It would’ve been easy to take her, to claim her, to rip apart the final strand of resistance and claim her fully as mine.
She would resist for a bit, pretend she’s not burning with need, but I couldn’t take her yet, not now.
Not until she was begging.
And I wanted her to be aware, minute by minute, that I occupied the space in her mind, along with her body.
I drew back slowly, the air stretching between us like a string wound too tightly.
Her eyes followed each move I made, pupils wide, and her breath still rapid.
I lifted my hand, tracing her lower lip with my thumb in a slow, deliberate motion, and it trembled under the pressure.
She froze, but she did not move back.
“You’ll feel this,” I whispered, then my voice dropped, rough with restraint. “But not tonight.”
Her breath caught. Only slightly. Only enough to signal to me that she was both relieved and filled with need.
I stood from the bed, leaving her lying there flushed, breathless, and shaken.
The air about her still held the scent of roses and heat and tension, but I took the gravity with me when I left.
She didn’t say anything.
Didn’t beg.
Did not even reach for me.
But I didn’t need her to because I knew precisely what I’d done. I’d left my mark without even taking her.
Now she’d lie awake in that bed, bearing my name, bearing my touch like a ghost on her skin, and she’d be thinking about me.
Whenever her hands closed into the bedclothes, whenever she recalled the pressure of my mouth, the edge of my voice, and when she attempted to persuade herself that she despised me, she wouldn’t be able to escape the memories I’d just planted in her head.
She couldn’t.
I walked out onto the balcony, allowing the chill to nip at my flesh. Los Angeles lay in gold and silver under the blackness. Jagged lights, long shadows, and a city that never slept.
I drew a cigarette out of the pack and lit it one-handed. The flame cast a brief glow over the subtle curve of my smile.
The first drag burned. Good. Now all I could think of was Zoella Yezhov—my wife. It still felt strange to say, felt unreal, but she was mine now.
She thought she could put up a fight, resist me. But she had no idea that she was already yielding—one breath at a time.
And me?
I had all the time in the world.
The cigarette smoldered slowly between my fingers, the tip puffing when I inhaled. I allowed the smoke to fill my lungs, allowed the quiet to wrap around me. The door at my back was still an inch open. I hadn’t closed it completely on purpose.
Not out of oversight, but of something far worse.
I said it was instinct, that I had to be vigilant, that she was volatile, obstinate, impulsive. That she would attempt something foolish.
Yet the reality was more straightforward.
I needed to listen to her.
