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The insult doesn't land hard because it's not meant to. It's just... true. Delivered without venom or emotion. Clean. Precise.

"Did you expect your own room?" he continues, thumb still moving across the screen. "Or perhaps the couch? Some grand gesture of chivalry after I fucked you against the shower wall?"

I don't answer. There's no point.

"Or did you think this was a hotel? That you'd be offeredoptions?"

"Do you always assume silence is agreement?" I ask instead, shifting my weight slightly.

His eyes finally lift from the screen, slow and deliberate, like it costs him nothing to look at me.

"I told you," he says, voice dropping lower. "You're mine."

Each word lands soft but weighted. A lead anchor wrapped in silk.

"You say that like I'm supposed to know what that means."

"You sleep where I sleep. You breathe when I let you. You come when I say." His gaze slides down my body, unhurried. "This isn't a negotiation."

My throat tightens involuntarily. I swallow but don't look away. "I need something to wear."

"You don't."

The words land like a blade between us.

I blink, momentarily thrown. "I don't sleep naked."

"You do now."

His voice remains calm and absolute. Like it isn't a question. Like it never was.

I grind my teeth as I grip the towel tighter, weighing my options. Defiance seems futile after everything that's happened, but surrender feels too much like acceptance.

His stare drags down my body like a physical touch. Heat blooms unwillingly at the base of my neck, crawling lower, spreading beneath my skin even as I fight it, like I didn't just come on this man's cock ten minutes ago.

But I already know what I'm going to do. Not because I've accepted this or because I agree, but I lost the right to protest the second I let him own me in the dark.

My fingers loosen deliberately. The towel falls in a soft whisper of cotton against the polished floor.

I don't give him the satisfaction of watching mehesitate or cover myself. I lift my chin and walk forward. Each step is slow and steady, like I'm the one in control, not him.

His gaze follows every inch of exposed skin like he's carving me into memory, cataloging each curve and shadow with meticulous precision.

But he says nothing.

I slide under the sheets without a sound. The fabric is crisp and cool against my bare skin, and the contrast hits hard–too clean, too smooth, too untouched for what I just let him do to me.

I face away from him deliberately, my back a barrier between us. My spine locks rigidly. My muscles stay tight, bracing for something that never comes.

He doesn't touch me. Doesn't shift closer. Doesn't even breathe differently.

But I feel him regardless. His presence massive in the silence and spilling over me like shadows, pressing against my back without laying a single hand on me.

And somehow, even surrounded by everything that should feel foreign and threatening, the sheets still smell like him–sandalwood and clean cotton and something darker underneath. Something that reminds me of the forest.

I close my eyes, determined to stay awake, to remain alert, to not surrender this last piece of myself.

But exhaustion takes me like gravity–heavy, sudden, cruel. My limbs grow heavier with each breath, my mind slipping despite my best efforts to hold on. I don't even hear him as he gets up to shower himself and then returns and gets into bed next to me.