"You better behave today." His voice was a growl against my mouth, his breath hot and ragged. "Don't get too close to him. Don't let him touch you. Don't even look at him like you know his name." His thumb dragged across my swollen lip. "Or I won't hesitate to claim you right there, in front of him, in front of everyone. You understand?"

"Yes," I whispered. "I do."

I was so confused.

Why was I getting turned on listening to his threats? Why was my body betraying me, aching for things I didn't have names for, responding to his violence like it was tenderness? I pressed my thighs together under the blanket, trying to ease the throbbing heat building between them, trying to pretend I wasn't wet, wasn't desperate, wasn't his in every way that mattered.

He felt the shiver that ran through my body. He heard the catch in my breath.

He smiled against my ear — slow, knowing, victorious.

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" His hand slid down my waist, his palm pressing flat against my stomach, his fingers dipping just below the hem of my shorts. "You'd like me to ruin you where he could see. Where he'd know he never had a chance."

Then he bit my earlobe.

Sharp enough to make me gasp. Hard enough to make my back arch off the mattress.

A sound escaped my mouth before I could stop it — breathy, desperate, humiliatingly eager.

"Shit, kitten." His voice was wrecked, barely human. His forehead dropped against my shoulder, his body trembling with the effort of holding back. "You can't make sounds like that. Not now. Not when he's coming here in an hour." His hand gripped my hip, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "You don't want your little toy to see what you really are, do you? You don't want him to know how wet you get when I threaten you."

I immediately got up.

I scrambled off the bed so fast I nearly tripped over the sheets, my face burning, my heart hammering, my body a traitorous mess of shame and want. I hurried to the bathroom before he could say another word, before I could do something truly reckless, before I could beg him to finish what he had started.

I locked the door behind me and pressed my forehead to the cool tile, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

What was happening to me?

By the time I got ready — cold water on my face, borrowed clothes from my drawer that now lived in his closet, my hair pulled back so tight it hurt — Advik had prepared breakfast. The smell of eggs and toast and something sweet drifted from the kitchen, wrapping around me like a trap.

Damn this man and his cooking skills.

He knew exactly how to weaken my resolve. Exactly how to make me forget that he was a monster. Exactly how to make me sit across from him and open my mouth like a good girl while he fed me the life he had decided I would live.

After we ate, the doorbell rang.

It must be Sahil.

Advik looked at me from across the table, his eyes dark and unreadable, a small, dangerous smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

"Remember what I said, kitten." He wiped his lips with a napkin, slow and deliberate. "Behave."

I got up and opened the door.

Sahil stood on the threshold, a bouquet of roses in his hand, his smile warm and hopeful. The kind of smile that belonged to a different version of my life — one where I wasn't sharing a bed with a man who bit me, where my neck wasn't already marked from the morning, where I still believed that kindness and desire were the same thing.

He held the flowers out to me.

But this time, I hesitated.

For the first time, it felt wrong. The roses, his smile, the way he looked at me like I was already his — none of it fit anymore. It was like trying to wear a dress I had outgrown. The person he was offering them to didn't exist in this flat. She had disappeared somewhere between Advik's confession and his teeth against my throat.

I glanced back.

Advik stood in the kitchen doorway, a coffee cup in his hand, his posture deceptively relaxed. But his eyes — his eyes were burning with rage, dark and barely controlled, a wildfire held behind glass. I waited for the explosion. For the slammed fist, the shouted command, the public claiming.

Instead, he simply set the cup down.

He walked past us without a word, his shoulder brushing mine in the narrow hallway — a touch so brief no one else would notice, but I felt it like a brand — and disappeared into his room. Our room. The door clicked shut with a softness that felt more threatening than any slam.

I took the roses from Sahil, my fingers numb, and we both settled on the sofa. The petals were soft against my palm, absurdly delicate, completely wrong for the brutality of the morning.

"Give me a minute," I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. "I need to grab my study materials."

I entered Advik's room — our room now — and stopped.

There was no one there. The bathroom door was closed, the sound of running water echoing through the space, steam curling from beneath the frame. I gathered the books and notes I needed, stacking them in my arms, and turned to leave.

Just then, the bathroom door opened.

He came out with just a towel wrapped around his waist.

Water droplets trailed down his chest, his shoulders, the sharp lines of his abdomen, catching the morning light. His hair was damp and messy, falling across his forehead in a way that made him look younger. Vulnerable. Deceptive. My breath caught. I tried to look away, I really did — I turned my head toward the door, toward escape, toward the boy with roses in the other room — but my eyes betrayed me. They dragged back to him like magnets, cataloging the sculpted muscle, the power coiled beneath his skin, the droplet sliding down the hollow of his throat and disappearing beneath the towel.

He closed the distance between us in three strides.