Chapter 3: The Confrontation
The silence in the garage was a living thing, thick with the smell of sex and leather and rain. Sadie’s body hummed, a tuning fork struck too hard. Jace had dressed her in soft, borrowed clothes—a pair of Rhett’s sweatpants and a worn flannel that swallowed her. She sat on a low stool, knees to her chest, watching Rhett methodically coil the ropes that had held her. His movements were economical, practiced. A part of her wanted to scream, to shatter the careful quiet. Another part, deeper and more frightening, wanted to curl into it forever.
Her phone, discarded on the workbench, buzzed. Then buzzed again. A rapid, insistent vibration that sliced through the calm.
Jace picked it up, his thumb sliding across the screen. “Your people are getting restless.” He read aloud, his tone flat. “’Lake house tonight. Bonfire’s lit, beer’s cold, and Travis brought his shitty guitar. Get your ass out here, Brooks.’” He scrolled. “’You alive? Did the quiet man finally murder you? Send a dick pic as proof of life.’”
Sadie held out her hand. “Give it.”
Rhett turned from the ropes. He didn’t speak, but his gaze locked onto her. The question was there, heavy in the air.
“It’s just Maya and the crew,” she said, the defensive edge returning to her voice. It felt good, that familiar armor clicking back into place. “The usual shit. I’ll tell them I’m busy.”
“You are busy,” Rhett said. His voice was quiet, final.
She blinked. “I meant busy not going. It’s just a party.”
“It’s a party at the lake. An hour away. With that fucker Travis and his shitty guitar and a cooler full of beer,” Jace clarified, tossing the phone onto the bench. It clattered against the metal. “You’re still shaking, Sadie.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not going.” Rhett stated it as a fact of physics. Gravity exists. The sky is grey. You are staying here.
Her spine straightened. The passivity of the last hour burned away, incinerated by that tone. “Excuse me?”
“You heard him,” Jace said, but his voice was softer, trying to bridge the gap. “Come on, Brooks. Look at yourself. You want to go play beer pong and make small talk right now?”
“What I want,” she said, standing up, the flannel hanging loose around her, “is to not be given fucking orders. I’m not a dog. I’m not a thing you get to lock up in your garage.” She gestured to the suspension rig, her anger finding its target. “That was… that was then. This is now. I’m going home. And then, maybe, I’m going to the goddamn lake.”
She strode toward the bench to grab her phone. Rhett moved, a blur of silent intent. He didn’t grab her roughly, but his hand closed around her upper arm, stopping her progress. His grip was an iron band.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
The word was absolute. It ignited everything. The fear, the submission, the wild, unmoored feeling of dangling for him—all of it transformed into pure, righteous fury.
“You don’t own me, Rhett! You don’t get to fuck me senseless and then decide where I go and who I see!” She tried to wrench her arm free. He didn’t budge. “Jace! Tell him.”
Jace ran a hand through his hair, frustration on his face. “He’s not wrong, Sadie. Going out there, in this state, with that crew… it’s a bad idea.”
“My bad ideas are mine to have!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the high ceiling. “You don’t get to protect me from myself. That’s not your job!”
“It is,” Rhett growled, his voice low and dangerous. The first real crack in his calm. “It is my job. You are my job.” He pulled her closer, his face inches from hers. “You think those boys at the lake see anything but a pretty girl who drinks too much and laughs too loud? You think they see what you are? What you need?”
“And you do?” she sneered, tears of frustration welling hot in her eyes. “You see so much? You know what I need? You think a flogger and a set of ropes is a fucking relationship?”
He flinched. It was microscopic, but she saw it. It fueled her.
“You’re just scared,” she hissed. “Scared I’ll remember there’s a world out there where I don’t have to beg for permission to come. Where I’m not someone’s ‘job’.”
His jaw tightened. His grip shifted, his other hand coming up to cup her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “You weren’t begging. You were asking. And I gave it to you. Everything you asked for.”
“I’m asking now! Let me go!”
“No.”
With a cry of pure rage, she shoved against his chest with her free hand. It was like pushing a mountain. He absorbed the force, his expression turning to stone.
“Fine,” she spat. She stopped struggling, going limp in his grasp. “Fine. Hold on to me. See how long you can keep it up.”
She let her weight drop. Surprised, his grip on her arm loosened for a fraction of a second. It was all she needed. She twisted, tearing herself free, and bolted for the open garage door.
The rain was a cold shock, soaking through the flannel instantly. She heard Jace call her name, but she was already running across the slick gravel driveway, headed for the street, for freedom, for the goddamn lake and its shitty guitar.
Footsteps pounded behind her. Heavy, fast. He was on her in three strides. An arm hooked around her waist, lifting her clean off her feet. She kicked, fought, her elbows flying back. He grunted, taking the hits, and spun her, pinning her back against the rough, cold siding of the garage. The overhang kept the worst of the rain off them, but it sheeted down just beyond, a rattling curtain.
“Get off!” she screamed, twisting her face away.
He caught her chin again, wrenching her gaze back to his. His eyes were black with an emotion she couldn’t name. Possession. Fury. Fear. “You. Are. Ours.”
“I’m not a possession!”
“You are!” he roared, the sound raw, startling even him. His control was in tatters. “You are mine. You are Jace’s. And we are yours. That’s the deal. That’s the only deal. You don’t get to run from it because it gets hard. You don’t get to take what we give and then throw yourself back to the wolves because you’re scared of how much you want it.”
“I’m not scared!”
“You’re terrified.” His mouth crashed down on hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming. Brutal, punishing, all teeth and desperation. She bit his lip in retaliation, tasting copper. He groaned into her mouth, his hand tangling in her wet hair, holding her still as he devoured her. She fought for a second more, then a broken sound escaped her, and she was kissing him back, just as wild, just as hungry. Her fists unclenched, grappling at the front of his shirt, clinging to him.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “You want to go to the party? Go. But every guy who looks at you, I’ll see it. Every drink you take from someone else, I’ll know. And when you come back—when—you’ll understand what it means to make me wait. To make me watch.”
He ground his hips against her, and she felt him, hard and demanding even through their clothes. The proof of his anger, his want.
“Tell me you understand,” he demanded, his voice a gritty whisper against her ear.
She was panting, her body alight from the fight and the kiss. She looked past his shoulder. Jace stood in the garage doorway, backlit by the warm light. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes burned with the same possessive fire, watching Rhett dominate her, his own hand resting on the obvious bulge in his jeans. He was letting Rhett do this. He was wanting it.
It should have enraged her. Instead, it doused the last of her rebellion in gasoline and threw a match. A helpless, wanting moan crawled up her throat.
Rhett took it as answer enough. His hands went to the waist of the sweatpants, yanking them and her underwear down in one brutal pull. The cold air hit her skin, then the heat of him as he shoved his own jeans open. He didn’t prepare her, didn’t tease. He drove into her with a single, deep, punishing thrust.
She cried out, her head knocking back against the siding. She was still tender, swollen from before, and he filled her with a stretch that bordered on pain. He didn’t pause. He set a relentless, driving rhythm, fucking her right there against the wall of his garage, the rain shattering on the ground beside them.
“This is where you belong,” he growled, each word punctuated by a thrust. “Right here. Taking my cock. Marked up from my flogger. With him watching.” He glanced at Jace. “You see her? You see how she takes it?”
“I see her,” Jace’s voice floated, dark with lust. “She’s beautiful. Look at her, Rhett. She’s not thinking about any fucking party now.”
It was true. The world had narrowed to the rough wood at her back, the slam of his body into hers, the filthy, wet sound of their joining. Every nerve was screaming, oversensitive from the earlier denial. The climb was steep and fast, a violent ascent.
“Rhett,” she gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders. “I’m gonna… fuck, I’m gonna come…”
“Come, then,” he snarled. “Come on my cock while I’m fucking the defiance out of you. Show me who you belong to.”
His hand slid between them, his thumb finding her clit, rough and direct. The pressure, the friction, the deep, full strokes—it broke her. Her orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, silent scream of pleasure that clenched around him, milking him desperately.
It triggered his own. With a final, grinding thrust, he buried himself to the hilt and came, a hot, pulsing flood inside her. His body shuddered against hers, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. They stayed like that, joined, breathing in ragged unison.
Slowly, he softened, slipped out of her. He leaned back, his eyes searching her face. The fury was gone, replaced by a weary intensity. He pulled her sweatpants back up with surprising gentleness.
Jace walked over, stepping into the damp space under the overhang. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, then at Rhett, and gave a slow, definitive nod.
Rhett cupped her cheek. His thumb wiped at a raindrop—or a tear—on her cheek. “The party,” he said, his voice back to its usual low gravel, but laced with something irrevocable. “You still want to go?”
She looked from him to Jace, her body humming, her heart a frantic bird in a cage of her own making. The cage door was open. She knew it. They knew it.
She swallowed. “No,” she whispered.
Rhett nodded. He bent, picked her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and carried her back into the warm, waiting light of the garage. Jace followed, closing the door on the rain and the dark, sealing them inside.