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“That’s it,” Malachi said, his voice dark and approving. “Come for me, sweetheart. Let the House see exactly what you are.”

The words should have broken the spell, reminded me where we were, what was watching, and what this would cost.

Instead, they pushed me higher.

My nails dug into his shoulders. My hips rocked against his hand, chasing the release that was right there, just out of reach⁠—

And then he stopped.

His fingers withdrew completely, leaving me empty and shaking, the orgasm hovering just beyond reach.

“What the fuck—” I started, but he pressed two fingers against my lips, silencing me.

“Not yet.” His smile was cruel and satisfied. “You don’t get to come until I say so. And right now?” He stepped back, leaving me braced against the wall, furious and aching. “I want you to walk through the rest of this gallery knowing exactly how close you were. Knowing that I could have given it to you, but I chose not to.”

“You’re a fucking monster.”

“I know.” He brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, holding my gaze. “But you taste like heaven, little flower. And when you finally beg me to finish what I started?” His expression darkened. “I’m going to make you scream my name so loud the entire House hears it.”

Then he turned and walked away, disappearing through a side door that sealed itself behind him with a soft, final click.

There I was, left alone in the corridor, panting and unsatisfied, with the taste of humiliation and arousal burning in the back of my throat.

I wanted to scream. Wanted to chase after him and demand he finish what he’d started.

Instead, I straightened my dress, adjusted my mask, and forced myself to keep walking.

The House was waiting. So was Dahlia.

And I was done running from the only thing that had made me feel alive in six years.

I moved deeper in.

Chapter 3

Zinnia

“CLOSER” BY NINE INCH NAILS

The first room smelled like copper and sweat, with something floral underneath that made my stomach turn because it tried too hard to mask what was really happening.

A crowd had gathered around a circular stage lit from below by red floods that turned everyone’s skin the color of fresh meat. Guests pressed against the velvet rope, masks glittering, champagne glasses forgotten as they watched the woman chained at the center.

She was naked. Completely. Her wrists were suspended above her head by chains that disappeared into the ceiling, and her legs were spread wide, ankles locked to bolts in the floor. Leather straps crossed her body in geometric patterns, each pulled tight enough to leave marks, but they covered nothing. They were framing her, displaying her. The straps pushed up her breasts, left her nipples hard and exposed. Between her spread thighs, I could see everything—the wetness, the way her cunt was already swollen and flushed. She wasn’t struggling. She was performing.

A man circled her with a riding crop in one hand and a microphone in the other. He wore black leather pants and nothing else, his chest covered in scars that looked carved rather than accidental, a map he’d decided to make permanent.

“The Cartographer,” someone whispered beside me.

I didn’t look away from the stage.

Dragging the crop along the woman’s inner thigh, the Cartographer started at her knee and moved upward. When he reached the apex, he pressed the leather tip against her cunt, and she whimpered into the gag between her teeth, her hips jerking forward. Speakers hidden in the walls amplified the sound, making it both obscene and intimate.

“She asked for this,” the Cartographer said into the microphone. His voice was smooth, practiced, the kind that knew exactly how to make cruelty sound like generosity. “She came to me three weeks ago and said she wanted to feel something real. She wanted to know what it was like to give up control completely. To be used. To be marked. To be owned. She signed the contract. She agreed to the terms. Thirty days. Public display. No limits except the ones I decide to give her.”

He struck her across the thigh with the crop, and she screamed through the gag, her body jerking against the chains. A red welt bloomed across her skin.

Guests leaned closer.