And somewhere out there, Merrick was plotting his next move.
I finished the bourbon in one long swallow and set the glass down.
What the fuck am I going to do now?
The answer came to me slowly, inevitably.
I was going to fight.
For her. For the life I didn't deserve but wanted, anyway.
And if Merrick wanted me?
He could fucking try.
14
MILA
Iwoke with my body already ahead of my mind.
Heat lingered between my thighs, low and insistent, like it had been banked overnight instead of spent.
My sheets were twisted. My muscles ached in the best way—from tension, from restraint, from wanting something and not having it. Connor’s mouth, Connor’s hands, Connor stopping when everything in me had been screamingdon’t—it all replayed in fragments, sharp and vivid.
I lay there staring at the pale ceiling, listening to Paris wake up outside my window, and realized something that made my pulse jump.
I wasn’t embarrassed by how much I wanted him.
That was new.
Back home, desire had always come with an apology attached. A quiet negotiation. A sense that if I leaned too far into it, I’d lose something—dignity, safety, control. But this morning, wanting felt like momentum. Like direction.
Amaya had been right.
I didn’t want to be protected from myself.
What I wanted was to be met.
The thought unfurled slowly, dangerously, like a truth I’d been circling for years without naming.
I didn’t want safety rails or careful pacing or to be talked down from my own desire. I wanted to feel him lose something—just a little—because of me. I wanted to see what happened when his discipline slipped, when the careful distance cracked and something raw pushed through.
I imagined it without trying to censor myself.
His hands on my hips, sudden and decisive, lifting me like my weight didn’t register. My back against a wall I hadn’t chosen. His mouth claiming mine in public, unapologetic, like he’d decided I was worth the risk of being seen. The city watching and not watching at the same time. The heat of it—the danger, the immediacy—making my knees weak.
I imagined him kissing me where anyone could see.
I imagined him not caring.
It wasn’t about being fucked in public—not really. It was about being wanted so fully that restraint became a choice instead of a rule. About knowing he could stop and choosing, just once, not to. Choosing me instead.
My body reacted to the thought, heat pooling low and insistent, my breath going shallow as if the fantasy itself were already pressing me back against stone and glass and night.
I wanted to tempt him.
To make him see me as I was now—awake, intentional, unashamed—and decide, all on his own, that he was done holding back. That whatever rules he lived by bent when it came to me.
