Chapter 9: Mine

Elijah didn't make it through dinner.

Every forced smile, every polite question from their parents about his "afternoon with that nice girl from your economics class," felt like swallowing glass. Sam sat across from him, playing the perfect stepdaughter, asking Helen about gallery updates and laughing at David's terrible jokes, but her eyes never left his face.

There was something different about her tonight. Something darker, more dangerous than her usual provocative games. The careful control she'd maintained over the past week had cracked, and underneath it was something raw and possessive that made the air between them crackle with electricity.

When she excused herself halfway through dessert, claiming she needed to work on her portfolio, Elijah lasted exactly ten minutes before following her upstairs. He found her door slightly ajar, music playing softly from within—an invitation or a challenge, he wasn't sure which.

He knocked once, a soft sound that was barely audible over the music.

"Come in," her voice called, and there was something in those two words that made his heart race.

She was sitting on her bed, laptop open, but she wasn't looking at the screen. Instead, she was looking directly at him, her blue eyes blazing with an intensity that took his breath away. She'd changed out of her sundress into shorts and a tank top that left very little to the imagination, and her hair fell in waves around her shoulders like spun gold.

"Close the door," she said quietly.

His hand moved to obey before his brain could protest, the soft click of the lock engaging sounding unnaturally loud in the charged silence.

"Sam, about today—"

"No." She closed the laptop and set it aside, her movements deliberate and controlled. "I'm done talking about today. I'm done talking about Jessica Martinez and what she represents and why you thought fucking someone else would cure you of wanting me."

The crude words hit him like a physical blow, but there was something underneath them—hurt so deep it made his chest ache.

"I didn't sleep with her," he said quickly. "I would never—"

"But you wanted to." She slid off the bed, moving toward him with predatory grace. "You wanted to so badly that you could taste it. You wanted to bury yourself in someone safe and appropriate and forget that your stepsister makes you lose your mind with wanting her."

Each word brought her closer until she was standing directly in front of him, close enough that he could smell her perfume, could see the rapid pulse beating at the base of her throat.

"Tell me I'm wrong," she whispered, her hands coming up to rest against his chest. "Tell me you didn't spend every second with her wishing it was me."

He couldn't. Because she was right—devastatingly, completely right. Even when Jessica had been at her most charming, most beautiful, most everything he should want in a woman, all he'd been able to think about was Sam.

"I thought so," she said when his silence stretched too long. "Do you know what that felt like? Seeing that picture? Watching you try to replace me with someone who would never understand you the way I do?"

"Sam—"

"It felt like dying." The words were raw, honest, and they cut through him like a knife. "It felt like watching you throw away everything we could be because you're too scared to admit what you really want."

Her hands slid up to frame his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Well, I'm done waiting for you to stop being scared. I'm done pretending I don't know exactly what I want."

"What do you want?" The question came out rougher than intended, laden with months of suppressed desire and desperate need.

"You." The word was fierce, uncompromising. "All of you. Not just the parts you think are acceptable, not just the moments when your guard is down. I want the man who looks at me like he's drowning and I'm the only thing that can save him."

She pressed closer, until every inch of her body was aligned with his, until he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of her clothes.

"I want the man who kissed me like his life depended on it. I want the man who made me come so hard I forgot my own name." Her voice dropped to a whisper that was somehow more powerful than a shout. "I want you to stop apologizing for wanting me and start doing something about it."

The words shattered the last of his resistance. All the guilt, all the careful rationalization, all the desperate attempts to be someone he wasn't—it all crumbled in the face of her fierce honesty.

"You have no idea what you're asking for," he said roughly, his hands moving to her waist despite every rational thought in his head screaming at him to stop.

"I'm asking for everything," she said simply. "I'm asking you to choose me. Not because it's easy, not because it makes sense, but because you can't imagine your life without me in it."

The truth of her words hit him like a physical blow. Because she was right—he couldn't imagine his life without her. She'd been the constant source of friction in his carefully ordered world for so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to exist without that electric tension between them.

"This is insane," he whispered, but his hands were already pulling her closer, already betraying the words coming out of his mouth.

"The best things usually are." She reached up to trace his lower lip with one finger, the simple touch sending fire racing through his veins. "Stop thinking, Elijah. Stop analyzing and planning and trying to control everything. Just feel."

And God help him, he did. He felt the softness of her skin beneath his hands, the way she fit perfectly against him, the desperate need that had been eating him alive for what felt like forever. He felt the rightness of this moment, the way everything else in his life faded to background noise when she was in his arms.

"Mine," he said roughly, the word torn from somewhere deep in his chest.

Her eyes blazed with triumph and desire in equal measure. "Prove it."

The challenge in her voice was his undoing. All the careful distance he'd maintained, all the walls he'd built to keep himself safe, crumbled in an instant. He captured her mouth with his in a kiss that was nothing like their desperate encounter in her room or their heated moment in the kitchen. This was claiming, pure and simple—a statement of ownership that left no room for doubt.

She melted against him with a soft sound of satisfaction, her arms winding around his neck as if she'd been waiting her entire life for this moment. When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, her eyes were dark with desire and something that looked like relief.

"Finally," she breathed against his lips.

But before he could respond, she was pushing him backward toward the bed, her hands already working at the buttons of his shirt with desperate efficiency. There was nothing tentative about her movements now, nothing uncertain. She knew exactly what she wanted and she was taking it.

"Sam, wait—" he started, some last vestige of rational thought trying to reassert itself.

"No more waiting." Her shirt hit the floor, followed immediately by her bra, and the sight of her bare breasts made his mouth go dry. "No more thinking. No more pretending this isn't what we both need."

She pushed him down onto the bed and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips with a confidence that took his breath away. In the soft light filtering through her curtains, she looked like some kind of goddess—all curves and golden skin and fierce, possessive hunger.

"You're mine," she whispered, leaning down to press kisses along his jaw, his neck, the sensitive spot just below his ear that made him groan. "You've always been mine. You just needed to stop fighting it long enough to admit it."

Her teeth grazed his earlobe, and the sensation shot straight to his cock, making him arch beneath her with a curse that would have made his father wash his mouth out with soap.

"That's it," she purred, grinding against him in a way that made stars explode behind his eyelids. "Stop thinking. Stop being noble. Just let me have you."

And God help him, he did. He let her strip away his clothes with hands that shook with need. He let her map every inch of his body with her mouth and tongue and teeth until he was writhing beneath her, desperate and aching and completely at her mercy.

When she finally sank down onto him, taking him deep with a gasp that was half pleasure, half relief, Elijah thought he might actually die from the intensity of it. She was so tight, so perfect, so absolutely everything he'd been denying himself for months.

"Jesus, Sam," he breathed, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave bruises.

"No," she said, moving against him with a rhythm that was driving him slowly insane. "Just me. Only me."

The possessiveness in her voice, the fierce claim of ownership, pushed him closer to the edge than he'd ever been. This wasn't just sex—it was a declaration of war against everyone and everything that had tried to keep them apart.

She rode him with an abandon that was both beautiful and devastating, her head thrown back, her hair cascading down her back like liquid gold. Every movement sent waves of pleasure crashing through him, building toward something that felt too big for his body to contain.

"Look at me," she demanded, and when he did, the intensity in her eyes nearly undid him completely. "I want you to see who's making you feel this way. I want you to remember this the next time you even think about trying to replace me with someone else."

The words were possessive, claiming, and they pushed him right over the edge he'd been dancing on. His release crashed through him with an intensity that left him gasping, his vision whiting out as every nerve ending in his body caught fire.

Sam followed him over a moment later, her body clenching around him as she cried out his name like a prayer, a claim, a promise all rolled into one.

They collapsed together onto her bed, sweaty and breathless and completely wrecked, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing.

"Wow," Sam said finally, her head pillowed on his chest, her finger tracing lazy patterns on his skin.

"Yeah," he agreed, because words felt inadequate for what had just happened between them.

This hadn't been just sex. This had been a claiming, pure and simple. A line crossed that could never be uncrossed, a declaration that changed everything.

And as Elijah held her close, listening to the sound of her breathing evening out, he realized that for the first time in his life, he wasn't afraid of the consequences.

Whatever came next, they would face it together.

Because she was right—she was his. She'd always been his.

He'd just been too much of a coward to admit it until now.