She racked her brain, desperately seeking a natural way out of the trap closing around her, but before she could formulate a plan, the front door loomed directly ahead.
Derek threw the door open. Yet what awaited Eileen on the other side was not a system error message. It was a new disaster entirely.
“…And what, exactly, do you think you’re doing with my wife?”
Silas had returned.
“Nhhah, ah! Ugh!”
Silas mercilessly worked two fingers against Eileen’s clitoris. But each time she hovered on the absolute precipice of release, he abruptly stilled his hand—only to resume the crude, grueling rhythm the second her breath began to settle.
She had attempted to flee from his towering fury, but the effort had ended in complete ruin. Now she lay sprawled across the bed, her legs pinned wide, her body laid entirely bare.
Every instinctive attempt to draw her thighs together and resist was broken by a single, casual movement of his hand.
“Pl-please… let me… ngh, let me go…”
“Why should I? This is a punishment, isn't it? Granting you a climax would make it a reward.”
His voice was laced with pure, dark fury. In his mind, his rage was entirely justified.
“My wife. In the arms of another man, barely covered by a bedsheet. Tell me, isn’t it only natural for me to be angry?”
Eileen was not his actual wife, yet the rage consuming him was undeniably real. He could not comprehend the origin of this burning resentment.
Was it mere possessiveness—a simple impulse to claim what was his? It felt far too visceral for that. If it were standard possessiveness, he would have felt something similar when failing to acquire a rare, limited-edition timepiece. This foul, suffocating sensation bore no resemblance to such petty desires.
Was it a knee-jerk rejection of the idea that she might slip beyond his control? No, she evaded his control constantly. He even found her pathetic, clumsy lies mildly entertaining, so that couldn't be it either.
“I’m sorry… ngh, nhahh… ah! Ugh!”
“What are you sorry for?”
“…”
Eileen found herself completely devoid of an answer. Her apology had sprung purely from the primal terror that he might end her life, mixed with the sheer torture of being repeatedly dragged to the edge of ecstasy only to be denied. In truth, she didn't even know what rule she had broken.
Wandering through the mansion wrapped in nothing but a bedsheet was a common occurrence—one that usually prompted Silas to laugh and press his lips against her neck.
As though he possessed an inexhaustible appetite for her body, he would just as easily spread that very bedsheet across the kitchen table, the study desk, or the living room sofa to take her right then and there.
At times, he would drive himself straight into her without warning; at others, he would meticulously scoop out his previously left traces with his fingers, claiming he was clearing the slate for a fresh batch. He would force her to gush with her own slick moisture until every trace of his previous release was erased, only to plunge his rigid length back inside and thrust until he came.
“See? You don't even know.”
“N-no…!”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Lies. The falsehoods she had fed him were beyond counting. A mental archive of every deception she had spun since arriving in this place flashed before her.
She remained silent, knowing that claiming she didn't know would only be another lie. Yet her silence only served to stoke the fires of Silas’s fury.
Eileen held her breath, unable to utter a syllable, but her body betrayed her with disgraceful honesty. A wet, slick friction echoed through the quiet room every time Silas’s fingers flexed and drove deep inside her core.
“Nhhngh…!”
When he hooked his fingers and struck deep against her sensitive walls, she felt as though she would burst into a climax at any second. But granting her release was not his intention.
Instead, his movements remained agonizingly slow, calculated, and unhurried. He deliberately skirted the exact pleasure points he knew all too well. Eileen writhed her hips in desperation, craving the pressure, but her silent pleas were ignored.
“Why did you try to leave this house?”
“I… hngh… I didn’t try to leave…!”
“Oh, really? So that police bastard tried to drag you out against your will?”
Eileen flinched at the sheer malice flashing in Silas’s eyes. Her mind involuntarily flashed back to the tense confrontation between Derek and Silas at the front entrance only moments before.
‘What do you think you're doing?’
Derek, instantly recognizing that Silas was approaching with intent to kill, fumbled frantically in his coat before drawing his service weapon. Even with the barrel trained directly at his chest, Silas had merely offered a cold, mocking smirk. It was the detective who was trembling.
‘I-I’m with the police.’
‘Why are the police in my house? With my wife?’
‘We received an official missing person’s report for Ms. Eileen Bennett. We came to locate her.’
‘How did you trace her here?’
‘Through your marriage to—’
‘You’re mistaken. We aren’t legally married.’
Silas’s eyes had flickered with a brief, volatile shift at the mention of Eileen Bennett’s missing person file, though his face quickly smoothed back into an unreadable mask.
Yet beneath that calm exterior, his rage was volatile. Had he not wasted precious minutes stalling and firing off procedural questions to get his attorney on the line, his wife might have already vanished by the time he stepped through the door.
Recalling the detective’s pale, flustered expression upon realizing the owner of the house had returned, Silas genuinely regretted not opening the man's throat on the spot.
‘…It was a tip.’
‘There was no tip. My wife hasn’t set foot outside this property since the day she arrived. And let me make one thing abundantly clear: every word you utter in this house is being recorded. This is private property and an enclosed personal space, making your presence here entirely unlawful. It will be admissible in court, so I suggest you measure your next words very carefully.’
In the end, Derek was left with no choice but to offer a tense apology and retreat. The entire operation had unraveled the moment his phone battery died. Noah Cruz was supposed to alert him the moment Silas Blackwood’s interrogation concluded at the station, but the call never came, triggering this complete disaster.
Still, the intrusion hadn't been entirely fruitless. He had confirmed that the missing Eileen Bennett was alive rather than a corpse buried in a ditch. Yet leaving her trapped with the prime suspect in a brutal homicide offered little comfort. Derek had made one final attempt to pull her away.
‘Regardless, an active missing person report remains open, and I am obligated to process it. Ms. Eileen Bennett, you need to accompany me to the precinct.’
‘Out of the question. She has no surviving family left to report her missing, so confirming her survival is more than sufficient. And given that she is now my common-law wife, I’ll ask you to kindly remove yourself from my home.’
Silas had reached out, sweeping aside Eileen’s waist-length blonde hair to expose the pale curve of her neck. He abhorred the thought of letting another man even catch a glimpse of her, yet watching the detective flinch at the dense pattern of dark crimson bite marks coating her skin provided a bitter sense of satisfaction.
‘My wife and I were planning to spend some quiet time together, and finding her half-naked with a strange man in my foyer is testing the limits of my patience.’
Without waiting for a response, Silas had lifted Eileen into his arms and carried her straight up to the master bedroom. Lacking a warrant for forced entry and facing clear legal opposition, Derek had no option but to withdraw. And for Eileen, left behind in the silent mansion, Silas’s grueling "punishment" had begun.
“It’s… it’s a misunderstanding, nhugh, ah…! I… I said… ugh… that I wouldn’t leave.”
“I know. You can’t leave this place without me anyway.”
Silas’s tone seemed to ease slightly, though his fingers continued their slow, relentless exploration, tracing her slick inner walls and digging deeper.
“The police will likely attempt to contact me again… What should I do about that?”
As he pondered the dilemma aloud, his fingertips finally brushed against the precise, excruciatingly sensitive focal point she had been begging for.
“Nhhah, ah! Ah…! Th-there…! Ugh!”
“Right here? Yes, you love this spot. You like it even better when it’s my shaft driving into it.”
“Haa, ah…! Yes! Nhahh! Yes…!”
His pace quickened instantly. Eileen, pushed to the absolute brink, rolled her hips against his hand in an uninhibited, desperate plea for completion.
“Hahuuh, I-I’m coming…!”
It was right there. Finally.
Yet to her complete despair, Silas withdrew his hand completely without a second's hesitation.
“Why… why…”
Though her body spasmed in violent, unfulfilled disappointment, there was nothing left inside her. Neither his thick length nor his fingers remained to anchor her.
“Because this is a punishment.”
Silas spoke with chilling indifference, looking down at Eileen as she lay gasping for air, tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
He raised the fingers that had been plundering her body, and though his mouth hovered near the clitoris he so frequently devoured, he merely used his tongue to lap the glistening moisture from his own knuckles.
“I picked up a few gifts for you on my way home.”
He retrieved a plain black shopping bag devoid of any brand logos. Turning it upside down, a cascading pile of sleek, colorful packages spilled across the mattress.
They were high-end adult toys, neatly encased in structured boxes. It appeared he had been entirely serious when he threatened to strap suction devices and vibrators to her body before leaving her alone next time.
Silas’s cold, dark smile sent a shiver of dread through her chest, yet the involuntary anticipation of what those devices would do caused her core to pulse helplessly.
“Perhaps I should attach an ankle shackle to you as well?”
Silas reached down, his large hand wrapping around one of Eileen’s ankles and lifting her leg high into the air. Her lower body opened wider to his gaze, letting the pooled warmth inside trickle out onto the sheets beneath them.