I stopped in front of her.Crouched down until we were eye to eye.
“Strip.”
She held my gaze for a long moment.Then, without a word, she rose to her feet.
Her fingers went to the buttons of her dress.One by one.Slow and unhurried.Not trembling like last night.Not rushing to get it over with.She moved like someone performing a task, distasteful but necessary.A job.
The dress slipped off her shoulders.Pooled at her feet.Beneath it, she wore simple white cotton.Bra and panties, practical and unadorned.The same plain underwear as before, chosen on purpose.A message I could read clearly: she would give me her body, but not her vanity.Not her desire to please.
Her hands went to the clasp of her bra.She unhooked it.Let it fall.Her breasts were exactly as I remembered them, small and perfect, with pink nipples that were already hardening in the cool air of the room.
Then the panties.She stepped out of them neatly.Stood naked before me with her hands at her sides and her chin lifted.
Waiting.Not trembling.
I rose and circled her again.Let my fingertips trail across her shoulder, feeling the silk of her skin, the delicate architecture of bone beneath.Down the curve of her spine.Coming to rest at the small of her back.She shivered at the contact but controlled it.Didn’t lean into my touch or away from it.
“Your body betrays you.”I traced the goosebumps rising on her skin.“No matter how calm you pretend to be, I can see the truth.”
Silence.
I moved around to face her.Let my gaze travel down her body with measured slowness.The hollow of her throat where her pulse beat steady.The soft swell of her breasts with their hardened tips.The flat plane of her stomach.The dark triangle of hair between her thighs.
And underneath the determination in her scent, there it was.The warm honey note of arousal, faint but unmistakable.Her body knew what it wanted even if her mind was fighting.
“You want this.”I stepped closer.Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her bare skin.“You can pretend otherwise.You can shield yourself in composure and treat this like a business transaction.But your body knows the truth.Your body wants to be touched.Wants to be taken.Wants to surrender.”
Something surfaced in her eyes.Defiance.Anger.But she didn’t speak.
“Say it.”I let my gaze drop deliberately to where her nipples had hardened, visible even through the shield of her composure.“Tell me you’re wet right now.Tell me your body is betraying every wall you’ve built.”
Her jaw tightened.A flush crept up her chest, her neck, her cheeks.But still she said nothing.
“Your silence doesn’t matter.”I reached out and traced one hardened nipple with my fingertip, watching her shiver.“Your body is already confessing.”
The silence annoyed me more than words would have.She was denying me the reactions I craved, the fear and shame that had been so delicious last night.In their place was this forced stoicism.
She’s testing us,the wolf observed.Seeing what we’ll do.What we’re made of.
What I would do was break her.Just not the way I’d planned.
“Get dressed.”
Confusion crossed her face.The first crack in her composure.“What?”
“Partially.Put on your dress.Leave the undergarments.”I turned away from her.“Then follow me.”
I heard the rustle of fabric as she obeyed.Didn’t look.Didn’t trust myself to look at her body again without touching, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.Not until I’d found a way past her walls.
The library was at the end of the hallway, through a door I rarely opened.Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, leather chairs by a cold fireplace, thousands of volumes I’d never read.Alice kept it dusted and maintained, though I never asked her to.
The piano sat in the corner by the tall windows.A Steinway grand, rosewood case, ivory keys.I’d bought it on impulse years ago, drawn to it for reasons I refused to examine.It had never been played.Not once.
But I remembered music.Somewhere deep in the fragments of memory I still carried from before, my mother had played.Chopin.Debussy.The sounds drifting through a different house, a different life, finding me wherever I hid.
I hadn’t heard those sounds in thirty years.
Lena stopped in the doorway behind me.I heard her breath catch.
