The foyer still smelled of copper and gunpowder when Damien carried Elena upstairs—her naked body limp in his arms, silver collar glinting under hallway sconces, cum still leaking in slow, viscous trails down the insides of her thighs to drip onto the marble steps.

Her skin was a canvas of ruin: wax flakes clinging to her breasts like blackened petals, welts crisscrossing her ass and inner thighs in angry lattices, bite marks ringing her nipples like dark halos, faint rope burns on her wrists, and between her legs—both holes gaping, swollen, red-raw from hours of merciless use.