"Will you teach me?" The question slips out before I can stop it. "About intimacy, about... everything?"
"If you want me to."
"I do." The answer comes without hesitation. "I want to learn everything you're willing to show me."
His smile is brilliant and hungry and completely male. "Then we'll begin tonight."
Tonight. The word sends anticipation and nervousness racing through me in equal measure.
"What will happen tonight?"
"I'll start teaching you about pleasure, Maya. Real pleasure, the kind that comes from perfect submission to someone who treasures you." His voice is rough with promise. "You'll learn what it means to be touched by someone who understands your value."
Someone who understands my value. After years of feeling worthless, replaceable, always second-best, the promise hits like salvation.
"I can't wait," I whisper, meaning it completely.
The rest of the day passes in a haze of anticipation. Every casual touch during our sessions feels charged with new meaning. Every word of praise carries undertones that make my skin flush and my pulse race. I find myself watching his mouth, remembering the feel of it against mine, wondering what other things he'll teach me to want.
When evening comes and he walks me back to my quarters, I don't want the day to end.
"Tonight," he promises, his hand warm against my lower back. "Rest now. You'll need your strength."
Alone in my luxurious room, I touch my lips and try to process everything that's changed. This morning, I was just a research fellow learning to channel magical energy through submission. Now I'm... what? Someone Thorian wants to kiss, to teach, to treasure?
Someone he thinks is perfect exactly as I am. Someone a Fae—an actual Fae—finds worthy of his attention.
The impossibility of it makes my head spin. Thorian isn't just brilliant or powerful—he's otherworldly beautiful, ancient beyond human comprehension, the kind of being that exists in stories and legends. And he wants me. Ordinary, inexperienced, forever-second-place Maya.
I touch my lips and try to process what his kiss means. David couldn't see past my inexperience to anything worth keeping.But this magnificent Fae male looks at my virginity and calls it perfect. Looks at my eagerness to submit and sees treasure instead of weakness.
And if that means learning about intimacy and submission and all the things David said I wasn't ready for... well, maybe I'm finally ready to discover what I've been missing.
Maybe I'm ready to become everything Thorian needs me to be.
Alone in my luxurious room, I touch my lips and try to process everything that's changed. This morning, I was just a research fellow learning to channel magical energy through submission. Now I'm someone a Fae wants to kiss, to teach, to treasure.
The thought makes my chest tight with disbelief. Thorian isn't just any man—he's Fae, ancient and powerful and impossibly beautiful. The kind of being that human women write fantasies about but never actually encounter. And he chose me. Not Sarah with her confidence and experience. Not some sophisticated omega who knows how to please an alpha. Me.
I lie back on the silk sheets, my body still humming from his kisses, and let myself imagine what tonight might bring. His enormous hands teaching me things I've never dreamed of, that deep voice commanding me through pleasures I can't even name.
"Such a perfect little scientist," he'd whisper as those massive hands explore places no one has ever touched. "Made just for me, weren't you?"
"Yes," fantasy-Maya would gasp, arching under his touch. "Only for you."
"Going to teach you exactly how good submission can feel," he'd promise, his voice rough with controlled desire. "Show you what this body was designed for."
The images make me press my thighs together, seeking relief from the ache building there. I can almost feel his weight covering me, his incredible size making me feel delicate and feminine and utterly claimed. The slickness between my legs increases until I'm convinced he'd be able to scent my arousal the moment he walked into the room.
I bury my face in the pillow that carries traces of his scent, breathing him in deeply. The woodsy warmth mixed with something purely Fae makes my body respond with desperate need. My hips shift restlessly against the sheets, and without really thinking about it, I let my hand drift down between my legs.
The first touch makes me gasp. I'm so wet, so sensitive, and when my fingers find that aching spot I've never paid attention to before, pleasure spikes through me in ways I didn't know were possible.
"Thorian," I whisper into the pillow, imagining it's his massive hands touching me instead of my own small fingers. In my mind, he's whispering encouragement, telling me how perfect I am, how responsive, how made for his touch.
The fantasy builds until I'm trembling, lost in sensations I've never allowed myself to explore, chasing something I don't understand but need desperately. When release finally crashes through me, I bite the pillow to muffle my cry, my body clenching around nothing while I imagine it's him making me feel this way.
Tomorrow night can't come fast enough. Whatever he plans to teach me, however intimate these lessons become, I'm ready to learn. Ready to discover what it means to be treasured by someone who could have anyone but chose me.
