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My fingers find the hem, slipping beneath to touch warm skin as I lift it, inch by measured inch. Not rushing. Revealing.

Skin. Breath. Shivers.

Her arms raise in surrender, allowing me to pull the shirt up and over her head and remove her bra. She lets me see her—all of her—with a trust that nearly breaks me.

"You made a mess of me," I say, my voice low and wrecked as I trace the gold still clinging to her skin. "Now I get to make one of you."

Her breath stutters, her pulse visibly racing at the hollow of her throat, but she doesn't pull away. Instead, she watches me with eyes that hold too many emotions to name.

I smear black paint along the fading lines of gold, tracing over the art she created in solitude, claiming the parts of herself she never meant to show anyone.

"I see it," I tell her, almost reverently. "What you made out of the wreckage. The storm you weathered."

She looks down at the paint on her skin. Looking at the dried marks from the early hours and the new ones I've just made.

Her voice, when it finally comes, is barely audible. "I like what you've added."

Something shifts in my chest at those words—something long dormant breaking loose. I press my thumb to her ribs, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to anchor us both to this moment.

"Then let me add more."

She stands before me, her chest rising with quick, shallow breaths, lips parted like she's searching for words she can't find.

Her fingers move to the waistband of her overalls, and with a deliberate slowness that makes my blood burn, she steps out of them.

She doesn't rush. Doesn't look away. Doesn't hide.

She stands there in nothing but soft cotton panties, herskin a canvas of memories—paint streaked across it like promises and confessions.

And it fucking ruins me.

Not because she's half-naked, though God knows that sight alone could bring me to my knees. No, it's because she's allowing me to see her like this—open, unmasked, stripped down to bone and breath and choice. No pretense. No armor. Just Luna, offering herself not as a sacrifice or submission, but as an equal in this claiming.

"Luna..." My voice breaks on her name, and for once, I don't try to hide it.

I step around her slowly, taking the brush from her hand. For a moment—just one fleeting second—she looks up at me with an expression I've never seen before, like she's not sure who's in control anymore.

And that's perfect.

I press the brush to the hollow of her throat, dragging it down between her breasts, watching the gold paint smear across her skin like an oath we're both taking.

"You left your mark on me the second you touched me," I murmur, voice low. "Now I'm branding you with mine—so you feel me every time you fucking breathe."

She doesn't flinch or pull away. Doesn't break our gaze. She just watches me with that same intensity that drew me to her across the ballroom—the look of someone who sees the monster and chooses to face it head-on.

I find myself kneeling before her, not because she commanded it, not because she asked, but because I need to. Because something in me recognizes this for the sacred thing it is.

My hands find her thighs, fingers pressing into the soft skin as I spread them slightly. I drag paint down the inside of eachone, tracing patterns like a roadmap to her destruction—or perhaps her salvation. Maybe they're the same thing.

Her hands fly to my shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

"Beckett..." My name on her lips sounds like both warning and plea.

"I know," I answer, my voice breaking against her skin. "I know what you need."

And I do. I've known since the moment I saw her across that crowded ballroom, since the second I recognized her for what she was—not just another woman to claim, but someone who might actually be worth the breaking of all my rules.

I look up at her from my position at her feet, taking in the sight of her standing above me. Bare thighs. Bare skin. Dark eyes wide and desperate, like she's trying and failing to pretend she doesn't already know exactly what's coming next.