“Come with me,” he says.
I expect him to lead me to the control wing, to a wall of monitors and a lecture about protocols. He turns in the opposite direction and takes the corridor that runs behind the conservatory—a service line, narrow, with a low ceiling and doors that don’t announce themselves. He moves with that economy I’ve started to recognize as something learned in hallways where time matters more than appearances. He doesn’t look over his shoulder. He knows I’m here.
He takes me through a door I haven’t seen open before. The room beyond is not the studio salon. This is plain, almost severe. The windows are tall and uncurtained, letting the moonlight lie in strips across the floor. A single lamp pulls a circle on a low table. There’s a long, low couch, a bench built into the wall, a shelf with nothing on it but a stack of folded blankets and a bowl that looks like the kind of thing you put on a table to say you have taste but also eat your keys.
He closes the door with his palm flat, as if he doesn’t trust the handle not to make more noise than he wants. He doesn’t lock it. The decision to notice that is mine.
“This is where you live,” I say, and it’s not a question. It doesn’t look like anyone lives here. It looks like a person passes through and leaves the room a little better for it. It looks like a mind that needs fewer objects than most.
“For now,” he says. “We move rooms when it’s useful. I keep this one because nobody thinks to look for me in a space with nothing to catch the eye.”
“Show me,” I say again, because talking about walls is not what I came for.
“Come here,” he says back, and the mirroring lands somewhere low in my body and sets a pulse.
I walk. The robe brushes my calves. The slip slides along skin the way silk does when someone thought about how fabric should behave. He waits until I’m inside the circle of the lamp. Then he steps just close enough that I have to tilt my head to keep eye contact.
“What do you want from me?”
“Truth,” I say. “And you. In that order.” The sentence makes me blush like I’m twenty, but I don’t withdraw it. If he wanted coy, he wouldn’t have picked me.
He raises a hand and halts it a breath from my jaw. I lean into the space and make the contact for both of us. His palm warms my face. I feel his pulse in the base of his thumb, steady and faster than he wants to admit.
“Look at me,” he says.
“I am,” I answer, but I make my eyes stay where he wants—his face, his mouth, the tired line at the edge of his brow. He is the most dangerous when he is gentle; I know that now. He is also the most honest when he wants me to look.
“If I show you more,” he says, “you don’t get to pretend you weren’t shown. If I bring you closer, I keep you there. I don’t let Caldwell have a picture of you to hold up at a hearing. I don’t let you walk into a room alone when he has people who will make it look like you did. I will put a hand at the small of your back and it will be both choreography and protection. If you want out of that, you say it now. Not tomorrow.”
“I walked here,” I say. “Barefoot. Don’t make this sound like you dragged me.”
The corner of his mouth moves. “I’m not dragging you.” His fingers curve, asking the question they asked the first night.Tell me to stop.He doesn’t say it out loud because we both heard it then. I nod one short, deliberate nod and feel the answer settle in my chest like a stone that fits the palm.
“Then keep me in here,” I say again. “All the way in.”
He leads me deeper into his private wing, the hallway narrowing like a vein pulsing under skin, until we reach a room where rain-blurred moonlight filters through tall windows, casting everything in smeared silver and shadow. The air hangs heavy with the scent of old books and storm-damp wood, cool against my heated skin. He takes the belt of the robe with two fingers and lifts, not yanking like some desperate claim, but enough that the slack unravels, the fabric parting like split flesh exposing the slip beneath. It drops open, the chill air licking my collarbone, raising gooseflesh where moonlight paints my exposed chest in pale streaks. He watches my face, eyes dark and unblinking, searching for any fracture in my resolve. I keep my gaze locked on his, refusing to glance down, refusing to turn this into a show for the empty room—there's power in that, in holding the moment raw between us.
He steps behind me, his presence a solid heat at my back, not caging me like some predator bullshit, but deliberate, his fingers drawing the straps of the slip together where they've slid askew. He sets them back on my shoulders with the precision of wrapping a wound, two points of contact that sear into my skin, redrawing boundaries I didn't know were blurred. His breath ghosts my ear, warm and steady, and my cunt clenches involuntarily, a deep ache blooming low in my belly.
“Say what you need from me,” he says, voice low and gravel-rough, the kind of instruction that assumes I'll meet him halfway.
“Don’t lie,” I say, the words tumbling out sharp and unfiltered. “Don’t talk to me like a donor. Don’t make me beg for information you already decided to give. If you want to touch me, say it. If you want me to touch you, ask.” They hit the air like stones skipping across water, building a solid ground we can both stand on without slipping.
“Done,” he agrees, no pause, the word snapping into place like a lock. Then, softer: “And you—tell me when no is the right answer. If I’m holding you wrong. If you want the door open, say it before we forget there is one.”
“Okay,” I breathe, and the relief crashes through me—shoulders easing, throat loosening, lungs expanding like they've been holding back. The fear sharpens, gains definition, but doesn't rule.
He turns me gently, my back meeting the wall beneath the windows, cool plaster biting into my skin through the thin fabric, grounding me in the night's chill. He doesn't slam my wrists up like some dominance play; instead, he lifts my hands and places them on his shoulders. “Here,” he murmurs, voice steady as if directing pressure on a bleed. I curl my fingers into the damp cotton, feeling the warmth of his body seep through, the fabric clinging where rain has soaked his collar. I could linger like this, just breathing him in, the solid rise and fall under my palms.
He kisses me differently now—not the edged tension from last night in that cedar-scented room thick with unspoken debates. This is mine by choice; I came to him, I asked.He doesn't crowd or chase; he deepens only when I lean in, matching my rhythm, slow enough that my mind syncs with the heat pooling between my thighs, no longer a bystander to my own want. When his hand settles at my waist, fingers splaying wide and firm, the old instinct to tense dissolves. He's careful, as promised, but the undercurrent of his strength is undeniable, a promise of more if I reach for it.
“More,” I say into his mouth, not to guide him but to claim the words, to feel them vibrate against his lips.
He delivers. His mouth charts a path—down my throat, teeth grazing the pulse there, then to the hollow at my collarbone where skin always burns hot, no matter the storm outside. One hand stays open on my hip, an anchor that steadies without demanding submission, while the other cups the back of my neck—warm weight that could tighten into restraint if I invited it. I don't. He doesn't presume. That restraint, that held-back power, sends a fresh rush of slick heat between my legs, my clit throbbing with neglected need.
I'm fully in it now, no detached narration buffering me from the scrape of his cheek against my jaw—rough, unshaven, human as fuck. He tastes like the dregs of whiskey from his glass, clean linen from his shirt, and that underlying salt that's purely him, primal and unmasked. My hands roam, tracing the hard ridges of muscle under cotton along his back, the taut line between his shoulder blades I could sketch blind, his waist narrowing where my palms flatten and he exhales sharply, like he'd forgotten how to claim his own breath.
I haul him closer by fistfuls of his shirt because I fucking can. He surges forward with a low rumble, like a dam cracking under pressure he'd bottled himself.
