I thought about tomorrow morning. His study. Nine o'clock.
My fingers found the wetness between my legs and I gasped. Quietly. Pressing my face into the pillow to muffle the sound, even though there was no one to hear.
I circled my clit with shaking fingers, thinking about Dante's hands—large, capable. Steady hands. Hands that had cupped myface at the altar like I was something precious. Hands that would hold me accountable because I mattered enough to hold.
The orgasm hit me fast. Too fast. A sharp, bright thing that crested and broke before I was ready, leaving me trembling in the aftermath, my breath coming in ragged bursts against the damp cotton of my pillowcase.
I lay there afterward, stunned.
When had I last felt this? This raw, desperate wanting? Not the muted tolerance I'd learned to substitute for desire. Not the performative arousal I'd faked for years before my body shut down entirely. This was real. This was mine. This was my body waking up after a decade of sleep, reaching for something it finally recognized as safe.
At six, I gave up pretending to sleep. The sky outside my window was gray with early autumn light, the Chicago skyline emerging from darkness like a photograph developing in solution.
I showered. The hot water cascaded down my body, and I stood beneath it with my hands pressed flat against the tile, denying the urge that surged through me when the spray hit sensitive skin. Not again. Once was a revelation. Twice would be a habit I couldn't afford before walking into his study and looking him in the eye.
I dressed carefully. A soft cashmere sweater in pale gray—nothing provocative, nothing that screamed armor. Simple black trousers. No jewelry except the wedding band. Hair down, because he'd seen me with it down and something in his expression had changed, and I wanted that look again even though wanting it felt like handing him a weapon.
At 8:55 I stood outside his study door.
My heart hammered against my ribs. My palms were damp. The hallway stretched in both directions, offering escape routes I didn't want to take.
This was it. The cliff edge. The moment where theory became practice, where ink on paper became skin on skin, where the promises we'd made each other stopped being abstract and became undeniably, terrifyingly real.
I knocked.
"Come in."
His voice was warm. Steady. The same voice from last night, the one that had reached inside me and turned off the noise.
I opened the door.
Dante stood behind his desk, but he was already moving. Rising. Coming around the heavy oak to meet me, his jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows again—and God, those forearms were going to be my undoing.
He didn't touch me. Didn't reach for me. Just gestured toward the leather sofa by the window, the one where we'd negotiated the contract, and waited for me to sit before settling beside me.
Close. Close enough that I could smell his cologne—that expensive, woodsy scent that had rewired something in my brain over the past weeks.
The morning light fell through the window in long golden bars. Dust motes drifted lazily between us. The study was warm, quiet, sealed off from the rest of the house like a world unto itself.
"Tell me why you didn't eat yesterday."
His voice was gentle. Curious. The way a teacher might ask a student to explain their reasoning on a problem—not because the answer was wrong, but because the process mattered.
I'd rehearsed a dozen responses in the shower. Practiced them against the tile while hot water sluiced over my shoulders. Reasonable explanations. Plausible excuses. The kind of careful deflections I'd spent a lifetime perfecting.
None of them made it past my lips.
"I wanted to see what would happen."
The truth landed between us, bare and vulnerable and terrifying. I watched his face for the flinch, the flicker of disappointment, the withdrawal I'd been trained to expect when I stopped performing.
He nodded slowly. No surprise. No judgment. Just that infuriating, beautiful calm.
"You wanted to test me."
Not a question.
"Yes." The word came out smaller than I intended. I tried again, forcing volume into my voice the way I forced steel into my spine. "I needed to know if you meant it. If the rules were real. If you'd actually—"
