I break the kiss just long enough to breathe against her lips. “You want your story?” My thumb drags across her swollen mouth. “Then you take me. Tonight. You let me fill you until my seed takes root, and in return I give you more truth than you’ll know what to do with.”
Her breath shudders out, hot against my jaw.
I know I sound like a madman. I don’t care. This is the only way forward. For me. For her. For the empire my father threatens to hand to my vulture cousins if I don’t secure my line.
“You want immortality?” I press. “You’ll get it. In ink. In blood. In the child I put inside you.”
I pull back just enough to see her eyes. Wide. Bright. Terrified. Tempted.
She’s trembling. Not a visible shake anyone else would see, the kind you feel when your palm is pressed to someone’s back, when your mouth is still wet from theirs. I can feel it like an electrical current through both of us.
Every instinct in me wants throw her down and make good on every promise I’ve just whispered against her lips. Fill heruntil she can’t run, make her understand with my body what she refuses to admit with her mouth.
But that’s the fast way. And I’ve already decided I don’t want fast with her. I want her to know exactly what she’s stepping into. I want her tochoose, even if she doesn’t realise she’s already chosen.
I ease my grip just enough that she can breathe, but not enough that she can step back. Her pulse still beats against my thumb. Her eyes still dart over my face like she’s trying to memorise me for later. Evidence. Proof. A witness cataloguing her captor.
I lean in until my forehead brushes hers, our masks rubbing softly together. “You’re thinking about running,” I murmur. “I can feel it.”
She inhales sharply.
“You should,” I go on. “You should run now, while you still can. Walk back into the crowd. Disappear. Write a little gossip piece and forget all about me.” My mouth curves. “But you won’t.”
Her lashes flutter. “Why are you so sure?”
“Because I see the same hunger in you that you have in me,” I say. “You want more than a byline. You want a world that burns hotter, brighter, more dangerous than the one you’re living in. You want it enough to risk yourself. That’s why you’re here among all the people in the world who could ruin you in a heartbeat.”
I slip my fingers up into the hair at the back of her neck, tilting her head back a fraction. “And that’s why you’re not walking away from me.”
Her breath hitches. Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak. That tiny surrender, just the tilt of her chin, the way she lets me hold her there, hits me harder than any plea.
I lower my mouth to hers again, slower this time, a drag of lips over lips that feels like a promise instead of a demand. She tastes like defiance and salt and the story she’s dying to write. She kisses me back, hesitant at first, then with a pulse of heat that makes my chest ache.
When I finally draw back, I keep my hand in her hair, thumb brushing the line of her jaw. “This is your last chance to walk away,” I tell her, voice low, rough. “If you stay, you don’t get to be an observer anymore. You become part of it. You become mine. And once you’re mine…” I let the weight of it hang between us. “…I don’t let go.”
She doesn’t answer. Her eyes search mine, still masked but wide, bright, caught between fear and fire.
I straighten, slide my palm down to her hand and twine our fingers. “Come,” I say, turning toward the door that leads deeper into the suite. “If you’re going to hear my story, you need to see where it begins.”
She hesitates for the space of a heartbeat.
Then she steps forward.
And just like that, she crosses the line.
Natasha
The door clicks shut behind us, the sound sharp as a lock sliding home.
I’ve walked into plenty of rooms where I wasn’t supposed to be. Mayor’s offices. Police evidence archives. Back doors of gentlemen’s clubs with neon lights buzzing overhead. But none of them made my stomach drop like this one does.
Because this isn’t just a room. It’s a contract, an expectation of something I never thought I’d have to trade.
And I stepped inside willingly.
He doesn’t rush me. He doesn’t need to. He just watches, calm as stone, while I hover near the door pretending I haven’t already decided to stay. His mask glints in the lamplight, his shirt loose now, black silk clinging to muscle. A man sculpted from command and intent.
“This is your last chance,” he says quietly, echoing the words he pressed against my lips downstairs. “Walk back out, and you’re just another guest who strayed too far. Stay, and you belong to me.”