I stared at her. Deep inhale. Slow exhale. I could feel the old Crow lessons whispering at the back of my mind—control your tone. Do not scare her, crow.
“No.” I stood before the word finished forming. “No, you’re not.”
“Vince.”
“Don’t Vince me. You’re in pain. You can barely walk.” My gaze dragged down her body, cataloguing every tiny stiffness, every guarded movement, every place I’d made her soft and sore because she’d begged me to. “And now you’re going to put on heels and a dress and smile for six hours straight because your uncle needs a walking contract brochure?”
Her arms crossed automatically, that same defensive posture she took when dynasty men started dictating terms. Then she winced and let them drop when the motion pulled on sore muscles.
“I’ll be fine.”
Bullshit. I could feel my pulse in my teeth.
“You’ll be miserable.”
She shrugged. That indifferent little lift that wasn’t indifferent at all. “Not the first time.”
That sentence landed like a punch. It said more about her life than any file Luca had compiled on Thorne habits. Not thefirst time meant they’d been doing this for years—propping her up, painting her, sending her out, no matter what state she crawled in from.
“How long?” I needed numbers. Data. Something I could dismantle. “Give me numbers.”
“Afternoon arrivals.” She was already drifting toward the dresser with that careful not-limp I hated, like she thought if she pretended hard enough I wouldn’t notice. “Auction at six. Dinner at seven. Dancing starts at nine.”
“Dancing.” The word tasted like poison in my mouth. Imagining her in some overlit ballroom, wincing while some dynasty idiot spun her around, pretending she wasn’t sore and exhausted, made my hands curl into fists. “Tell me I’m wrong for being horrified.”
Her expression softened for half a second. The part of her that was falling for me peeked through the dynasty training. “You want me to tell my family I can’t go because I lost my virginity last night?”
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. No, I didn’t want her to tell them anything. I wanted them to vanish. I wanted every dynasty man who thought she was an accessory to choke on their own expectations. I wanted to pull her back into bed and bar the door and let the world burn while she healed in my shirt.
Instead, I walked over and caught her elbow, forcing my voice back down from lethal.
“You’re not fine,” I said, softer than my blood pressure deserved. Then my rage allowed.
“I will be.” Her hand rose, grabbed mine, turned it palm-up. She pressed a kiss to my knuckles like it was a promise she could keep just by being sweet. “I’ll take something before I leave.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
She leaned into me like she’d learned my nervous system the way I’d learned hers. “I know.”
Helping her dress felt like participating in a crime. Co-conspirator with the dynasty I’d been raised to coexist with, not trust. I hated it. I also hated how the dress looked on her, hiding the marks I’d left and framed her body for others to look stare at her.
My fingers brushed her spine, tracing the places I’d had my hands the night before, where she’d arched for me, trembled for me, trusted me.
“Last night, you didn’t just tell me you loved me and let me fuck you.”
My cock twitched, uselessly interested even now. I kept going, because this part was more important. “You agreed to something bigger. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“What did you agree to?”
She hesitated. Old fear of saying what she wanted out loud. “To the dynamic.”
I lifted a brow. I wasn’t going to let her half-name it.
“To be your submissive,” she added, a little stronger.
There it was. The word sank into my bones like ink.
