Three
DOREN
The fourth day, I touched her.
Nothing overt. Nothing she could point to and call assault.
Just small incursions into her space—my hand on her lower back as I guided her to the table for meals.
My fingers brushing hers more often when I passed her a cup of tea.
Standing close enough that she could feel the heat of my body when we were in the kitchen together.
She held herself rigid, pretending not to notice whenever I made contact, then relaxed by degrees when I didn’t push further. Slowly, incrementally, I was teaching her body that my touch wasn’t a threat. That eventually, she’d crave it.
It was manipulation. I knew that. I was conditioning her, the same way I’d been trained to condition assets and informants during my years with the service. Find their needs, their weaknesses, their secret desires. Give them what they want while convincing them it was their idea all along.
It started as an assignment, though not a routine one—nothing is routine when they call me in. She’d unknowingly translated documents that put her on the wrong people’s radar, and the decision was made to use her as bait. Let the threat get close. Draw out a target we’d been hunting for years.
My job was to watch. To wait. To let it play out.
I was supposed to let her stay in danger long enough for him to make his move.
I couldn’t.
Three weeks ago, I eliminated the team he’d sent for her.
Quietly and efficiently. The target is still out there, the mission ongoing, but I decided she’d never be bait again.
Was I ignoring a direct order? Of course.
Did I care? Not even a little. What would my superiors do—eliminate me?
That was their only option, and they’d never be foolhardy enough to attempt it.
Besides, I’m a ghost when I want to be. They trained me to be.
But protecting her didn’t require taking her. Keeping her. This was obsession, pure and simple. And I’d stopped pretending otherwise.
On the fifth night, she broke a glass.
It was an accident—her hand slipped while she was washing the dishes, a task she’d insisted on taking over because she couldn’t stand being idle. It shattered against the stone sink, and a shard caught the heel of her palm, drawing a thin line of blood.
“Fuck.” She clutched her hand to her chest as crimson drops fell onto her shirt.
I crossed the room in three strides and closed my fingers around her wrist.
“Let me see.”
“It’s fine—”
“Let me see,” I demanded.
Her eyes snapped to mine and in their turquoise depths, I saw a flicker of heat she tried to suppress.
But I’d seen it. And she knew I’d seen it.
She let me examine the cut. It was shallow, nothing that required stitches, but I took my time cleaning it. I ran warm water over her palm, dabbed antiseptic along the wound with a gentleness I reserved for very few people, then wrapped her hand with gauze.
Through it all, she stood frozen. Barely breathing. Her pulse stuttering beneath my fingers where I held her wrist.
“There.” I didn’t release her immediately. Instead, I traced a slow circle against her arm with my thumb. “All better.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I lifted her bandaged hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to her skin below the gauze. “Be more careful. I don’t like seeing you bleed.”
I released her and walked away, leaving her standing at the sink with flushed cheeks and ragged breath.
It wouldn’t be long now.
—Lillet—
I dreamed about him.
That was the part I couldn’t forgive myself for. The captivity, the isolation, the constant tension—those I could blame on him. But the dreams were mine. The images that surfaced when my defenses were down, when my subconscious wasn’t busy maintaining the fiction that I hated him.
In my dreams, he touched me. He pressed me against the wall, using his hands to learn the shape of my body, and his mouth to find the places that made me gasp and arch and beg.
I woke on the sixth day with my skin damp and my body aching. I knew I was losing a battle I hadn’t even realized I was fighting.
I found him in the main room, drinking coffee and reading like this was any normal morning. Like he hadn’t systematically dismantled every defense I had over the past week.
“Good morning.” He didn’t look up from his paper. “There’s hot water for tea. Eggs if you’re hungry.”
“I want you to let me go.”
His expression was calm when he looked up, but I’d learned to read the subtle shifts in his demeanor—the scrunch of his eyes and tightening of his jaw.
“We’ve discussed this.”
“No. We haven’t. You’ve told me I’m not leaving, and I’ve argued, but we haven’t actually discussed anything.
” I moved closer, stopping on the other side of the table.
Close enough to see the individual shades of gray in his eyes.
“You say you’re not interested in forcing me.
Fine. Prove it. Let me walk out that door. ”
“No.”
“That’s not—”
“I said I wouldn’t force you to want me.” He came around the table and stopped inches from me. “I didn’t say I’d let you leave.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.
“Until you admit what’s happening between us.” His voice dropped, going rough. “Until you stop pretending you don’t feel it too.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t lie to me.” His fingers caught my chin, tilting my face toward his. “I can see your pulse jumping and how your pupils dilate when I touch you. You’ve been dreaming about me—I can tell by the way you look at me in the mornings, like you’re ashamed.”
My face burned. “That doesn’t mean—”
“It means you want me.” His thumb traced along my lower lip, and I shuddered. “It means that somewhere underneath your anger, part of you understands why you’re here. Why you belong here.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“Not yet.” He echoed the words he’d said that first night, but they felt different now.
Heavier. More dangerous. “But you will. And when you finally admit it—when you come to me and ask for what we both know you want—I’ll give it to you.
Everything. Every dark thing you’ve never let yourself imagine. ”
He released me and stepped away.
“Until then,” he said, “I’ll wait.”