Chapter 138: No Cracks

Serena Blackwood knew exactly where Elias Kane’s limit was.

That knowledge was the only reason this test worked.

She knew.

Liora Voss did not.

Serena’s hand moved with almost tender care, her palm resting over the place where Elias’s mouth lay beneath the bandages. The gesture looked gentle if a person judged only the shape of it. The reality was much crueler. She was taking away a person’s right to breathe and doing it with a lover’s hand.

Elias’s straight legs suddenly bent.

The motion was sharp, instinctive, like a drowning person’s final struggle before the water closed completely. His toes curled hard, the bare tendons along his feet tightening until even that small exposed part of him betrayed how close he was to the edge.

He was almost at his limit.

Serena glanced briefly at his feet, then returned her attention to Liora’s face.

Even now, she found nothing there.

No anger.

No panic.

Not even discomfort.

Liora looked as if Elias’s life had no personal weight to her at all. She watched with interest, with a kind of contained excitement Serena understood too well, but there was no protective reflex, no betrayed softness, no split-second failure of control.

In the end, Serena was the one who let go first.

Air found Elias again. Under the tight bandages covering his face, the part over his mouth began to rise and fall visibly as he dragged in rough breaths, every inhale trapped and distorted by the layers wrapped around him.

Liora laughed softly and gave her assessment. "You didn’t wrap him tightly enough."

There were gaps. That was the only reason Elias had been allowed to survive this particular game.

At last, a trace of amusement touched Serena’s darker expression. Her smile was shallow, carrying a kind of indulgent pity. "We were only playing. There was no need to take it that far."

"You really are gentle," Liora said.

She shook her head, turned away as if the entertainment had finished, and added, "I’m done chatting. I’m hungry."

After Liora left, Serena lowered her head and looked at Elias.

Her fingers moved over the bandages at his cheek until she found the end. Then she began to unwind them slowly.

In another person, this would have been its own small torture. Even without adhesive, sweat would have made the fabric catch and tug. Fine hairs would have been pulled at the root, layer after layer, until the removal stung almost as much as the binding.

Elias did not have that problem.

Smooth as snow was not a figure of speech with him. His skin really was almost unfairly clean, with only the faintest down too fine to notice unless the light chose to betray it. The bandages came away with startling ease, sliding free from him as if even fabric had no right to cling.

The process was simple. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

What waited underneath was not.

Because he had been held near suffocation, the face revealed to Serena was flushed deep red. His lips were vivid from trapped breath and pressure, full and wet as they parted the instant they were freed. He began breathing hard at once, each breath pulled in with a desperate rhythm that his pride was too weakened to disguise.

Serena continued unwrapping him until his whole face returned to the light.

Elias clearly had not recovered. He lay in Serena’s arms while she removed the mask and then the blindfold. His eyes were red, bright with water, and the moment light reached them, tears slid down naturally, as if his body had been waiting for permission to break.

"Why are you crying?" Serena asked.

Her tone was fond, almost teasing, as if she were indulging a boyfriend’s temper after pushing him a little too far.

Elias lay there limp and breathless. "Take the rest off."

"Of course."

Serena smiled and started removing the bandages from his body.

Elias closed his eyes with apparent weakness.

Inside his mind, he was replaying everything that had just happened.

Serena would probably never imagine that he had seen the entire scene clearly. He had heard every word as well. The blindfold, the earplugs, the wrapping, all of it had been useful theater, but not enough to blind him where it mattered.

The moment Liora appeared at the door, Elias had understood most of the situation.

Liora must have done something to set Serena off. That was why Serena had tested him first, then used him to test Liora.

[Why would she do that?]

System Theta sounded genuinely lost.

Never try to reason through the mind of someone who lives for entertainment, Elias replied solemnly. By the time you understand her, you’ll already be halfway to becoming one of them.

System Theta went silent at once, apparently frightened enough to stop analyzing Liora’s behavior.

Elias almost laughed.

I’m kidding, he said. Probably. My guess is that the thing I said after kissing her last night disgusted her, so this is her way of hitting back.

While speaking to System Theta, Elias noticed the open office door.

His voice, when he used it aloud, came out hoarse and surprised. "Why is the door open?"

"For air," Serena said.

The answer was so careless that Elias immediately "understood" the truth. "Did someone come in?"

Serena frowned slightly.

That was enough to confirm it for him.

Excitement sparked cleanly through Elias. Finally, he had a proper reason to hit her without needing to dress it up as character work.

He spat at her.

"Serena Blackwood, you bastard."

His face filled with anger at once. Already flushed from lack of air, it darkened further until the color looked almost blood-warm beneath his skin.

Serena lifted a hand and wiped her face.

"Disgusting," she said coldly.

She did not lose her temper.

Her mind was elsewhere.

Was this furious reaction truly shame and rage over being seen in such a state, or was it another performance meant to cover panic because the relationship had nearly been exposed?

Elias and Liora had reacted too perfectly.

Their flawless composure did not erase Serena’s suspicion. If anything, that was what made the suspicion worse. A normal person left traces. A guilty person left different ones. Those two had left nothing.

Nothing was not proof of innocence.

Sometimes it was proof that the lie had been built by experts.

Elias did not care whether Serena was still suspicious.

He had watched Liora’s performance with his own eyes. There had not been a single visible flaw. Even if Serena became completely certain they had already betrayed her a hundred times, she had no evidence. Without evidence, all she could do was swallow it and let the suspicion rot in her own chest.

Which meant Elias should take advantage of this chance.

A little toxic love game with Serena.

Specifically, he would be doing the hurting.

When Elias looked ready to spit again, Serena reacted faster than him and covered his mouth with her hand. "Stop it. Do you want me to finish unwrapping you or not?"

At that, fury seemed to blaze up in Elias’s eyes.

The look said everything his covered mouth could not. She had been the one to suggest this game, and now she was using the restraints from her own game to threaten him.

Even so, Elias went still.

Only then did Serena continue removing the bandages from his body.

When the layers came loose, the skin beneath was flushed pink from trapped heat, white under the redness in a way that made him look as if he had just stepped out of a long sauna. A faint damp warmth clung to him where the bandages had held him too closely.

The instant his hands were free, Elias attacked.

He went for Serena like a cat that had spent too long pretending not to have claws. Both hands struck toward her at once, fast and furious, every movement carrying the temper he had been forced to save while wrapped tight on her sofa.

Serena had expected it.

She caught him and pulled him tightly into her arms, pinning his wrists before he could do real damage. "I lied," she said. "No one came in. I opened the door myself."

Elias stared at her.

Does she believe herself when she says things like that?

With his hands trapped, he switched weapons.

He sank his teeth into Serena’s cheek.

Hard.

The bite was not playful. It carried the kind of force that wanted flesh, wanted a mark, wanted a piece of her torn loose as repayment.

Even Serena felt the pain. Her brows tightened, and she reached up with one hand to grip his jaw, forcing his mouth open. The moment she did, one of his hands slipped free from her control and landed a punch against her body.

For a while, Serena actually looked disheveled.

Her hair shifted. Her clothes wrinkled under his struggling hands. Elias fought in her arms with all the rage of someone wronged, exposed, and insulted past tolerance.

But Serena’s eyes remained cool.

She still did not get angry.

It was as if she had stepped outside the relationship and begun examining Elias from above, separating each reaction from the heat of the moment and weighing it for use.

Was this resistance emotional release?

Or was it panicked concealment because the secret had almost surfaced?

Serena twisted his arms behind his back and used the remaining bandage to bind his wrists tightly together, stealing his claws for a second time.

After that, Elias was once again firmly under her control.

All his flailing, striking, biting violence had been reduced to helpless softness in her arms. He lay against her, breath still uneven, his bound hands useless behind him while Serena held him exactly where she wanted him.

Then she lowered her head and took the trembling warmth of his mouth.