“Strip,” he said.The word was clinical.Efficient.A checkbox being ticked.
I removed my clothes with the same detachment, folding each piece neatly, refusing to give him the trembling vulnerability he’d gotten from me before.When I stood naked before him, he rose from his chair and approached.
His hands moved over my body with mechanical precision.Checking.Cataloging.No lingering touches, no possessive heat, no whispered promises of what he’d do to me later.
This should feel like victory.He was giving me exactly what I’d asked for.Distance.Boundaries.A transaction, nothing more.
Instead, it was being erased.
“You may go to the bedroom,” he said when the inspection was complete.“I’ll be there shortly.”
I went.Sat on the edge of his bed, naked and cold, and waited.The minutes stretched.When he finally appeared in the doorway, he’d removed his jacket and tie, but he was still dressed.Still distant.
Still a stranger.
The coldness I’d been trying to maintain all day finally gave way, shattering under the weight of his matching ice.Maybe it was exhaustion, or frustration, or the desperate need to feel something other than this terrible numbness.
“Are we going to pretend last night didn’t happen?”
The words came out before I could stop them.He went still in the doorway, his expression flickering with something I couldn’t read.
“There’s nothing to pretend.”His voice was flat.Final.“It was an evening like any other.”
“Bullshit.”
The word hung between us.He looked away.
“Careful, Lena.”
“Or what?”I stood from the bed, suddenly unable to sit still, suddenly too angry to care that I was naked and he was fully clothed and every power dynamic in this room tilted in his favor.“You’ll punish me?Add it to the contract?That’s all this is to you, right?Just terms and conditions.”
“That’s all it can be.”
“Then why did you hold me?”
He flinched.Actually flinched, like I’d struck him.His hands curled into fists at his sides, and something moved behind his eyes.The wolf, fighting to get out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You cleaned me with your own hands.You pulled me against your chest and held me like I was something you couldn’t let go of.”I took a step toward him.He didn’t retreat, but I saw the tension coil through his shoulders.“And then you watched me leave.You stood there and watched me walk away and you looked like it cost you something.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?”
Silence.The air between us thick with everything unsaid.His breathing had changed, coming faster now, and there was a strange quality to his stillness.Like the beast inside him was straining against a leash.
“This conversation is over.”He turned toward the door.
“No.”I closed the distance between us before I could think better of it, grabbing his arm.The muscle beneath his shirt was rigid, trembling with some internal battle I couldn’t see.“You don’t get to do that.You don’t get to kiss me like you’re drowning and I’m air, hold me like I matter, and then pretend it was nothing.”
“Let go.”
“Make me.”
His eyes flashed.For a moment I thought he would.Thought he’d shake me off, walk out, leave me standing naked and foolish in the middle of his bedroom.
Instead, he went completely still.His jaw worked.A vein pulsed in his temple.And then his expression cracked, vulnerability surfacing for just a second before he slammed it shut again.
