Ella stepped out with both hands in her hair, towel draped over her shoulders as she dried it. She stopped short when she saw Alec and Rowan stretched out on the bed. I stood at the foot, blocking the exit.
“What?” she asked, nerves threading through the word when none of us moved.
Alec patted the mattress once. Slow. Expectant.
“Just waiting for you, Ella. Why do you think we came home early tonight?”
“Oh.” Her hands resumed their motion automatically.
She wore the nightdress Rowan had chosen for her—long, but deliberately revealing. Soft grey fabric clung to her thighs and hips, stretched thin where her body demanded it. Sheer lace cinched her waist, skin visible before the pattern darkened to obscure her breasts. The straps were wide. Supportive. Designed with intent.
And suddenly I saw it.
Milk.
Weight.
Fullness.
Breasts made heavier by purpose.
I glanced at Alec. Then Rowan.
Fuck.
They’d already been there. Already run the calculation I’d missed.
Ella finished combing and blow-drying her hair, then climbed onto the bed and sat back on her heels, waiting.
The look in our eyes was the same.
Hungry.
Sharp.
Heated.
Her eggs wouldn’t stand a chance.
Chapter 26
Ella
They had planned something. I could feel it in the air—the stillness, the way none of them spoke—but when I let my gaze drift carefully around the bed and the nightstands, I didn’t see the usual spread of things Alec liked to arrange. No cuffs. No clamps. No coils of leather or neatly laid-out instruments that made my stomach knot before he even touched them.
Sometimes those things were… manageable. Other times, he took it right to the edge and then pretended it had never been sharp in the first place. Alec had a way of making pain sound reasonable. Inevitable. He softened it with words, dressed it up as necessity, as improvement. As if my body was something that needed correcting.
Rowan was easier to predict. He liked structure. Routine. Repetition. The same shared positions, the same choreography between them, as though they were following steps they’d practised until they no longer needed to think. He used degrading language the way other people used punctuation—naturally, without effort. They all did, in different ways. But with Rowan it felt… habitual. Automatic. Like it wasn’t about me at all.
Sometimes I wondered—who hurt you?
And then I remembered it didn’t matter.
Nick was the one I watched for. The one I measured my breathing around. He was the most dangerous because he was the least predictable. Alec’s hunger for pain could be anticipated. Managed. But Nick could go from distant to volatile in a heartbeat. Cold one second. Scorching the next. Like something inside him was always on the verge of splitting open.
There was no more time to delay.
My hair was dry.
