My climax builds with frightening speed, a tidal wave I can’t outrun. When it crashes over me, Ezra releases my wrists, and I cling to his solid form, fingers digging into the new artwork on his shoulders. My body shaking and shuddering beneath him as pleasure tears through me with the force of a natural disaster.
His name falls from my lips in a broken litany, a prayer or a curse or both at once, as I come apart in his hands.
My body still trembles with aftershocks when Ezra gathers me into his arms, lifting me from the desk with unexpected gentleness.
The contrast between his earlier ferocity and this careful handling leaves me disoriented. My head falls to rest on his shoulder as he carries me through the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. The overhead lights flicker on, illuminating cream marble and brushed gold fixtures with a soft glow more intimate than the shadowed office.
Ezra sets me on the marble counter between the twin sinks, the cool stone a shock for my overheated skin. My reflection catches in the corner of my eye, the blond wig askew and tangled, makeup smeared across my face in abstract patterns, eyes dazed beneath the brown contacts. A stranger stares back at me, a collage of lies coming undone.
“Hold still,” Ezra murmurs, gentler than he’s been since I returned to the manor.
His fingers find the pins securing the wig, removing each one and setting them on the counter with soft clicks of metal on stone. The wig itself comes away next, along with the skull cap beneath, peeled away to reveal my real hair, flattened by sweat. Ezra runs his fingers through the dark strands, coaxing them back to life with an almost reverent touch.
“I missed this color.” He separates a strand and watches it catch the light. “Like mahogany laced with garnets. My hidden gem.”
The observation is so specific, so attentive to detail, that my breath catches in my throat. I’d forgotten how he notices things I never thought extraordinary about myself. The intimacy of being truly seen wrenches open parts of me that have remained safely numb for the past year.
Ezra turns away to open a drawer, lifts out a soft washcloth, and dampens it under warm water. His other hand tilts my chin up, holding me steady as he brings the cloth to my face. The first gentle swipe removes a streak of foundation from my cheek, revealing the natural tone beneath.
“Close your eyes.”
Unable to fight it, I surrender to his ministrations with a trust that should terrify me but doesn’t.
The damp cloth passes over my eyelids, removing the layers of shadow and liner, cleaning away the artifice stroke by stroke. It’s ritualistic, almost sacred, this dismantling of my constructed persona. Each pass of the cloth erases another line of defense, another layer of protection.
When he reaches my lips, wiping away the muted color I’d used to make them less distinctive, his thumb lingers at the corner of my mouth. I’m laid bare, not by the absence of clothing, but by the exposure of my true face.
“Open your eyes,” he says, raw hunger underscoring the command.
I blink away the bright light, and his face swims into focus. He stands close enough to catch the flecks of gold in his irises, the slight asymmetry of his pupils, and the tiny scar at the corner of his right eyebrow that tells a story unknown to me.
“Look up,” he instructs. “Don’t move.”
I do so, and his fingertips gently remove the contacts. I blink away the slight sting, and his thumbs sweep away the tears.
His hands frame my face with such tenderness it threatens to undo me. “There you are.”
The recognition reverberates through me. Not just acknowledgment of my physical features beneath the disguise, but a deeper recognition of some essential part of me he alone perceives.
Before I can respond, he draws me off the counter to stand before him and turns me to face the mirror, my back to his chest, his arms circling my waist from behind.
Our reflected gazes meet in the glass, and the sight steals my breath.
My face, my true face, stares back at me, green eyes reddened from crying, high cheekbones flushed with lingering arousal, dark hair tousled from his fingers. And behind me stands Ezra, golden and solid, his new tattoos visible over my shoulders, his face a study in possessive satisfaction.
We look like a painting, a study in contrasts, his golden warmth against my cooler tones, his certainty balancing my hesitation.
“Watch.” His lips brush the shell of my ear, sending shivers racing down my spine.
His hands move lower, caressing over my abdomen. One continues downward to stroke my dick, bringing me back to readiness, while the other flattens over my heart. I want to look away from witnessing my pleasure, but I can’t. I remain transfixed as Ezra’s skilled fingers draw responses from my body that only he controls.
When he enters me again, slow and deliberate this time, my gasp echoes in the bathroom. His eyes hold mine in the reflection, forcing me to face my surrender. There’s nowhereto hide, no character to slip into, no mask to wear. Just me, stripped bare in every sense, taking and wanting and needing.
“Tell me your name.” Ezra sucks the racing pulse in my neck, his hips establishing a rhythm that steals my breath. “Your real name.”
The question jolts through me. After fifteen years of aliases and characters, of being whoever the job required, the truth feels foreign on my tongue. But in this moment, with him inside me and my naked face staring back from the mirror, the lie is impossible to maintain.
“Ren,” I whisper, the confession dragged from a deep, protected place. “My name is Ren.”
