Chapter 174: Addiction
Before Elias could react, the grip around his wrist tightened with a force he could not refuse.
He was dragged back in one clean motion and dropped into Yvonne’s lap, caught against the softness of her body.
His mood changed as fast as it had when she rejected him.
The instant he was seated on her again, the anger vanished. Elias brightened at once, his smile dazzling.
"Yvonne," he said in a sweet, deliberately airy voice, "did you change your mind?"
Yvonne knew that tone was fake.
She knew he was performing. The sweetness was exaggerated, the softness too practiced, the whole act shalessly artificial.
Even so, with Elias smiling at her like that, disgust was hard to reach.
He turned slightly and slipped his arms around her neck with practiced ease. Then he leaned forward and offered her his mouth.
"Don’t worry," he said. "I’m clean. Serena Blackwood, Liora Voss, Giselle Frost. Which one of them looks like the kind of woman who’d be careless?"
One na after another left his mouth.
To anyone else, those nas would have sounded almost unreal. Won like them were the sort of people ordinary n watched from a distance: powerful, beautiful, wealthy, untouchable, the kind of won a person might dream of eting once and never manage to approach.
From Elias’s mouth, they sounded like trophies.
Won he had already taken, or won he would take soon.
His expression said the sa thing.
He was bragging.
He was telling Yvonne that being chosen by him, being invited into his bed, was an honor she should recognize.
"You," Yvonne said flatly.
Elias paused.
Then he understood. She was answering his question about who looked careless.
He did not mind at all. His smile blood, bright and soft. Like a cat asking for affection, he rubbed his cheek against hers, his voice light enough to brush over skin.
"Then, Doctor, why don’t you examine ? See what’s wrong with my body."
That single sentence struck the last remaining thread of Yvonne’s restraint.
It snapped.
"Ah!"
Elias cried out, but the sound carried more excitent than fear.
"Yvonne, slow down!"
She had lifted him into her arms.
Elias hooked both arms around her neck, his legs swinging restlessly in the air like the tail of a fish that had no intention of being still.
The bedroom matched the rest of the apartnt.
Cold. Severe. Ordered to the point of discomfort. At first glance, it looked less like a place to sleep and more like a private patient room stripped of all warmth.
Yvonne threw him onto the bed.
The mattress was so soft that Elias sank into it before he could catch himself. He had barely begun to move when pressure closed around his throat, pinning him in place until his breath caught.
He had experienced this feeling too many tis to panic from it alone.
With the system’s skill active beneath his skin, the sensation blurred, warped, and turned strange. It was like being subrged in a bath, except the water was hot enough to scald.
At so precise point, Yvonne released him.
She had found his limit faster than Serena, even though Serena had done this to him more than once.
Elias lay on his back, staring at the ceiling while his vision blurred. He drew breath in rough, uneven pulls.
After a while, his sight cleared.
He looked down, searching for Yvonne’s face.
He was still smiling.
He laughed, then coughed. "Yvonne, you’re so nice. So softhearted. When my ex did that to , she actually made pass out once."
The comparison was deliberate.
So was the provocation.
Behind Yvonne’s gold-rimd glasses, her pupils trembled.
Elias had pushed her close to madness.
He was not afraid.
Instead, he kicked off his shoes with reckless delight, revealing feet in clean white socks, his expression bright with a feverish kind of joy.
There was an abyss in front of him, and he looked thrilled to lean over the edge.
That was the smile of a demon.
Yvonne saw it clearly.
She still could not turn back.
Her only choice now was to go into the abyss with him and find out which of them would shatter first.
So ti later, Elias lay in the curve of Yvonne’s arm.
After a while, he turned his head toward the beauty beside him and sighed in deep satisfaction.
"Yvonne," he said hoarsely, "you really are the best."
Comparison made so things painfully clear.
For a first ti, how was Yvonne this good, while Serena had been like an elentary schooler fumbling through a lesson?
It had to be because Serena was useless.
[System Theta: ...]
If Serena Blackwood ever heard what he was thinking, even System Theta did not know what she would do.
Afterward, Elias always beca lazy.
Boneless.
Unwilling to move.
He opened his mouth and gave a small yawn, then asked in a raspy voice, "Do you have cigarettes?"
Yvonne lowered her gaze to him.
There was no extra emotion in her eyes, but Elias understood the look. She was probably wondering why he knew how to do everything.
He smiled and gave her the answer.
"Because I’m a bad boy."
Because he was bad, seducing won, smoking, drinking, and all the rest of it beca natural. Expected, even.
Yvonne shook her head. "No."
Her voice was a little hoarse too, but only a little. In tonight’s concert, Elias had been the lead singer.
That slight roughness only made her already addictive voice worse.
It made Elias want to eat her alive.
"I don’t care." Elias shook his head too, then pouted. "Go buy so. I’m craving one, and I want it now."
It was an order, but with his lips pushed out and his voice softened by exhaustion, it sounded more like spoiled begging.
Looking at him, Yvonne could hardly imagine what he looked like when soone refused him. He was too righteous about asking, too certain he would be indulged. It made him seem like soone who had been spoiled for so long that wanting a thing and receiving it had beco the sa action.
In truth, Yvonne had already seen what happened when he was refused.
He put away every trace of obedience and let all his cruelty show.
It would be better not to refuse him.
Yvonne lifted the blanket and got out of bed.
Elias smiled at once.
He had known she would agree.
Getting access to his body had raised Yvonne’s favorability in the most obvious way so far.
[Yvonne Quinn’s favorability has increased. Current value: 40%.]
That notice had appeared earlier, and it was exactly what Elias expected.
According to the story settings, Yvonne was the one most interested in his body. That interest was not limited to sex, either. To her, his body had too many things worth studying.
[System Theta: But... won’t she be harder to raise later?]
Elias’s mouth curved. "Baby’s learning how to think. That deserves praise. You’re right. This isn’t exactly good news. It ans Yvonne’s favorability will rise more slowly from here."
He did not sound worried.
"But for , it doesn’t make much difference."
It took Yvonne a while to co back.
When she did, she was holding an expensive carton of cigarettes.
Elias raised an eyebrow and sat up. "Why did you buy sothing this expensive?"
Yvonne’s answer was calm.
"More expensive cigarettes do less damage to the body."
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