Her second orgasm is stronger. The third one even more. By the fourth, she's sobbing my name, her body shaking with pleasure.
Only then do I let myself follow. Release inside her with a roar, marking her, claiming her, making her mine in the most primal way possible.
We stay joined, breathing hard, watching our reflection. Her blood and my release mixing. Past and present. Death and life.
I trace her name on the mirror above her head. Deliberately now. Consciously.
S-O-N-Y-A.
She sees it in the reflection. Understands what it means.
Not overwriting Elena. Honoring her by living again.
"I’m falling in love with you," she whispers.
The words should terrify me. Instead, they feel like absolution.
"I know," I respond, still buried inside her. "I've known since the gallery. Since I covered your body with mine and couldn't imagine a world where you weren't in it."
I carry her—still naked, still trembling—through the mansion. Not to the guest wing. To my master suite. My bed.
The bed where Elena slept beside me. The room I abandoned the night she died. I've slept on the couch in my study for fifteen years, as I couldn't bear to come back to where we were happy.
I lay Sonya down on sheets I've had the staff change weekly despite never sleeping here. Pull her against my chest in a bed I swore I'd never share with anyone again.
"Sleep," I tell her.
"Here? In your bed?"
"This is your bed now. Your room. Your space." I kiss her forehead. "You're not a guest anymore, Sonya."
She's asleep within minutes, exhausted by pain and pleasure and everything between.
I stay awake, watching her breathe. Tracing her name on my own chest in the dark.
For the first time in fifteen years, I don't trace Elena's name before sleeping.
I trace Sonya's.
And Elena's ghost, somewhere in this mansion, finally rests.
Chapter seven
Morning Regrets
Sonya
I wake to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows and an empty bed.
My body aches in ways I've never experienced. Between my legs—tender, swollen, marked by last night. My thighs where his fingers gripped. My shoulders where his mouth claimed. Everything hurts, but it's a good hurt.
Until I see the note on his pillow.
White paper, black ink, four words that destroy everything:
This was a mistake.
I stare at it, my chest tightening. Read it again, hoping I misunderstood. But there's no ambiguity. No softness. Just cold rejection the morning after he took my virginity with what I thought was reverence, in the studio where Elena danced.
