision of hunger and relief, a frantic, messy claiming. She poured every hour of frustration, every jolt of humiliating need, into it, biting his lip, her tongue sweeping into his mouth with a desperate urgency.
He met her with a growl that vibrated from his chest into hers, his hands coming up to grasp her waist, hauling her fully against him. The careful distance vanished. The roughness of his shirt against her skin, the solid plane of his chest—it was all fuel on the fire.
“Teresa,” he gasped against her mouth, his hands sliding under her sweater, pushing it up. His palms were hot and slightly rough as they found her bare back, then moved around to her stomach, his thumbs skimming the undersides of her breasts.
“Please,” she begged, the word swallowed by his kiss. She tore her mouth free, panting. “Don’t be gentle. I can’t… I need…”
“I know,” Patrick murmured, his voice a rough promise against her ear.
His lips traced a hot path down her jaw to her throat, teeth scraping her frantic pulse. The words, the deliberate contact, were the final detonation. Control abandoned her like a snapped rope. Her hands scrambled at his shirt, popping a button in her frenzy. "Now, please, now..."
He grunted, a sound of primal agreement, his body moving with a fluid strength that upended her. His arms slid under her, and he stood in one decisive motion, lifting her from the hardwood floor as if she weighed nothing. She instinctively wound her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back, her arms a vise around his neck. Her body was a live wire, every movement a torment.
He supported her with one arm, his other hand gripping her ass through the denim, his fingers pressing hard enough to bruise, claiming her. She needed friction, a pressure her current position denied. Trapped against him, her core pressed against his belt buckle, a maddening hardness that promised nothing she could use. She writhed, trying to grind down, desperate for a solid point of contact against the aching throb between her legs.
"I can't... Patrick, touch me," she begged, her voice shattered against the skin of his neck, her hips hitching uselessly. "Just put your hand on me, put it in me, I don't care.Anything."
"Hold on," he rasped, turning towards the living room.
His stride was purposeful but short. He only made it a few steps before, with a groan that seemed born from a shared desperation, he sank onto the stiff leather couch, taking her weight onto his lap in the exact motion she craved. He adjusted her, pulling her legs to straddle one of his thighs, and without preamble he grabbed the hem of her heavy sweater. He yanked it, along with the thin camisole beneath, up and over her head in a single, impatient movement, tossing the bundle onto the floor.
Cool air rushed across her overheated skin.
The shock of it against her bare breasts drew a choked sob from her chest. Her nipples were so hard, so impossibly sensitive, that the faintest movement of air felt like sandpaper. They were dusky pink peaks against the flushed landscape of her skin, tight and swollen with a lifetime of denied ache. The sudden exposure wasn't liberating; it was a vulnerability that made the hunger infinitely worse.
With her core finally grinding against the solid muscle of his thigh, the rhythm was her undoing. It was frantic, erratic, just mindless, jagged jerks of her hips that found no true purchase. She clawed at his shoulders, tears of raw frustration mixing with the sweat on her temples. "Suck them," she pleaded, the words broken and soaked in longing. "Your mouth, please, just put your mouth on my nipples. They hurt so much, you have no idea how much they ache..."
His hands moved from her back, sliding down her sides, over the flexing muscles of her abdomen. They settled on her hips with a definitive, unyielding strength, his fingers digging into the swell of her pelvic bones through the denim. He stilled her, forcing her frantic bucking to cease.
"Stop," he commanded, his voice guttural. "Let me."
He held her there, her cunt pressing against the hard seam of her jeans and then the heat of his thigh, as he slowly sat forward, his gaze dropping to her heaving chest. He didn't speak. He simply leaned in, his hot breath washing over her a second before his lips closed, wet and full, around the tight peak of her right breast.
The sensation wasn't gentle. It was deliberate, intense suction that pulled the deep-rooted ache from her nipple all the way down her spine to coil in her womb.
She keened, a high, ragged sound of relief and torment ripped from her throat. Her hands flew to his head, fingers fisting violently in his soft, disheveled hair, holding his mouth to her. "Yes, God, yes," she sobbed, her hips beginning to rock again, but this time he guided her. He used the pressure of his hands to set a slow, deep, deliberate rhythm, rolling her against his thigh with each firm pull of his mouth.
She chanted into the crown of his head, a litany of gratified agony. "Thank you, yes, just like that, thank you..."
He alternated between teeth and tongue and pure wisdom suction, the careful research of a man dedicated to breaking a spell, his movements precise yet voracious. The double stimulation was too much, too perfectly aimed. The agonizing tightness in her belly, built for endless, taunting days, gathered into a singular, unavoidable point under his guidance.
It needed only seconds.
Her orgasm detonated with savage, unforgiving power, a white-hot wire snapping from her cunt to her skull. Her head threw back as her back arched so severely the tendons in her neck stood out like cables. A guttural, wordless scream tore from her, the leather of the couch crackling under her clawing hands. The release was seismic, a convulsive flood of sensation that erased every sound, every sight, every thought that wasn't him and this.
The world bled out in a rush of deafening static.
Her body went limp. All the coiled tension, all the trembling vigilance, simply melted away. The grip of her fingers in his hair slackened, her hands sliding down to rest on his shoulders.
Her forward momentum carried her crumbling, breathless, like a puppet with its strings cut. She slumped onto his chest, her forehead resting against the damp linen of his shirt where she'd bitten it. A final, shuddering sigh wisped from her lips, warm against him.
Her limbs, once clutching with frantic strength, were dead weight. The frantic pulse under her skin slowed to a whisper.
She was still.
A long strand of her dark hair, pasted to her damp cheek, didn't stir. The shallow rise and fall of her back stopped. The heavy, boneless quiet of true unconsciousness descended, erasing even the nightmare that had trapped her. For the first time since the tavern, she slept.
He waited. He counted her breaths, felt the press of her slumped weight against him, a heavy and unnatural stillness on the stiff leather. Her skin was damp with sweat and cooling fast. Only when he was certain the unconsciousness was deep, the desperate clawing at her mind temporarily sated, did he move.
Extricating himself from beneath her was a careful, intricate process. He lowered her to her side on the couch, her head lolling against a cushion. Her bare chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm, her face eerily placid, stripped of its usual sharpness. The sight—this fierce woman so brutally reduced—sent a cold, clean fury through him that he had to physically swallow down.
His jacket was still on the newel post. He retrieved it, draping it over her torso, a thin shield against the chill of the room. He moved through her silent house with familiar, proprietorial steps, returning with a blanket from her bedroom to layer on top. He did not look at the corkboard of crime scene photos. His focus was singular.
Back in the living room, he didn’t sit. He stood over her, watching, the consultant’s mind whirring alongside a more primal current of protectiveness.
The notes had mentioned exhaustion. Profound, system-crashing fatigue would follow each forced crest, each artificial release. The body needed time to rest, to process, before the chemical tide rose again. How much time? He hadn’t found a reliable interval. Ten minutes? Three hours?He would watch.
He turned off the recessed lights, leaving only the muted glow of the early afternoon sun behind the blinds on the front windows. He dragged her club chair closer to the couch, angling it so he could see both her and the door. He sat, not reclining, his posture one of readiness.
Her breathing remained steady. Occasionally, a twitch would ripple through her—a hand flinching, a soft sigh that wasn’t his name. He catalogued each one. He didn’t touch his phone. He didn’t think about what he’d just done. He simply observed, a sentinel in the half-light, the faint scent of her and sex and leather clinging to the air.
An hour crept by, marked by the gradual change of the sun’s position. Then another. Her color was better, a faint pink returning to her cheeks. The peace on her face was haunting. It was the peace of a shutdown, not of rest.
She stirred.
A low groan escaped her, the sound ripped from a place of deep physical distress. Her body tensed before her eyes even opened, a return to the prison of waking life. The blanket over her shifted as her legs drew up.
He leaned forward, hands on his knees.
Her eyes flew open, wide and unseeing for a terrified second, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of her own living room. Disorientation gave way to a wave of pure sensation that contorted her features. Before she could consciously process where she was, the raw, burning ache was already there, reigniting her nervous system with a merciless flare.
A broken gasp tore from her throat. She writhed on the couch, the leather creaking in protest, her hands fisting in the blanket as if to tear it. It had reset. The clock started anew.
He was there before she could sit up, a solid presence leaning over her. One hand, warm and heavy from being clenched, pressed firmly onto her stomach through the layers, pinning her twisting hips to the cushions. "Teresa."
The pressure stopped her. Her eyes, wild and wet with the sudden, unbearable return of the need, fluttered open. His face slowly swam into focus above her, the angles of it sharp in the dim light, his own gaze dark and sleepless and utterly focused.
"How is it?" he asked, his voice quiet, stripped of everything but purpose. "Rate it, from one to ten. Right now."
She didn't answer with numbers. The feeling of his hand on her, even through the blanket, was a brand. The sudden memory of his mouth on her, of the sharp, temporary relief, crashed over her with the force of the craving itself. She needed it. More.
She arched up off the couch, a sinuous twist of her torso, straining against his hold. Her mouth found his in a clumsy, desperate collision. It was less a kiss and more a transfer of urgent pleading, her lips moving feverishly against his.
"More," she whispered into the seam of his mouth, the word a hot, ragged breath. "It's already… it’s back. Please, more."
His hand on her stomach slipped, the strong fingers tunneling down, under the loosened waistband of her jeans, past the cotton of her panties. He bypassed cloth, finding her directly. She was so wet, so slick and swollen, his fingertips met no resistance, sliding through her folds with a fluid ease that shocked a moan from her lungs.
He moved his fingers, seeking friction, trying to circle her clit. But the sheer lubrication defeated him; his touch skated over the hypersensitive bud, providing maddening sensation but no satisfying pressure. She wrapped both of her hands around his wrist, trying to push his fingers harder against her, to force them inside her, anything for purchase.
"Harder, goddamn it, just fuck me with them," she gritted out, her hips bucking against his trapped hand.
It was useless. The weeping wetness was a physiological response, a demand for penetration, for filling, that his fingers could not satisfy. The teasing, slippery contact was worse than no touch at all. A wordless sob of pure frustration wrenched from her throat. Her eyes screwed shut, her face a mask of torment.
Suddenly, he stopped his movements entirely, his hand going still.
She whimpered, a high, panicked sound. "No, no, no, don't stop, you can't stop…" She tried to move her hips, to create the friction herself, her movements becoming frantic, animal.
"Look at me." His voice cut through her whimpers, firm, an order from a place of absolute authority.
With a monumental effort, she forced her eyes open. Tears of rage and need spilled over, tracking into her hairline. She met his gaze, which was burning with a fierce, uncompromising intensity.
"I am going to use my mouth on you," he stated, each word deliberate, a clinical promise.
Immediately, a fresh wave of lust, sharper than before, crested through her. "Yes," she begged, the single word a prayer. "Please, Patrick, your mouth, your tongue, lick my pussy, just make it stop for a second, just let me feel you..."
He didn't need further persuasion. In one smooth motion, he pushed the blanket and his jacket off of her. He guided her to shift, to lie back fully on the couch. He stood, his own movements economical, and knelt on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. The space was tight.
"Open for me," he said, his hands on her inner thighs.
She spread her legs wantonly, as widely as the confines of the couch would allow, heels digging into the leather, offering herself without shame, without hesitation. The cool air of the room touched her exposed, glistening skin. Patrick shifted, getting closer, his shoulders nudging her knees wider apart.
He didn't tease. He didn't kiss her inner thigh or build anticipation. He lowered his head and put his mouth directly on her.
The first flat, wet stroke of his tongue, from the base of her entrance all the way up through her slick folds to her clit, was a jolt of pure, undiluted sensation that arched her back off the couch. A guttural cry echoed in the quiet room. He tasted her deeply, his tongue pressing inside her just for a moment, a hot, probing acknowledgment of her wetness, before retreating to focus on the hard, desperate nub of nerves above.
This was not lovemaking. It was strategic, relentless application. He held her hips down with strong hands, pinning her writhing form to the leather as his mouth worked. He used the flat of his tongue, the pointed tip, alternating between broad, lapping strokes and sharp, focused flicks directly on her clit. He suckled, drawing the swollen flesh into his mouth, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure that made her toes curl and her hands claw at the cushions.
"Right there, don't move, don't you fucking move," she chanted, her voice hitching with each deliberate pull of his mouth.
He was mapping her, learning the responses the drug had amplified, finding the precise points that made her legs tremble and her breath catch. He added a finger, then two, sliding them into her with the same efficient wetness, curling them upwards as he sucked. The dual sensation of fullness and that relentless, rhythmic suction on her clit built the pressure with terrifying speed.
The orgasm, when it hit, was different from the first. Less a snapping wire, more a deep, internal detonation. It rolled through her in slow, powerful waves, a throbbing, clenching release that had her screaming into the fist she’d shoved into her own mouth. Her hips jerked against his unyielding grip, her channel pulsing around his fingers. He didn't stop. He gentled his mouth but continued, coaxing every last shudder, every last pulse from her until she was limp, gasping, the fire temporarily banked once more.
He slowly withdrew, sitting back on his heels. He looked up at her, his lips wet, his breathing slightly ragged. She was a wreck—hair plastered to her temples, cheeks flushed, body splayed open and spent.
The peace, when it came, was shallow. Her eyes were already clouding with the exhaustion that followed, but a deep, unsettling dread lurked beneath the physical relief. She turned her head to look at him, her voice a shredded whisper.
"It's not enough, is it?" she asked, the question hanging in the air between them, heavier than any confession. "One time... or two... it's not going to break it."
Patrick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes never leaving hers. He slowly shook his head.
"No," he said, the word final. "It's not."