***---Harper---***
Velour had no business being this quiet.
The bass usually shook the walls, the air usually buzzed with sex and secrets. Tonight? Just silence. The kind that made you hear your own pulse in your ears.
It was only my second time here and it felt wrong. The first time, nerves had been tangled with lust. I'd hidden behind the mask and let the dark swallow me whole. Tonight, I wasn't Crownless. Tonight, I was Harper Lane, walking into something that felt like a trap.
The door to Room Seven shut behind me and I froze.
The bed was shoved aside, almost forgotten. No champagne chilling in ice, no silk robes, no evidence of the play that usually happened here. Just a single table in the center. One chair, pulled out. A leather folder and a heavy pen laid across it like an invitation.
And him.
He stood at the far side of the table, masked, broad, too still. My chest tightened.
"What is this?" My voice split the silence, sharper than I meant.
"Come and sit down."
That voice. I knew it. The cadence. The command. Something in my chest sank. My fingers shook as my eyes darted around the room.
I swallowed, and tried again. "What is this?"
"Sit down. Open it."
I crossed the room because my legs didn't give me another choice. My coat pulled across my knees when I sat. My hand hovered over the folder. My gaze flicked up at him, his mask shadowing half his face. The cut of his jaw was too familiar. My stomach flipped.
Don't think it. Don't say it.
I flipped the folder.
Legalese. Clauses. Lines. My brows furrowed. This wasn't sex club paperwork.
I turned the page. Consent language. Red and yellow spelled out in neat, black text. My pulse stuttered.
Then the third page gutted me.
Participant: Harper Lane
My name. Not Crownless. Not anonymous. Harper fucking Lane.
Air left my lungs in a rush. My head snapped up. "How do you know my real name?"
He didn't answer. He just stood there. My stomach twisted tighter. The silence was worse than words.
"You…" My throat closed. I tried again. "Who are you?"
His head tilted a fraction. My heart plummeted. I knew that tilt. I'd seen it every time a meeting went too long and he lost patience.
No. Just fucking no!
"Say something." I snapped, because the alternative was screaming.
His shoulders lifted as he drew in a breath, but still no words. Just his hand rising, slow, to the strap of his mask.
"Don't…" I whispered, even though I already knew. My stomach knew. My thighs knew. My entire fucking body knew.
He pulled the strap loose, but he didn't take the mask off right away. He let it hang for a second, like he was daring me to say it out loud first.
And God help me, I did.
"Garret." The name tore from my throat.
He froze. His hand lingered on the edge of the mask.
"Tell me I'm wrong." I begged. "Tell me it's not you."
He dragged the mask off.
Garret Bannen. CEO. My boss.
My world tilted.
"Garret!" I gasped again, because saying it didn't make it less insane.
"Yes." His voice was raw. "It's me."
I scraped my chair back an inch like that would make space between us, but I couldn't look away.
The mask dangled from his hand. His eyes were locked on me, fierce and naked.
"You." I whispered, because my brain couldn't string together anything else. "Why is my name in this contract?"
"Because I'm finished pretending we're strangers." His jaw tightened. "I was ready to keep the masks. I was going to just walk away, end it when I found out. Then you messaged. And now I can't anymore."
My fingers fumbled the pages. Each turn hurt.
"Confidentiality." He shrugged when I tapped the first clause with a shaking finger. "It protects you more than me."
I turned another page.
"Consent. You say Red and it ends. Yellow and we slow way the fuck down. No reasons required."
I swallowed. My throat burned.
Then I hit the paragraph that made everything tilt again.
Residence requirement: Participant Harper Lane will reside primarily in the penthouse of Garret Bannen, with a dedicated private suite to maintain independence.
My head shot up. "You want me to move into your penthouse?"
"You'll have your own room. Your own space. Privacy when you want it."
I laughed, brittle and sharp. "Not happening. My best friend Chloe has a key to my apartment. She crashes there when she feels like it. What am I supposed to tell her? Sorry, my boss wants me chained in his penthouse but hey, make yourself at home?"
"I'll buy the apartment." He didn't even blink.
"What?"
"I'll buy it. The lease, the building, whatever it takes. Chloe will never lose her refuge. You'll always have a place to run to. But the penthouse is not negotiable. You'll have a room there. That's final."
My stomach knotted. "You sound insane."
"Maybe I am." He took a step closer. The light caught his eyes, wild and dark. "Do you know what it did to me, hearing another man's voice in the background while you were on the phone with me? I wanted to tear the city apart. I can't stop thinking about it."
"You're jealous." I whispered.
"I'm consumed." His voice was soft, broken. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw like he wanted to rip the words out of himself. "I've wanted you for years, Harper. Every time you walked by my office. Every time you bit down on a pen. Every goddamn messy bun you twisted tighter. I've wanted you. And when I found out you were Crownless? That the woman who got on her knees for me was the same one I've been lusting after all this time?" His voice cracked. "It broke me. I can't go back. I have to own you. I have to know you're mine."
My throat worked. He didn't sound like the boss who strode through the office with the world at his feet. He sounded unhinged. Lost.
He braced a hand on the table, knuckles white. "I don't know how to want you gently. All I know is this. I need you in my penthouse. I need to know where you are. That you're not with anyone else. That you're close enough to touch."
My hand clenched around the pen, knuckles aching. His brand of crazy filled the air until it pressed down on me, hot and suffocating.
"This isn't right." I whispered.
"No." His voice was sharp. "It's obsession. And it's not going away."
Silence swallowed the room. The bass outside thumped slow and steady, like a reminder that the world was still spinning even though mine had tipped sideways.
"You're shaking."
"So are you." I shot back.
His eyes flicked to my mouth, then back to my eyes. "Say it again. My name."
"Garret."
His eyelids fluttered shut like it wrecked him. When they opened again, his voice dropped lower.
"Sign it. And I'll show you exactly what it means to belong to me."