I feel him leave my body. A slow, deliberate withdrawal, inch by inch, and I feel the emptiness opening inside me like a wound. I press my thighs together—tight, instinctive—trying to keep his seed inside me, that wet warmth that's already starting to leak onto the desk beneath me. My body clenches around nothing, missing him already, and I can still feel the ghost of him stretching me, filling me, claiming me.
Kaelen is already moving, reaching for his jeans on the floor. He zips them one-handed, runs his fingers through his dark hair, and I watch the transformation happen. The Animal retreating behind the mask. His grey eyes go flat, shuttered, the hunger banked into something cold and distant. He looks at me—a glance, not a gaze—and his voice is clipped. "Stay here."
I don't answer. I'm already sliding off the desk, my legs trembling, the red silk of my dress sticking to my damp skin. I brace a hand on the leather surface, feeling the stickiness under my palm, the evidence of what we've done. My thighs are slick. I'm still gasping, still raw, still aching for more, and he's already gone.
He unlocks the door. Pulls it open. Steps into the hallway.
"She's in her room," I hear him say, flat and calm. "I was working."
"Kaelen." Elara's voice, low and urgent. "She's been calling for you. She's agitated. You need to come now."
Silence. Then his footsteps, moving away. Toward the east wing. Toward Margit. Leaving me here.
The study door stands open. I can see a sliver of the hallway—empty, the wallpaper a muted gold, the light dim. I hear voices receding, Soren's laugh somewhere in the house, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen. The family is here. The family is everywhere.
I press my thighs together again, harder. His seed is still inside me, I can feel it, wet and warm and his. I should go clean up. I should find a bathroom before anyone sees me like this—dress wrinkled, hair a mess, the flush still burning my cheeks. I should fix myself before I have to face his sister, his brother, his nieces and nephews. Before I have to be his wife again, the invisible one, the one who doesn't matter.
But I don't move. I stand there, barefoot on the study carpet—heels discarded somewhere under the desk—and I feel the aftershocks still rippling through me. The ghost of his hands on my hips, his mouth on my throat, the way he looked at me when he came inside me. Like he was watching something break open and bloom.
I want to hate him for leaving. I want to feel the familiar sting of abandonment, the old wound that's been healing since he first kissed me. But all I feel is the ache where he filled me, the wetness between my thighs, the slow, thick pulse of his claim still warm inside me. And I know, with a certainty that hollows me out, that he'll disappear again. He's done it before. He'll do it again.
This is what I'm used to. This is what I chose.
I pull myself together—find my heels under the desk, slip them on, smooth my dress as best I can. My hair is half-falling from its bun, strands of chestnut clinging to my damp neck. I walk out of the study, my legs still unsteady, and find the hallway empty.
The next few days blur into a rhythm I've learned to survive.
I host. I smile. I pour tea and laugh at Soren's jokes and listen to Elara talk about her children. The house is full of noise—the clatter of toys, the running feet of kids, the endless questions and demands of a family reunion that has nothing to do with me. I make myself useful. I become the one who fetches juice boxes and wipes sticky hands and reads bedtime stories to Soren's youngest, a girl of six with Kaelen's grey eyes and none of his coldness.
Her name is Liv. She's shy and sweet and she gravitates toward me like I'm the only quiet thing in a house full of shouting. I don't mind. The kids don't look at me like I'm a transaction. They don't know about the debt, about the alliance, about my father's slap or the bruise that's faded to yellow under my makeup. They just know I'm the lady who smells like vanilla and reads stories in a soft voice and lets them braid my hair.
I braid Liv's hair too. She giggles when I tug too gently, and I feel something crack open in my chest—a hunger I didn't know I had. I push it down. I pour more tea. I avoid looking at the study door, which is always closed now, and I avoid looking at Kaelen, who moves through the house like a stranger.
He's here. He's not here. He eats dinner with the family, silent and watchful, his grey eyes passing over me like I'm furniture. He goes to his office after meals. He shoots scenes in Studio B, and I hear the muffled sounds through the walls—Amanda's moans, the director's voice, the camera's steady hum—and I press my palms flat against the kitchen counter and breathe until the nausea passes.
But at night, he comes to me.
Not every night. The first night, I lie awake in my room, waiting, and nothing happens. The second night, I fall asleep with my hand pressed between my thighs, still feeling the ghost of him, and wake to find my door cracked open and the hallway empty.
The third night, he comes.
I'm in the bedroom I've been using—one of the guest rooms, because the master is still his territory, and I haven't earned the right to sleep there—when I feel the air change. The door opens without a sound. He's standing in the darkness, a shadow against the dim light from the hallway, and I can smell him before I see him. Sweat. Soap. Something metallic, like blood or anger.
I sit up. The sheet falls to my waist. I'm wearing a thin cotton nightgown, nothing special, and I see his eyes track down to my breasts, visible through the fabric, my nipples hardening under his gaze.
"Kaelen—"
He crosses the room in three strides. His hand is on my throat before I can finish his name, pressing me back into the pillows, pinning me to the mattress. His fingers curl around my windpipe, not tight enough to cut off air, but tight enough to make me feel the weight of them. The threat.
I gasp. My hands fly up, gripping his wrist, but I don't pull away. I can't pull away. My body is already arching into him, my thighs parting, the wet heat flooding between my legs at the feel of his hand on my skin.
His grey eyes are wild. Unhinged. The Animal is not behind a mask tonight. The Animal is here, breathing hard, leaning over me, his pupils blown wide, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping in his cheek.
"I couldn't come," he says, and his voice is rough, scraped raw. "After a scene. For the first time in my life."
I feel the words land like blows. I feel them in my chest, in my cunt, in the shallow breath I manage against his grip.
"Because of you." He spits the words, like they're poison in his mouth. "Fuck, Dagmar. I am unable to come naturally anymore. The shoot ran longer because of you. Because I couldn't—" He breaks off, a sound that's almost a growl, and his hand tightens on my throat. Just a fraction. "You bitch."
I should be afraid. I am afraid, a bright cold thing that slithers through my veins, but it's tangled with something darker. Something hungry. He's looking at me like I broke him. Like I mattered enough to break him.
"I am going to fill you up with my cum," he says, and his other hand shoves the sheet aside, finds the hem of my nightgown, pushes it up to my hips. His fingers are rough, calloused, as they spread my thighs apart. "I watched you play with the children all these days. Watched you laugh at Liv. Watched her love you." The words come faster, harder, his grip on my throat tightening. "I am going to give you some of your own. I am going to trap you, Dagmar. You cannot leave now. You will never leave."
He thrusts into me without warning, without preparation, but I'm already wet, already aching, and my body opens for him like it has no choice. Like it wants to be filled by him, even like this, especially like this, with his hand on my throat and his eyes wild and his cock slamming into me like he's trying to drive himself so deep I'll never be empty again.
I scream—not from pain, but from the shock of it, the fullness, the way he's already hitting that spot inside me that made me see stars on the study desk. My legs wrap around his waist. My nails dig into the skin of his shoulders, leaving red crescents. He doesn't seem to notice.
"You're mine," he grits out, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath hot and ragged. "Say it. Say it."
"I'm yours." The words are a sob, torn from me. "I'm yours, Kaelen."
He comes inside me. I feel it—the hot pulse of him, the way his hips jerk and stutter, the groan he smothers against my mouth. And I come too, my cunt clenching around him, a shockwave that ripples through my whole body, leaving me limp and trembling beneath him.
He stays inside me. His hand slides from my throat to my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his gaze. The wildness is still there, but it's banked now, quieter, like a fire that's burned low.
"You cannot leave," he repeats, softer this time. Almost a plea. "I will not let you."
I don't say anything. I just lie there, his seed leaking out of me, my body still shuddering with aftershocks, and I feel the weight of what he's telling me settle into my bones like a new kind of gravity.
He pulls out slowly. Carefully. And then he presses his palm against my belly, flat and warm, and I feel his cum slick against his hand, still wet, still there.
"Stay like that," he says. "Don't move."
He rolls off the bed, crosses to the door, and leaves. The door doesn't close all the way—a sliver of light from the hallway falls across my bare legs, across the wetness between them, across the hand I press to my own belly when his warmth fades.
I lie there, his seed cooling on my skin, and I try to remember how to breathe.
I cannot leave now.
And I don't think I want to.