12. Either
TWELVE
Either
He doesn't lead me to the cushion.
The shift registers immediately. The way he pulls out a chair at the table, the way he gestures for me to sit like I'm a guest instead of a possession. Something has shifted. The confrontation in my room cracked something open, and now we're both navigating unfamiliar territory.
I sit.
He sits across from me. Not at the head of the table. Across, like equals, like two people having a conversation instead of an owner feeding his pet.
The staff brings food. I don't know where they come from, these silent people who appear and disappear like ghosts. They set plates in front of both of us, actual plates, actual silverware, an actual meal I can feed myself, and then vanish.
The silence stretches.
I don't break it. I'm too raw, too confused, too focused on the word still echoing in my head: either. He said he wasn't trying to fall for me either. Like I might be falling. Like that's something he's considered.
He breaks first.
"What I said." He's looking at his plate, not at me. Cutting into his food with precise, controlled movements. "About not trying to fall. I need to clarify."
"Clarify how?"
"I didn't mean—" He stops. Sets down his knife and fork. Looks at me with those frozen eyes, and for once, I can't read what's behind them. "The Protocol creates certain responses. Attachment. Dependency. The appearance of emotional connection. I was speaking to that. Not to anything... real."
"So you think I'm developing Stockholm Syndrome."
"I think the Protocol is working as designed." His voice is careful. Measured. "Your body is attuning to mine. That creates the illusion of closeness. I was acknowledging that illusion. Not suggesting actual feelings."
"And the 'either' part? The part where you implied you might be falling too?"
The silence returns. Heavier this time.
"That was poorly worded."
"Was it?"
His jaw tightens. The muscle flexes, something internal wrestled down.
"I've noticed," he says slowly, "that you respond to me in ways that aren't purely physical. The negotiation. The defiance. The way you pushed back just now, in your room." He meets my eyes. "That's not the Protocol. The Protocol creates physical compliance. It doesn't create fire."
"So?"
"So something is happening that I didn't plan for." The admission costs him something. It's in the way his shoulders tense, the way his hands flatten against the table. "You're not reacting the way I expected. And I'm not—" He stops. Breathes. "I'm not reacting the way I expected either."
The word hangs between us again. Either.
"I'm not falling for you." My voice comes out harder than I intend. Sharper. "I hate you. This is survival. Nothing more."
"Is it?"
"You don't get to ask me that." The anger surges, sudden and welcome. Easier than the other things I'm feeling. "You don't get to use me like a thing all morning. Like a convenient hole with a heartbeat. And then ask if I'm developing feelings. You don't get both."
"I wasn't asking if you're developing feelings."
"Then what were you asking?"
"I was observing." His voice is steady. Infuriatingly calm. "The Protocol amplifies what's already there. It doesn't create from nothing. So whatever you're feeling, hatred, survival instinct, anger, that's you. That's real. The Protocol just... intensifies it."
"And what does the Protocol intensify that makes you think I might be falling for you?"
He doesn't answer immediately. His fingers tap against the table, once, twice, three times. That gesture I'm starting to recognize as thought, as calculation.
"The way you looked at me last night." His voice is quieter now. "After. When I was holding you. That wasn't hatred."
My chest tightens. Because he's right. Because there was a moment, in the aftermath of everything, when he held my hand in the dark and I felt something that wasn't rage or fear or survival.
"That was exhaustion."
"Maybe." He doesn't sound convinced. "Or maybe the Protocol is revealing something you've spent your whole life hiding. The same way it revealed your body's responses this morning—the way you anticipated my commands before I gave them."
I go cold. "You noticed that?"
"I notice everything about you." He says it simply. Like a fact. Like the weather. "That's part of what's complicating this. I can't stop watching you. Can't stop cataloging your responses, your reactions, the way you look when you're fighting yourself."
"That's the predator in you. Not feelings."
"Is there a difference?"
The question lands like a blow. Because I don't know. I don't know if his obsessive attention is desire or something darker, if his need to control me is about power or something he doesn't want to name.
"Who was she?"
The words escape before I can stop them. The question I've been holding since yesterday, since he almost told me and then shut down.
His expression shutters. Doors slamming behind his eyes.
"Don't."
"The woman you showed mercy to. The one who?—"
"I said don't." His voice is ice. "That's not a subject for discussion."
"Why not? You said the Protocol reveals what's already there. Maybe understanding why you're like this would help me understand what's happening between us."
"Nothing is happening between us." He stands abruptly. Moves away from the table, toward the windows. His back is to me. A wall, a dismissal. "You're my property for a year. That's the extent of our relationship."
"That's not what you said five minutes ago."
"I was explaining the Protocol's effects. Not confessing to emotional attachment."
"Then why does it matter? Why does it matter if I ask about her, if there's nothing between us?"
He turns. The look on his face makes me shrink back in my chair. Cold fury, barely controlled.
"Because some doors stay closed." His voice is dangerous. "Because I've told you certain questions aren't permitted. Because if you keep pushing on this particular subject, there will be discipline, and it won't be the kind you've started to crave."
The threat lands. Cold fear mixing with the Protocol's warmth in my stomach.
But I don't stop.
"Fine. I won't ask about her." I force myself to hold his gaze. "But you can't tell me nothing is happening and then threaten punishment for asking questions. That's not 'nothing.' That's something you're protecting."
The silence stretches. He doesn't move from the window. Doesn't look away.
"Why are you like this?" I try a different angle. Softer. "Not her specifically. Just—why control? Why the Protocol? Why build this whole system around owning someone completely?"
For a long moment, I think he won't answer.
Then his shoulders drop. Just slightly. A fraction of the tension releasing.
"Because I learned what happens when you don't have it." His voice is different now. Quieter. Something raw underneath the control. "When you trust people. When you show weakness. When you believe that caring about someone will make them care about you back."
"What happens?"
"They destroy you." He says it simply. Without drama. Like he's reciting a fact from a textbook. "They take everything you offered and they use it to break you. And then you rebuild. You build walls. You build systems. You make sure that no one ever gets close enough to do it again."
"So this—" I gesture at the penthouse, at myself, at the whole arrangement. "—is what? Armor?"
"This is control." He turns to face me fully. "I told you—control is survival. If I control every variable, no one can surprise me. No one can hurt me. No one can take anything I haven't already decided to give."
"That sounds lonely."
"Loneliness is survivable. Betrayal isn't."
The words hang in the air between us. I think about what he's describing. A life built on walls, on distance, on making sure no one ever gets close. A life where people are possessions because possessions can't betray you.
"I'm not going to betray you."
"You don't know that." His voice is flat. "You don't know what you'd do if the right pressure was applied. No one does, until they're tested."
"And this is the test? A year of owning me, to see if I'll betray you?"
"This is—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. It's the first uncontrolled gesture I've seen from him. "This is more complicated than I thought it would be."
The admission cracks something open. In me, in him, in the space between us.
"More complicated how?"
"I was supposed to use you." He says it bluntly. "You were supposed to be a convenient body, a way to satisfy certain needs without the complications of actual connection. I wasn't supposed to?—"
He stops. Looks away.
"Wasn't supposed to what?"
"To care whether you hated me." The words come out rough. Reluctant. "To care about making you come. To notice the way your face looks when you're fighting yourself, or the way you curl your hands into fists when you're trying not to beg."
My heart is pounding. This isn't what I expected. This isn't the cold, controlled monster who bought me. This is something else. Something cracked and complicated and almost human.
"The Protocol works both ways." His voice is quieter now. "It attunes you to me. But I'm—I'm attuning to you, too. Noticing things I shouldn't notice. Wanting things the contract doesn't require."
"What things?"
"Your surrender." He meets my eyes. "Real surrender. Not compliance—not just your body responding because I've chemically engineered it to respond. I want you to choose me. And that's?—"
His phone buzzes.
The sound shatters the moment. He reaches for it automatically, checks the screen, and something in his expression shifts. The vulnerability shutters away. The walls slam back into place.
"I have to take this."
"Sebastian—"
"We'll continue later." He's already moving toward his office, phone pressed to his ear. "The conversation isn't finished."
But it is finished. At least for now. It's in the way he holds himself. Professional again, controlled again, the man who runs empires instead of the man who was just admitting he's scared of caring about me.
I sit alone at the table. My food is cold. The Protocol hums in my blood, keeping me aroused, keeping me wanting, but underneath the physical need is something else.
Something I don't want to name.
He's gone for two hours.
His voice drifts from the office. Sharp, commanding, the voice he uses for business. Whatever the call is about, it's important. Important enough to pull him away from the most honest conversation we've had.
I wander the penthouse. Look at his books. Stand at the windows and watch the city move below me like a machine I'm no longer part of.
When he finally emerges, his expression is closed. Professional. The crack I glimpsed at lunch has been sealed over with something harder.
"The conversation we were having." He stops a few feet away from me. "It doesn't change anything."
"Doesn't it?"
"You're still mine for a year. The collar still happens in three weeks. The Protocol continues to build." His voice is clipped. Efficient. "Whatever complications exist, they don't alter the terms."
"I wasn't suggesting they did."
"Good." He moves toward the kitchen. "Then we continue as planned."
But we can't. We can't continue as planned, because he admitted something. I heard it, and neither of us can pretend it didn't happen.
"Sebastian."
He stops. Doesn't turn.
"I want something."
Now he turns. Eyes narrowing. "Want what?"
"To talk to Bennett." The words come out before I can second-guess them. "You said I could have supervised calls. Weekly. I want one. Today."
The silence that follows is absolute.
"No."
"You said?—"
"I said you could check on him. At my discretion." He faces me fully. The man from the phone call. Cold, commanding, immovable. "My discretion says no."
"Why?"
"Because you're not ready." He moves toward me, and I hold my ground even though everything in me wants to step back. "Because you just spent two hours processing a conversation about feelings, and I'm not going to let you destabilize yourself further by talking to the brother who sold you."
"That's not your decision."
"Everything is my decision." He stops in front of me. Close enough for his heat to radiate, his cologne to sharpen the air. "Your calls. Your contacts. Your access to the outside world. All of it goes through me, and right now, I'm saying no."
"I need to know he's okay."
"He's fine." His voice is dismissive. "He's spending the money I gave him to relocate. He's gambling again, because that's what he does. And if you talk to him right now, you'll either comfort him when he doesn't deserve it, or you'll scream at him and make yourself feel worse."
"You don't know that."
"I know you." He cups my jaw, that gesture again, the one that makes my body respond even when my mind is furious.
"I know you've spent eight years taking care of him at the expense of yourself.
I know talking to him now will send you spiraling into guilt or rage, and neither of those is productive. "
"Productive for who?"
"For you." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "For what we're building here."
"What are we building?" I throw his words back at him. "You said nothing is happening. You said I'm property. Property doesn't get to 'build' anything."
Something flickers in his eyes. There and gone.
"Ask me again next week."
"Why next week?"
"Because by next week, the Protocol will have reached steady state. You'll be past the initial adjustment. You'll be—" He pauses. "—more stable. More ready to handle whatever your brother says."
"And if I ask now?"
"The answer is no." Final. Absolute. "You'll have your call when I decide you're ready. Not before."
He releases my jaw. Steps back.
"Dinner is at seven. Between now and then, you're free to read, rest, do whatever you like. But the call doesn't happen today."
He walks away.
I stand in the middle of his penthouse, denied the one connection to my old life I thought I had, and the truth crystallizes.
He's protecting me.
It's twisted. It's controlling. It's probably manipulation. But somewhere underneath the ownership and the power games, Sebastian York looked at me and decided that talking to my brother would hurt me. And he said no.
Not to punish me.
To protect me.
I don't know what to do with that.
I don't know what to do with any of this.