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I expect her to balk. To snap back something sharp and sweet to remind me she isn’t some thing I can command.

She doesn’t.

Instead, she stands.

Slow, deliberate, her gaze cutting to mine like she’s just peeled the skin from my chest and knows exactly what she’s holding in her hands. She turns, hips swaying like a curse meant for me alone, and disappears inside without a glance back.

And fuck me—I didn’t think she’d actually do it.

The bond pulls taut, humming like a blade pressed to my throat, like a leash I put around my own neck without realizing it. I can feel her climbing the stairs, the weight of her slipping out of her clothes, leaving them scattered like sins behind her.

Every step she takes away from me is a deliberate challenge. She wants me to follow. She wants to see how far I’ll go.

I exhale slow, my hands clenched around the rose crown like it’s the only thing tethering me to sanity, petals crushed between my fingers.

Across from me, Elias’ voice cuts through the haze, his dark snark slipping under my skin like he knows too much.

“Uh, are we all gonna pretend you didn’t just psychically send her upstairs to ride you?”

I don’t look at him.

I rise, slow and cold, dropping the ruined roses onto the ground like they mean nothing.

“I don’t pretend, Dain.”

And then I walk away, toward the storm I started. Because when I want something—I take it.

And right now, I want to ruin her.

Luna

The door doesn’t creak. It doesn’t announce him. It opens like a secret spilling its mouth, slow and deliberate, and I don’t look away.

I’ve been here too long already—spread across his bed like a goddamn offering. The silk sheets chilled against my skin, heat radiating from between my thighs where want lives like a wound. He told me to wait, and I did. Naked. Aroused. Legs open at the door like I’m carved from sin and indulgence itself.

Ambrose Dalmar has always known how to command without raising his voice. And I’ve always known how to obey when it suits me.

He steps inside, precise as ever. Unhurried. His coat still perfectly buttoned, gloves in hand like he’s been at war and now, finally, has the time to dismantle me.

The door clicks shut behind him.

Neither of us speak.

My breath catches when his gaze drags up—slow, brutal—over every inch of me. His mouth doesn’t move. His eyes, though? They eat me alive. Controlled. Starving.

And then—gods help me—he smiles. Not soft. Not warm. Like a blade sliding between ribs. That smile is a negotiation.

“Good girl,” he says finally, voice dipped in silk and steel.

I swallow hard because the sound of it cuts through me sharper than any magic I’ve ever touched.

“You like being good for me?” he asks, slow as honey, crossing the room with all the inevitability of a storm. “Or do you just like knowing how far I’ll go when you are?”

My breath shudders out. The bond between us thrums low, a taut hum under my skin—his side locked, mine wide open. I can feel it, the echo of what he refuses to let himself feel. The restraint choking him.

I arch a brow, because I know how to play this too. “I like that you keep pretending you’re the one in charge.”

That earns me a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Almost a laugh. Almost.