But the room remembers. I remember.
Alessandro closes the door. Turns the lock. The click is a period at the end of a sentence.
"Sit," he commands.
I sit. The edge of the bed. The mattress gives under my weight. I look up at him. He is standing in front of me, his suit jacket gone, his shirt untucked, the bite mark on his neck dark against his skin. He is backlit by the city.
He steps between my knees. His hands find my jaw—his gesture, the one that grounds me. He tilts my face upward. His thumbs trace my cheekbones. He is looking at me the way he looks at a document he's about to deconstruct.
"You've spent your entire life being the weapon," he says. His voice is low. Intimate. "The fists. The blade. The thing that moves toward the threat. Tonight, you're not the weapon."
"What am I?" My voice is rough.
"Mine."
The word enters my bloodstream.Mine.The possessive. The claim. The same word I've been using, returned to me in his voice, his authority.
He kisses me. Controlled. His mouth takes mine with a deliberation that permits no negotiation. His tongue traces my lower lip, then enters with a slow authority that makes my hands clench on the sheets.
I reach for him—a reflex, the need to grip, to take control.
His hand catches my wrist.
"No."
Quiet. Firm. He pins my hand to the mattress beside my hip.
"You don't move," he says. "You don't take. You receive."
The instruction rewires something deep inside me. The Reaper's operating system—the one that defaults to action, to force—encounters a command it doesn't know how to process.Stay still. Receive.
The muscles in my arm tense against his grip. The instinct to seize, to control, pushes back.
I let go.
The tension drains from my body. My wrist relaxes under his hand. My shoulders drop. The weapon stands down because the man holding the controls has earned the position.
Alessandro's eyes darken. The pupils dilate. He sees my surrender.
He undresses me. Methodically.
He unbuttons my shirt. Each button a deliberate act. The fabric parts. His palms lay flat on my chest—warm, steady, mapping the terrain of scar tissue. His thumbs find the cigarette burns on my shoulder. He pauses.
His mouth follows his thumbs. He presses his lips to each mark—one, two, three. The contact is so light, so specific, that my breath catches.
"My monster," he says against my skin.
The name, his father's insult, sounds different in his mouth. Not a curse. A benediction.
He pushes me back. Flat on the mattress. My head hits the pillows. He follows, climbing over me, his knees on either side of my hips, straddling me.
His mouth moves down my sternum. My stomach. The muscles contract under his lips.
He opens my belt. The trousers. He strips them off. My briefs follow.
I am bare on the bed. Exposed. Hard. My cock rests heavy against my stomach.
"Stay still," he says. His hand presses flat on my hip. "I said you receive."
