I pull back slightly, needing distance to think clearly. "This is happening too fast. We barely know each other."
His laugh returns, shorter this time, edged with something darker. "I know everything about you, Wren. Your childhood in Connecticut with parents who never understood your artistic drive. Your scholarship to RISD, your struggle to establish yourself in New York's competitive art scene. How you take your coffee in the morning versus the afternoon. The fact that yousketch obsessively when anxious but can't work at all when truly upset. The small scar on your left hip from falling off a bike at age nine." His fingers find that exact scar through the sheet, tracing it with unsettling precision. "I know the books on your nightstand, the music that moves you to tears, the exact shade of sunset that makes you stop whatever you're doing to stare at the sky."
I stare at him, cold fear threading through my desire. No casual observation could have provided this level of detail about my life. The surveillance I'd glimpsed hints of runs much deeper than I'd realized.
"How—"
"I've been watching you for longer than you know," he admits without a trace of shame. "From the moment I saw your early work in that small downtown gallery last year, I recognized what you could become. What we could be together."
Last year. Almost eight months before the auction where we supposedly met by chance. The room seems to tilt slightly as I process the implications.
"You engineered our meeting," I say slowly. "The commission, everything—it was all orchestrated."
"I created an opportunity," he corrects, completely unrepentant. "The talent was always yours. The connection between us was always real."
I should be terrified. Should be scrambling from this bed, this room, this house that suddenly feels like an elegant trap closing around me. Instead, I find myself caught in a dizzying mixture of emotions—violation at the intrusion into my privacy, yes, but also a perverse flattery that someone of his stature would invest such effort in pursuing me. And beneath both, a deeper, more troubling response: excitement.
"You had no right," I say, the protest sounding hollow even to my own ears.
"I have every right to pursue what belongs to me." His conviction is absolute, brooking no argument. "And you do belong to me, Wren. The sooner you accept that reality, the happier we both will be."
His hand slides beneath the sheet, tracing patterns on my bare skin that make coherent thought increasingly difficult. When his mouth finds the sensitive spot beneath my ear, I shudder helplessly, my body arching toward him of its own accord.
"See how perfectly you respond to me?" he murmurs against my skin. "As if made for my touch alone."
Part of me wants to resist—to push him away, to reassert boundaries and independence, to demand the autonomy that any modern woman should claim as her right. But another part, a part I've never fully acknowledged, thrills to his possession, to the absolute certainty with which he claims me.
As his hands and mouth work their magic on my willing body, drawing me once again into the whirlpool of sensation where thought becomes impossible, I recognize the truth he's naming: something in me has recognized something in him from the beginning—a key finding its lock, a missing piece finding its place.
And though the rational part of my mind still resists the totality of his claim, my body surrenders completely to the pleasure only he has ever been able to unlock within me, leaving the questions of tomorrow to be answered when passion's grip has loosened its hold.
ten
. . .
For three daysafter waking in Dominic's bed, I maintain the pretense of separation—sleeping in my assigned guest suite in the east wing rather than his master bedroom, working in my studio on "finishing touches" to the already-completed commission, taking meals alone when possible. It's a transparent charade. Each night, he appears at my door, sometimes with words, sometimes in silence, and I follow him to his bed like a sleepwalker drawn to a cliff's edge. Each morning, I slip away before dawn, returning to my own space to shower away his scent and rebuild the illusion of independence. He allows this dance, observing my retreat with patient amusement, as if indulging a child's game while knowing the rules are about to change.
On the fourth morning, I wake to find him watching me, propped on one elbow, his gaze tracking over my naked body with unhurried possession. Unlike previous mornings, he's fully awake before me, deliberately waiting.
"Your lease on your apartment ends next week," he says without preamble.
I freeze, the sheet clutched halfway up my body. "How do you know that?"
He doesn't bother answering the question, merely raises an eyebrow as if to say: You know how I know.
"I've been meaning to look for a new place," I say, sitting up fully, pulling the sheet with me like armor. "Now that the commission is done and I have some financial cushion."
"That won't be necessary." His tone is casual but absolute. "You'll move in here. Permanently."
Not a request. Not even a suggestion. A statement of fact, delivered with the confidence of someone unaccustomed to having his declarations questioned.
"Into the guest suite?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
His mouth curves slightly. "Into my penthouse. The Manhattan property, not this estate. It's more convenient for the galleries interested in your work, and I spend most weekdays there for business."
I stare at him, momentarily speechless. Moving in together is a significant step in any relationship—one that usually follows discussions, compromises, mutual decision-making. But Dominic approaches it like a business acquisition already finalized, merely informing me of the closing date.
"That's... a big step," I finally manage. "We've only been..." What? Sleeping together for three days? Circling each other for three months? The subject of his stalkerish interest for nearly a year?
