I couldn't sleep.
Not because the sheets were uncomfortable or the room was too cold—but because Lucian D'Amaro had left me standing half-naked in a velvet-walled room and walked away like it meant nothing.
Like I meant nothing.
I lay on my side, the moonlight slipping through the crack in the curtains, painting silver lines across the floor. My fingers were curled around the duvet, holding it too tightly like it could ground me—like it could silence the rush of thoughts spinning through my skull like blades.
It didn't.
I shut my eyes, but the images came anyway. His voice. His hands. That look in his eyes—the hunger he tried so hard to bury, the storm he barely held in check. It was still there behind my lids, just like it had been when he stared at me like I was something to dissect.
Something to own.
And I hated it—how much it got to me. How much I felt it.
I should've been proud. I'd stood there and let him look. Let him command. I hadn't crumbled. I hadn't cried. I'd held my damn chin high even when my legs were ready to give out.
But now, lying in this silence, away from his gaze, my armor felt paper-thin. And the truth? It was starting to bleed through.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My body still buzzed like I was standing in that lounge, like his breath was still brushing my skin. I could still feel it—the pull of his finger beneath my waistband, the weight of his stare. How I'd felt both stripped and seen. How I'd hated the silence he left behind.
A knot twisted in my stomach.
Because the worst part wasn't the shame.
It was the want.
I wanted him to touch me.
I wanted him to break. To lose control.
I wanted to be the reason Lucian D'Amaro—the man everyone feared, respected, bowed to—lost that composure he wore like a second skin.
I sat up slowly, curling my knees to my chest. My room was quiet. Too quiet. Every breath felt like a scream. The shadows looked longer tonight, more alive. And maybe it was exhaustion, or the leftover fever still licking at my bones, but I felt cracked open in a way that couldn't be patched up.
My fingers brushed the curve of my bare shoulder. I remembered how the silk top had slipped from my skin. The way his voice had commanded, not requested. Off.
God.
I buried my face in my knees and tried to breathe. Deep, steady. But all I got was that same tight ache in my throat—the kind that warned of tears I wouldn't let fall.
But the ache didn't go away.
It just sat there—low and heavy—like something I'd swallowed wrong. Lodged beneath my ribs, pushing against every breath. The room was spinning too quietly. Like the walls were waiting for me to break.
And maybe I already had.
Maybe the second he walked away, I cracked open. And now all I could do was sit in the pieces, trying to remember what it felt like to be whole.
I reached blindly for the duvet and tugged it higher, as if that could muffle the heat in my skin or erase the ghost of his breath. But it didn't help. Nothing did.
Lucian D'Amaro had looked at me like he was trying not to want me—and still, I'd burned under that stare like it was flame.
What scared me most wasn't how he'd touched me.
It was how he hadn't.
How he'd stopped. How he'd left. Like the hunger meant nothing.
Like I meant nothing.
And still, my body remembered every inch of the space between us. Every second I stood there, breathless and waiting, like something inside me had already said yes—even if the words never came.
I hated how badly I wanted more.
More of his silence. More of his eyes. More of the way he looked at me like I was a problem he didn't want to solve, but couldn't stop circling.
I wanted it even though I knew it would hurt.
I pressed my forehead to my knees and clenched my jaw, squeezing my eyes shut until stars burst behind them. I didn't cry. I didn't sob. But something inside me shuddered—like a breath that had been held too long finally slipping loose.
The silence crawled closer.
And I didn't fight it.
I just let it swallow me.