“Good girl,” he said, the words silk-wrapped steel. “Then undress. Slowly. And look at yourself while you do it. I want you to see what I see when you come undone for me.”
I held his gaze for a breath too long. Not resisting. Not agreeing. Just… calculating. Testing.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just waited, still as a predator before the pounce.
The dress clung to me in the heat—black, fitted, minimal. It had felt casual when I put it on. Now it felt strategic. Like I’d walked into his trap on my own two feet.
I turned to the mirror.
Candlelight bled across my skin, making every inch of me look more deliberate than I felt. My breathing was too shallow. My mouth too open. My pulse—a hard, visible beat at my throat.
I dragged the hem of the dress up slowly, watching the fabric stretch, wrinkle, inch higher. I didn’t unzip it. I peeled it away, let it catch on my hips, cling to my thighs, then drop.
No bra. Just a scrap of black lace between my legs, damp enough to betray me.
I didn’t turn around. I looked myself dead in the eye, bare and lit and trembling.
And I didn’t hide from it.
“Touch the mirror,” Rafe said.
I did. Pressed both palms flat to the glass, the coolness sharp against my heat. He came up behind me—close, but not touching. I could feel him there, the tension of his body like a held breath.
“No cuffs. No rope,” he said, voice like cut velvet. “But don’t think that makes this soft.”
I swallowed hard.
“You’ve never needed to be tied down, Grace,” he said, leaning in so his breath grazed my ear. “You just needed theright reasonto hold still.”
His hand ghosted down my spine, slow, measured, not quite contact—justcommand. I shivered.
“If you move without permission, I stop,” he murmured. “You break position, I walk out that door. Youwantthis? Prove it. With control. With stillness. With fucking discipline.”
It wasn’t a dare.
It was atest.
And it was worse than any bind. Because now I had no excuse. No rope to blame. No pressure to push back against.
Just my own body. My own choice.
“Yes,” I said. Quiet. Certain.
“Say it again.”
“Yes, Rafe.”
Something in his expression shifted. A flicker of satisfaction, dark and controlled. He stepped back, letting the space between us stretch again.
“Get on the bed,” he said. “Back to the headboard. Legs spread. Hands flat on the sheets, palms down. If they move, we’re done.”
I obeyed.
Not because I had to.
Because Iwantedto see how far he could take me if I gave him nothing to fight.
And that was the most dangerous part.
