Page 68 of Fire and Silk

That breaks me free.

I shove him away.

My hands shake as I wipe my face. I refuse to let the tears fall freely. Not here. Not with him watching.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” I say. “But you don’t know me as much as you think you do.”

He grins.

The kind of grin that belongs to a man who already knows the ending.

“The hunger in your eyes,” he says softly, “I can fill you up. Now.”

“What?” I mouth.

But the word barely passes my lips before he reaches for me.

His hand finds mine, firm and certain, and he pulls.

And I follow.

Not out of trust. Not out of fear.

Out of something worse.

Curiosity.

We move across the green and back toward the building, but he doesn’t take the path we came through. Instead, he veers to the left, down a corridor I hadn’t noticed before. The doors here are tall, lacquered in dark walnut. The hallway narrows.The scent shifts—less like roses and earth, more like stone and silence.

I should ask him where we’re going.

But I don’t.

He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. My footsteps fall into rhythm with his.

At the end of the hall, there’s a door.

Brushed steel plate. No carvings. No handles. Just a word etched in gold beneath the arch.

Private.

He stops.

His hand remains on mine.

He glances at me.

And something in his eyes flickers.

He pushes the door open.

And I follow him inside.

****

I didn’t expect the room to look like this.

The walls are a rich, decadent black—polished and cool, but it is the far side of the room that arrests me.