"What's your favorite book?"
I stopped dead.
The question landed wrong. Too gentle. Too normal. Too human after everything that had just happened.
I turned slowly, pulse hammering.
My voice came out low, shaking with anger I hadn't let myself feel since lunch. Since the booth. Since his hand guiding mine under the table while the restaurant hummed around us, oblivious.
"You're asking me that now?"
He lifted a brow, expression unreadable. "Yes."
I laughed—but it came out bitter, sharp-edged, nothing like the sound he'd coaxed from me earlier.
"After what you did to me at the restaurant?" My voice climbed despite my effort to control it. "After humiliating me?" Heat flooded my cheeks, my throat, my chest. "You want to talk books?"
He didn't flinch. Didn't step back. Didn't look away. Just watched me with those dark, unreadable eyes that saw too much, knew too much, understood exactly what he'd done to me and how thoroughly it had worked.
"I thought you enjoyed it."
The words hit like a slap.
Because he was right.
I had.
God help me, I had.
My hands fisted at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to hurt. "That's not the point."
My voice cracked on the last word, betraying me, exposing the truth I couldn't admit even to myself.
That the humiliation had burned. That the pleasure had been worse. That some terrible, traitorous part of me had wanted exactly what he'd given me.
And he knew it.
He'd always known it.
He took one step closer. Not rushed. Not aggressive. Just inevitable, like gravity, like the tide, like something I should've seen coming but couldn't escape.
"Belle. I know you liked it."
The words settled between us—undeniable, damning, true in a way that made my skin flush hot with shame and fury and something I refused to name.
I glared at him, hands shaking at my sides, hating him, hating myself, hating how exposed I felt under that steady, knowing gaze. "Yeah. Maybe I did."
The admission tasted like acid. Like surrender. Like the worst kind of truth.
His expression didn't shift. Didn't gloat. Just waited.
"But why demand it? Why take? Why not ask?"
His head tilted—not mocking, not cruel. Curious. Like he genuinely didn't understand the question, like asking had never occurred to him, like consent was a language he'd never learned to speak.
"If I had asked, you would've said no."
My breath stuttered. Caught. Trapped between denial and the brutal honesty I couldn't escape. Because he was right. Painfully, devastatingly right.
