Chapter 20 Iris
IRIS
Hours pass. I’m still stranded on the rooftop and wrapped in Wolf’s jacket with a sheet pulled tight around my shoulders like a flimsy cape.
I must have slept at some point. Now that I’m wide awake again, I meander through the rose garden. What Wolf has created here, what he’s allowed me to see, is unreal. But without him, it changes. The silence presses in, and my thoughts swell, drowning out everything else.
His reaction won’t let me alone. The way he unraveled, not when he gave me my third, and not when I leaned in to kiss him, but after I said that word.
Intimacy.
Maybe I disqualified myself the moment it left my mouth. Maybe that was the line no one crosses. And yet something deep and insistent tells me this isn’t finished.
I try the elevator again.
Nothing.
I curse as I turn back to the bed. If you can’t escape, you may as well surrender to it. This isn’t an indulgence I’ll be offered twice. I stretch the sheet over my legs and draw his jacket closer, breathing him in. There’s no cologne, just him. Clean and dark.
The night is so quiet that I catch the elevator doors opening, smooth as they are.
A woman steps out. She wears a porcelain shell mask and nothing else above a waist so narrow that it seems impossible. Her golden hair cascades in waves over her ample breasts, a living rendition of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
I clutch the sheet higher, suddenly too aware of myself.
She’s stunning.
Then, the thought hits. Has Wolf been with her?
The answer isn’t my business. I know that. Men like him don’t belong to one woman. They collect moments, bodies, nights without obligation, and rules without tenderness.
Without kissing.
Still, the ache arrives uninvited.
Venus crosses the space and hands me my dress, rescued from the interrogation room, along with my stilettos. Reggie will be relieved. His creation survived the night.
As she sets the fabric on the bed, I glimpse the edge of lace tucked inside. My panties are there too.
“Would you like help getting dressed?” she asks.
“No.” The word comes too fast. “I’m fine.”
Her mouth tilts as if she finds my refusal interesting. Amusing, even. Does she expect to touch me? Is that part of it…for others?
“Whenever you’re ready,” she says, stepping back. “Someone will be waiting downstairs.”
The doors slide shut behind her, leaving me alone again.
I dress slowly, purposely careless. There’s no rush left in me, only reluctance. The rooftop feels like a held breath, like a secret I’m not ready to release. I smooth the dress over my skin, slide into my heels, and stand there for a moment longer than necessary, letting the night look back at me.
When I finally step into the elevator, the doors close on their own. I don’t touch a single button. The descent is seamless, and the floor indicator never lights up. I’m delivered rather than transported.
My chauffeur is waiting, with the same posture and the same impassive calm as before.
He asks no questions and offers no commentary during the drive.
Time passes, though I have no way of tracking it in the dark.
Still, it feels as if the night is eager to be done with me, to return me to whatever version of myself existed before Wolf.
But she’s gone.
My bedroom feels smaller than I remember. I take off the dress, the heels, the remnants of the night, and sink onto the bed. My thoughts circle back to him immediately, unstoppable.
Wolf.
He was right. Every move I make today brings him back.
God, the memory still hits hard, the rush when I came hard on his face.
Only a powerful man could pull off what he did last night.
The rooftop bed inside a rose garden, the cops, the staged precinct.
And knowing he made me come three times leaves me burning all over again.
I trail my fingers over my own skin, slow and curious, not chasing release so much as sensation. They then move into my folds, parting me once, twice. Not even close! Nothing will be as incredible as Wolf. He filled me completely, ruthlessly, and precisely. Not even Mr. Purple can compete.
And then there’s the kiss that never happened. My lips part, conjuring what he denied me, which is his mouth, the pressure of it, and how everything would’ve changed if he hadn’t turned away. If he’d let it happen. If he’d stayed.
The images sharpen, not into scenes, but into understanding. The noise in my head thins, as if someone has turned a dial. What remains is stark. Inspiration doesn’t arrive tenderly. It never has. It takes hold the way truth does, without permission, without mercy.
That night inside Wolf’s manor club, I was certain of what I would create afterward. I thought experience marked the edge of my work, the farthest I was willing to go. Risk. Desire dressed up as bravery.
But it wasn’t the edge.
There is a space between sex and love, and it’s rarely mapped because it refuses easy language. Sex is spectacle. Love is mythology. Both are crowded with expectation, performance, and repetition. They come preloaded with meaning before the brush ever touches the canvas.
I’m not going back to Crimson Reverie. I’ve grown beyond Bobby Derring. Maybe gradually, maybe all at once. Maybe it happened the moment I saw the crack in Wolf and became aware of what lived inside it. That space between things is far more potent than I ever gave it credit for.
Intimacy.
It isn’t safe. It can be offered. It can be denied. It can wound, or ignite, or do both. And the most dangerous part of it, the part no one admits, is that it doesn’t guarantee reciprocity.
That’s where the power lives.
And why it can terrify even the most powerful man.
And I know, I know, how to take that truth and set it onto canvas in a way the world won’t be able to look away from. I’m done being a one-hit wonder. Done being the starving artist people speak about with indulgent pity. This time, they won’t just look again.
They won’t be able to stop.
Even Keller.
I scribble a note for Reggie and leave it on the counter.
Gone fishing.
Then I dress, grab my keys, and head for the studio. The road unfurls ahead of me, dark and receptive, and I know without a doubt that I won’t be home for days.
Whatever Wolf awakened doesn’t want a resolution.
It wants to be made.