Dorian didn’t believe in doling out one huge helping of pain. No, he liked to make it last, like papercuts.
There had been no more knocks at her door. No late-night visits. No hangovers on her welcome mat.
That night had been a glitch in his matrix. He had rebooted and recalibrated like the fucking automated cunt he was. He was also revamping her vocabulary.
Rune had started packing in earnest now. One or two boxes every night in that quiet, methodical way that she had learned from Dorian. Her small flat was slowly emptying itself of the life she breathed into it.
Yesterday, she'd opened the drawer beside her bed and found the small silver compass. It had been a joke from a time when it felt like Dorian and she could become... more. She'd gotten lost on a business trip to Edinburgh, and Dorian had bought it the next morning, tossing it on her desk without a word.
The inscription said –"For your future lapses in judgment."
It had made her laugh. She'd kept it in her bedside drawer ever since.
Later, in an old folder, tucked behind tax receipts, she found the polaroid – an accidental photo from a company retreat. Hugh, a former employee, had snapped her mid-laugh, Dorian in the background, looking at her with something dangerously close to softness. Obviously, Dorian had not liked it at all.
She stared at the image, allowing herself to trace the familiar lines with her eyes in a way she never did in reality. Sometimes, looking into Dorian's eyes felt like looking at the sun too long. Hooded dark eyes, impossible to read yet devastating when they locked onto you. Curly blonde hair, tousled in a way that was almost boyish until you saw the rest of him. The contrast of thick, dark brows, a few shades deeper than his hair, lent his face a severity the curls could never soften.A precise bristle traced the high planes of his cheeks, swept over the curve above his upper lip, and framed the strong line of his chin, turning his beauty into something temptingly male. It framed a mouth that could be cruel or... once, long ago... kind on the rare occasion when his guard was down.
He stood at six-foot-three to her five-foot-nine, built like someone who was religious about the gym and never skipped leg day. Not an ounce of spare flesh on him, just lean, controlled power. Without his clothes, he was a god. And when he had her under him as he liked, he had been dominant and unyielding. Until a few weeks ago, his focus on her had been absolute when they were alone, like she was the brightest star in his sky. Like she was his little secret from the world. His, and only his, though he never said so.
Then Crispin had unravelled over the last few months, and somehow Dorian had changed too, becoming a cruel stranger, pulling away without explanation. She didn't know why, though she had asuspicion. Dorian was a commitment-phobe, for reasons known only to him.
Their memories together weren't grand. They were tightly controlled, just like him. But sometimes a stray one escaped his tight net like the compass in her palm. And now, all of it was fading – bit by bit, day by day.
***
The next few weeks were hell. There was that slow, grinding erosion of self that came from watching a fantasy fade away. And it was her own fault. Nobody had promised her a happy ending or even a decent goodbye.
Rune wasn't technically part of the team anymore. But Dorian, in one of his curious power plays, insisted she stay on through the transition. She had put in a request to use all the leave that she never got to use, and Dorian promptly produced a copy of her contract from his top drawer, like he was waiting for her to ask the question.
He did not say a word but pointed to the pre-highlighted section in her contract, which clearly stated ‘No leave during notice period.’ So her attempt at escape was quietly derailed.
"To ensure continuity," he'd announced to the three of them when he almost gave her a heart attack when he joined them at the coffee corner.
And so she came in, every day, knowing exactly what she stepping back into .A kind of payback from her boss and former lover for reasons unknown. A huge stinking pile of shit, courtesy of the biggest predator in this particular food chain.
Surprisingly, Rune rarely heard him speak to the two replacements: Tom Burton, the quietly competent grad, and Margo, a polished blonde with endless legs, a master's degree in PR, and a mouth that rarely closed unless she was pouting or flattering someone important. Especially Dorian.
Chapter seven
Chapter 7
Margo floated around his office like she owned the air in it.
Rune didn't need to guess what was in her contract, the one Dorian had handled personally. She'd sat across from him, six years ago, as he calmly explained theterms of exclusivity. He had explained the medical screenings, the clause about silence and then the clause about compliance. The lack of trust, he had said, wasn't personal, just practical. To be fair, he had also offered her another contract to work in his Manchester office, minus the sex clause. She should have taken option B, damn it, but the stars in her eyes had blinded her.
He didn't believe in intimacy, however much she thought things would change between them. And she'd stayed despite knowing that she was losing the war.
Now she was only a liability. Now, she watched from the periphery as Margo tried on her old life like it was a sample sale dress. Dorian had let Margo redecorate the shared office space, trading Rune's clean, minimalist layout for powder-pink chairs and a side table cluttered with crystals, glittered coasters, and framed quotes about manifesting your destiny.
Finn had wandered down from Accounts for a coffee at "the boss's special machine," the one Rune had kept pristine for years. They stood side by side at the counter, the hiss of the steamer covering their low commentary as they watched Margo swan about in a skirt that could pass for a belt, arranging her crystals into some sort of "energy grid."
"Is she summoning the client list?" Finn murmured with a smirk.
Rune's lips twitched. Her filters, usually tight as bank vault doors, slipped.
"Maybe a portal into another dimension. Maybe she would let me have a free pass to escape this hell."
Finn snorted into his cup, and she was startled at herself. She never did this, but maybe she should do it more often.
