I blurt out, "Were you serious? About more than one person?"
She sits up against the headboard. "You looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin."
"I looked concerned," I correct.
She smiles. "You looked jealous."
I breathe through my nose.
"Were you?" she presses gently.
I study the wall across from me, the familiar lines of a room that suddenly feels unfamiliar. "This isn't a hypothetical I entertain."
"Usually entertain... Because you're entertaining it now," she points out.
I exhale slowly. "Blue?—"
"If you wanted it," she interrupts, voice dropping, steady and sincere, "I would."
My voice turns to gravel. "You would what?"
She teases the inside of my thigh, continuing, "Have a threesome. A foursome. Whatever you needed from me to have every desire you ever had, fulfilled."
My mouth waters, and I hate myself.
She quietly adds, "The best relationships are when couples are aligned. So isn't that what we should strive for? Alignment."
The word shouldn't be erotic. Somehow it is.
She slides out of the covers and straddles me. She runs her fingers through the side of my head, claiming, "I'm going to give you exactly what you want and need in your life. I'm going to please you in all ways, Dr. Mercer."
My thoughts fracture. Ethics. Power. Transference. Every rule I've built my career on flashes hot and urgent, then slides sideways as something darker rises to meet it.
She keeps her wide, wild eyes pinned on mine and whispers, "Tell me what you want, Red. And I mean everything. How you want me. Who you need next to me. What ways you require me to extinguish the ache deep inside you."
It hits me like vertigo. Not just desire—though that's there, immediate and undeniable—but the sickening sense of being seen straight through. She isn't guessing or reaching. She's naming things I've kept buried so long, they stopped feeling like choices and started feeling like gravity.
My body responds before my mind can build defenses. My mouth goes dry. My thoughts smear at the edges. Control frays and the careful architecture of rules, ethics, and restraint I constructed to keep myself intact flares hot and urgent. Warning lights scream, then slide to the side as something darker rises to meet them.
What unsettles me most isn't the offer.
It's how seamlessly it fits.
How naturally it aligns with the part of me that's never wanted indulgence, only permission. Guilt spikes hard and sharp, exactly where it should, but it doesn't root. It doesn't hold. It skims the surface and disappears, leaving something steadier underneath.
Recognition.
It's knowing that this—this—is the kind of power that could ruin me. Not through excess. Through precision and being wanted this completely. And it's a dangerous relief to imagine a life where I no longer have to amputate parts of myself just to function.
That's when true fear finally breaks through. It's not of Blue but of me. I can't hide it any longer. I know with a clarity that tightens my chest, if I speak now, if I name even one truth she's asking for, I won't be able to stop.
"Tell me. Everything," she breathlessly goads.
My heart beats so hard, sweat pops out on my skin. I find my voice and assert, "You don't get to erase yourself like that. You don't exist to be shaped around someone else's appetite."
She looks at me as if she pities me. "That's not what I'm saying, and you know it."
"No. I don't."
