The front door opens before we reach it. A woman with steel-gray hair and sharp eyes that assess me with practiced efficiency.
"Rina, this is Jana Spears. She'll be staying with us." His hand settles warm against the small of my back. "Jana, Rina runs this household. Anything you need, you ask her."
Rina extends her hand. Her grip is firm, and something in her expression softens—a flicker of genuine human warmth that makes my throat tight. The first I've encountered since walking into The Onyx Room.
"Your rooms are prepared," she tells Rafail. "Both of them."
*Both.* The word catches me like a hook. My own room. Some small piece of autonomy in this gilded cage.
"Thank you, Rina." She disappears down a hallway, shoes clicking sharp against marble, and leaves me alone with him in a foyer larger than my entire apartment.
"This way." His hand at the small of my back guides me toward a double staircase that curves upward like something from a film set.
We climb to the second floor. He leads me to the far end of the hall, to double doors he opens onto the master suite—his room. Massive and masculine. Leather furniture, a king-sized bed, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean where moonlight transforms black water into something almostbeautiful. Everything charcoal and cream and expensive and cold despite the wealth of it.
My feet stop just inside the threshold. My body knows before my brain does.
"What's that?" I point at a second door.
"Your room." He crosses and opens it, revealing softer tones—creams and pale grays, rose gold accents, warmer than his cold domain. "We share a connecting door."
Cold understanding settles in my stomach. "You said I'd have my own space."
"You do. Your own room, your own bathroom, your own bed." He leans against the doorframe—dark figure blocking the passage between light and shadow. "But no locked doors between us."
"That's not privacy—"
"That's practicality." He gestures for me to enter. "Come. Look around."
I follow into my room. White linens. A sitting area facing windows that mirror his view of the ocean. An ensuite beyond another door. The closet is already filled with basics in my size—jeans, sweaters, a few dresses. The realization that he was preparing for me before I agreed makes my skin crawl and something else I refuse to name.
"It's lovely," I admit, moving to the window. The moon paints silver across the black water, gentler than the harsh lights outside.
He comes up behind me. Close enough that his heat reaches my back. "When that connecting door is closed, you have your privacy."
I turn to face him and we're suddenly too close, the space between us charged.
"And when it's open?"
"When it's open, you're mine."
A knock interrupts us. Rina enters with a tray—soup, bread, tea—sets it on the small table, and departs through the connecting door. Her path a deliberate reminder: to get anywhere in this house, I pass through his territory first.
"Eat." He gestures to the steaming bowl. "You need your strength."
I stay by the window, arms crossed. "I'm not hungry."
"That's a lie." He crosses his own arms. "You haven't eaten since this morning."
My stomach betrays me immediately, a low growl I can't suppress. I lower myself into the chair and pick up the spoon.
"The rules are simple," he begins. "You don't leave the property without my permission and my escort." He lets that settle. "You don't lie to me. When I give you an instruction, you follow it." A pause. "And the connecting door stays unlocked. Always."
I keep my eyes on the soup. "And if I don't follow the rules?"
"Then I find you. Bring you back." Calm. Factual. "And I punish you."
My throat works, dry and tight.
