His face pales slightly. "You're not imprisoned. You're protected."
"It's the same thing if I can't leave." I pull the sheet tighter around myself. "I understand your fear. I understand why you need control. But I'm not Katya. I'm not a twelve-year-old girl who needs to be locked away for her own safety. I'm a grown woman with a life and a career and dreams that don't include being someone's prisoner."
His jaw tightens. "Sergei?—"
"Will eventually be dealt with. And then what? You'll find another threat, another reason to keep me here. There will always be danger in your world, Ilya. Always another enemy, another rival, another reason why I can't be allowed freedom." I shake my head. "I can't live like that. I won't."
He's staring at me, and I can see the conflict in his eyes. The need to keep me safe warring with the understanding that I'm right.
"If you want me truly," I continue, my voice softer now, "if you want me to be yours the way I was last night, then you have to trust me. You have to trust that I can navigate danger, that I can be careful, that I won't be taken from you the way Katya was."
"I don't know how to trust." The admission is raw and honest, and it makes my chest ache. He’s giving more than he’s ever given anyone, but I can’t allow him to control me completely. There has to be a give and take, or there can’t be anything at all. "I only know how to own. How to control."
"Then learn." I reach out and take his hand, curling my fingers around his palm. "Learn to trust me. Learn to see me as a partner instead of a possession. Love doesn't have to mean imprisonment."
“I can't love you if you keep me in a cage," I say softly. "I can't be yours if being yours means giving up everything that makes me who I am. So you have a choice. You can keep trying to control me, to own me, to protect me by imprisoning me. Or you can trust me."
"And if something happens to you?" His voice is strained. "If someone else hurts you because I wasn't controlling enough, wasn't careful enough, wasn't?—"
“That’s the risk.” I reach up to touch his cheek, and I feel him lean into my fingertips, ever so slightly. “Love… arelationship, requires vulnerability, Ilya. You have to accept that you can't control everything, that bad things might happen, that loss is always possible. You have to be willing to lose something to really feel what it’s like to have it. There’s always two sides to everything. Love and hate, possession and loss, dark and light. You can’t have one without the other. Ilya… you can’t keep me a prisoner and tell yourself that I’m here of my own free will.”
He closes his eyes, and I can see the struggle playing out across his features. Everything he's built, everything he's become, everything he's promised himself—it's all predicated on control. On never being powerless again. On protecting what's his so obsessively that nothing can be taken.
I'm asking him to let go of that. To trust. To accept vulnerability. To break the promise he made to himself the night his sister died.
"I can't," he says finally, opening his eyes. "I can't risk losing you. I can't go through that again."
I feel something crack in my chest, pain lancing through me as I look at the pain and regret in his eyes. I see who he is, as surely as he saw me—not just a man who wants to control me, but a man who's so traumatized by loss that he's built his entire identity around preventing it from happening again.
But I can't fix that. I can't heal that wound. Only he can.
I reach to the back of my neck, unclasping the diamond choker. It falls into my palm, glittering in the morning light. I hold it for a moment, feeling the weight of it, and then I place it in his hand.
“I told you last night,” I say quietly, "if you want me to wear your collar and be yours in the way you're asking, then you have to meet me halfway. You have to trust me enough to let me have a life outside this penthouse. You have to let me have control, too. Not just in bed, but in my life. I can’t be kept like a pet, Ilya. I’m a woman, and if you want me, you have to have me on my terms, too… not just yours.”
He stares at the choker in his hand.
"I don't know if I can," he says.At least he's being honest.
"Then I can't wear this." I gesture to the choker. "I can't be yours. Not the way you want. Not if it means giving up everything I am."
We sit there in silence, the morning light streaming through the windows, the choker glittering between us, a question that has no easy answer.
Finally, he stands. He's still holding the choker, and he looks at it for a long moment before closing his fist around it.
"I need to think," he says.
"Okay,” I whisper, my chest aching, tears stinging my eyes.How does this hurt so much?I don’t know when I started wanting to stay so badly, for him to give me what I need, too, but suddenly the thought of following through on everything I’ve said feels unfathomably painful.
He walks to the door, then pauses, looking back at me. I can see the pain in his eyes, the fear, the desperate need to find a way to keep me without losing me.
But he doesn't say anything. He just leaves, closing the door quietly behind him.
I sit there in his bed, wrapped in his sheets, the scent of him still on my skin, and I know I've just issued an ultimatum.Trust me or lose me. Let me be free if you want to keep me.
I suspect he'll try to wait me out, try to wear down my resistance, try to make me see that his way is the only way. But I'm determined.
I won't live as someone's captive, no matter how much my traitorous body wants him.
