Days passed, but she never really left his orbit.
His name was Lucian — fitting, somehow. Like something Latin, old-world, born under candlelight and secrets. He never texted. Never called. And yet every night, she found herself pulled back to him, driven not by need, but by the ache he’d awakened. A hunger she hadn’t known she was starving from.
Tonight, the door was already ajar. He’d been waiting.
Inside, the room was dim, lit only by a wall of flickering candles. Shadows danced along his jawline as he stood, sleeves rolled up, shirt open just enough to hint at the chiseled truth beneath. The man was carved in restraint.
And still, he didn’t touch her. Not yet.
“I don’t want obedience,” he said, circling her slowly, like a flame teasing the edge of paper. “I want you to choose every gasp. Every moan. I want your pleasure to be a decision, not a reaction.”
Amelia’s throat tightened, but her spine stayed straight. “Then give me something worth choosing.”
He stopped behind her, close enough to feel his breath against her neck. “Turn around.”
She did.
In his hand was a silver tray. On it: a glass of red wine, a velvet blindfold, and a single dark chocolate square.
“You’ll taste one,” he said. “But not both.”
“Why?”
He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear. “Because I want to teach you the art of denial. And the power of anticipation.”
She smiled, wicked and intrigued. “And if I want both?”
His smirk was sin incarnate. “Then you’ll have to earn them.”
She chose the chocolate.
Bitter at first. Then velvet. Then fire.
Just like him.
He guided her to the chaise lounge — not laid her down, no — guided her, as though she were royalty and this, a throne. She reclined as he bound her wrists again, this time above her head, the silk tighter, but still tender.
Then he blindfolded her.
The darkness made everything louder: the rustle of his shirt as he slipped it off, the sound of the cork being pulled from another bottle of wine, the pause before his lips grazed the inside of her thigh.
He didn’t rush. He explored. With tongue, teeth, breath. Her body became an instrument and he, a master composer — coaxing moans that sounded like betrayal and bliss twisted into one.
“Say my name,” he murmured against her skin.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you want it too much.”
The air stilled.
Then he laughed — low, genuine, and dangerous. “You’ll make this very, very interesting.”
And when she finally cried it out — “Lucian!” — it wasn’t surrender.
It was triumph.
Afterwards, he held her. Not out of softness, but reverence.
“You’re not like the others,” he whispered into her hair.
She was half-asleep, skin flushed, pulse still fluttering.
“I know,” she murmured. “That’s why you’ll ruin me.”
He said nothing.
Because he knew it, too.