Chapter 6: Claiming What's Hers
The car ride back to the penthouse was a vacuum. Silence, thick and charged, pressed against the windows. Victoria stared straight ahead, her profile etched in the passing streetlights, a marble sculpture of contained fury. Lila sat as far from her as the leather seats allowed, her body humming with the ghost of that kiss. Her lips still felt swollen. Her wrist, where Victoria had gripped her, throbbed faintly.
She replayed the dinner on a loop. The cutting remarks. Ellie’s silent, watchful amusement. The way the world had narrowed to the cold blue of Victoria’s eyes just before she’d pulled her close. It had been for show. A brutal, dramatic show. So why did the memory make her stomach flip?
The elevator in the penthouse lobby was a capsule of polished steel. The doors slid shut, sealing them in. Victoria didn’t look at her. She stared at her own reflection, her jaw tight.
“That was…” Lila started, her voice small in the sterile space.
“Necessary.” Victoria’s reply was a shard of glass.
The elevator began its smooth ascent. The tension spiraled, tightening with each passing floor. Lila’s nerves, already frayed, snapped. “Necessary? To humiliate me? To use me as a… a prop in some fucked-up power play with your mother?”
Victoria’s head turned slowly. The calm from the dinner was gone, utterly incinerated. What was left was something raw, volcanic. “You think that was humiliation?”
Before Lila could answer, Victoria moved. It wasn’t the calculated performance of the dining hall. This was pure, unmediated reaction. Her hand fisted in the carefully styled red hair at the nape of Lila’s neck, not gently. A sharp gasp tore from Lila’s throat. Victoria used the grip to walk her backwards out of the elevator the moment the doors opened into the penthouse foyer, not relinquishing it as she marched them both through the vast, dark living room.
“Let go!” Lila stumbled, her heels catching on the rug. Pain sparked across her scalp, a bright, clarifying counterpoint to the confusion.
Victoria didn’t speak. Her breath was audible, a harsh rhythm in the dark. She shouldered open the door to her bedroom, the grand space bathed in the ambient gold of the city below. With a final, forceful shove, she released Lila’s hair, sending her sprawling face-first onto the immense bed.
The silk duvet was cool and slippery. Lila pushed herself up onto her elbows, anger finally overriding the shock. “What is wrong with you?”
Victoria stood at the foot of the bed, outlined by the city lights. She was unraveling. Lila could see it in the tremor of her hands as she shrugged out of her ice-blue jacket, in the wild, unchecked fury in her eyes. The billionaire was gone. Someone else was here.
“You,” Victoria bit out, the word harsh and guttual. “Standing there. Taking it. With those fucking eyes.” She kicked off her heels. “You were perfect.”
It wasn’t a compliment. It was an accusation. She climbed onto the bed, a predator reclaiming territory, and pushed Lila back down with a palm flat against her sternum.
“Perfect?” Lila wheezed, struggling under the weight of her. “She eviscerated me!”
“And you just stood there!” Victoria’s face was inches away, her breath hot. “You let her. You with your art history and your principles. You were supposed to be a shield. A pretty, useless shield. Not… not that.”
Her mouth crashed down on Lila’s. This was nothing like the dinner kiss. That had been a statement. This was a consumption. It was all teeth and claiming tongue, a frantic, desperate thing that tasted like rage and expensive wine. Lila froze for a second, then her body, betraying every sensible thought, ignited. She kissed back, a muffled sound of protest and need caught in her throat. Her hands came up, not to push Victoria away, but to clutch at the fine fabric of her blouse.
Victoria broke the kiss as violently as she’d started it. Her eyes scanned Lila’s face, her blown-wide pupils, her kissed-red mouth. “You liked it,” she whispered, a dawning, terrifying realization. “You liked me putting her in her place. You liked being my weapon.”
“No, I—”
The denial was cut short as Victoria rolled her over in one swift, brutal motion. Suddenly Lila was face-down in the silk, the scent of Victoria’s perfume overwhelming. She felt Victoria’s weight straddle her hips, a knee nudging her legs apart. Cool air hit the backs of her thighs as her dress was rucked up.
A slap landed. Not a playful tap. A sharp, stinging crack that echoed in the spacious room. Lila jolted, a yelp escaping into the duvet.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Victoria hissed. Another slap, on the other side, harder. The pain was a bright, shocking bloom. It wasn’t just pain. It was a focus. It burned away the humiliation from dinner, the confusing swirl of fear and attraction, and left only a pure, startling present.
“Is this…” Lila gasped, trying to twist, “part of the deal?”
“This has nothing to do with any deal.” Slap. Slap. The rhythm was erratic, punishing. The sting built into a deep, throbbing heat. “This is for smiling at her. This is for having an answer about ‘value’.” Slap. “This is for making me want to ruin you in front of them.”
With each strike, Victoria’s words lost their coherence, devolving into a ragged mantra. “Mine,” she breathed, her hand falling again. “You’re. Mine.”
Lila’s tears came then, hot and silent at first, then in shaking sobs that she muffled in the bedding. The tears weren’t just from the pain. They were from the terrifying truth in Victoria’s words. She had liked it. The power. The possession. The way it simplified everything into a single, scorching point of contact.
The spanking stopped as abruptly as it began. The room was filled with the sound of their ragged breathing. Lila’s entire backside felt alive, a universe of concentrated sensation.
Slowly, Victoria’s weight shifted. Her hands, which had been instruments of punishment, now smoothed over the heated skin, a touch so unexpectedly gentle it made Lila flinch. She traced the outlines of her own handiwork, her breath hitching. Then she bent down, her ice-blonde hair falling like a curtain beside Lila’s face, and pressed her lips to the shell of Lila’s ear.
“No one,” she whispered, the violence gone from her voice, replaced by a hollow, aching urgency, “gets to make you feel small. Not even me.”
She rolled off, lying on her back beside Lila, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. The city glittered, indifferent. The performance was over. The family drama was miles away. Here, in the wreckage of the bed, there was only the aftermath and the two of them, breathing in the dark, forever changed.