"Always." I kiss her forehead. "You deserved careful. You deserved choice. You deserved all of it."
She's quiet again, and I can see her mind working through something.
"What are you thinking?" I ask.
"That I need to go. Before it gets light." She starts to move away, and I have to force myself not to hold her tighter. "That was the deal."
"The deal. Right." I release her, letting her slip from the bed. "Tomorrow we pretend this didn't happen."
"Right," she confirms, gathering her clothes. "This was just about taking back what's mine."
"And did you? Take it back?"
She pauses at the door, looking back at me in the darkness. "Yes. When I close my eyes now, I'll remember your hands. Your eyes. The way you looked at me like I was precious instead of purchased."
Then she's gone, slipping out of my room like a ghost, leaving me alone with sheets that smell like her and the devastating knowledge that I just had the most intimate experience of my life with a woman who'll pretend it never happened come morning.
But if that's what she needs—if pretending is part of her healing—then I'll give her that too.
I'll give her anything she asks for.
Even if it destroys me in the process.
I lie awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling, trying to memorize every moment. The sound of her breathing. The taste of her skin. The way she said my name when she came apart in my arms.
Tomorrow she'll be distant and careful and we'll maintain the fiction that nothing has changed.
But something has changed. Everything has changed.
She chose me. Not because she had to, not because she was being conditioned or manipulated or trained.
Because she wanted to reclaim something that was stolen from her, and she trusted me to help her do it.
That trust is more precious than anything I've ever been given.
And I'll honor it by pretending tomorrow that tonight never happened.
Even if the memory of her in my arms is the only thing keeping me sane.
Chapter 41: Camilla
I wake up in my own bed and everything feels different.
The morning light filters through the curtains the same way it has for days. The villa is silent except for birds outside and the distant sound of water from the lake. Everything looks exactly as it did yesterday.
But I'm not the same person who woke up in this bed yesterday morning.
I can still feel him. Not just physically—though there's a tenderness between my legs that's a constant reminder—but deeper. The ghost of his hands on my skin. The memory of his eyes locked on mine. The sound of his voice saying "this is you choosing" while he helped me take back what was stolen.
I sit up slowly, my body protesting slightly. When I picture hands on my body now, they're not Kozlov's. They're Renato's. Careful, reverent, waiting for permission at every step.
It worked.
But now I have to face him. Have to pretend that nothing happened, that we didn't cross that line, that I didn't give him something I've never given anyone.
I shower carefully, dress in simple jeans and a t-shirt, and spend the morning avoiding the main floor. Not ready to pretend over coffee and casual conversation.
By afternoon, I'm restless enough to venture to the window.
