Zara pov :
Waking up in Elio's bed was a slow, disorienting unraveling. The room was bathed in the pale, quiet light of just-before-dawn. The house was silent, a deep, heavy quiet that felt sacred after the chaos of the night. I was still in my clothes from the party, curled on top of the black duvet. Elio was gone, the space beside me cool and untouched.
A wave of soft embarrassment washed over me. I'd cried myself into exhaustion and just… stayed. He must have left me to sleep. The kindness of it, the unspoken understanding, made my throat tighten.
My stomach growled, a sharp, prosaic demand in the emotional quiet. I needed to move. I slipped out of bed, my layers from last night now feeling heavy and stale. I went to his dresser, hesitating for only a second before pulling open a drawer. It was meticulously organized. I found a soft, heather-grey t-shirt that smelled overwhelmingly of him and a pair of black athletic shorts with a drawstring. They swam on me, the shorts hanging loose on my hips, but they were clean. I changed quickly, folding my own clothes neatly on the bed, a silent thank you.
Padding barefoot out of the room and down the grand staircase, the house felt like a museum—a beautiful, empty shell. My footsteps echoed. The main living area was a disaster of empty bottles and abandoned glasses, but it was still.
The kitchen was a massive expanse of stainless steel and dark marble. It felt industrial, unlived in. I rummaged, finding a carton of eggs in the stark, cold fridge. Hallelujah.
The familiar, mundane ritual of cracking eggs into a bowl, whisking them, heating butter in a pan, was a lifeline. It was something my mother did. Something human. The sizzle was a friendly sound. I ate standing at the island, the creamy eggs tasting like normalcy.
I was washing the pan, my hands in warm, soapy water, staring out the black window at the first hints of morning grey, when I felt it.
A shift in the air. A presence, solid and undeniable, materializing behind me.
My body knew before my mind could catch up. Every muscle coiled, a primal alarm screaming through my veins. I tried to turn, to spin, but I was too slow.
A large, firm hand clamped over my mouth, stifling my gasp. An arm like a steel band locked around my waist, lifting me clean off my feet. I kicked out, a silent, frantic struggle, but he was effortlessly strong. In two strides, he'd carried me to the long, polished granite counter and set me down on the cold surface, stepping seamlessly between my bare thighs, caging me against the cabinets.
Soren.
His ice-blue eyes gleamed in the low under-cabinet lighting, fixed on my face with predatory focus. He was dressed in black, his hair tousled, smelling of the night and something dangerously alert. He didn't look drunk anymore. He looked perfectly, terrifyingly lucid.
He held my gaze as he slowly, deliberately, removed his hand from my mouth, daring me to scream. My breath came in ragged pants, but no sound emerged. It was as if he'd stolen my voice along with my safety.
"What the hell are you doing?" I finally whispered, the words trembling.
He didn't answer. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. He caught both of my wrists in one of his large hands, pinning them together with insulting ease against my own stomach. His other hand came up, not to hurt, but to trace the line of my jaw with his knuckles.
"Wearing his clothes," he murmured, his voice a low, intimate rasp. His thumb brushed over my bottom lip. "Cute. Do you feel like him now? Or do you still feel like you?"
"Let me go." It was a plea, weak and thin.
"But you just got here," he said, his hand leaving my face to slide down the column of my throat, over the worn cotton of Elio's shirt. His palm was scalding. He felt the frantic race of my pulse beneath his fingers and made a low, approving sound in his throat. "See? Your body knows the truth. It always tells me the truth."
His hand moved lower, skimming over the thin fabric of the borrowed shorts, mapping the curve of my hip. A violent shudder wracked me—part terror, part something else, something deep and shameful that uncoiled low in my belly. I tried to clamp my thighs together, but he was standing between them, a solid, immovable pressure.
"Stop," I breathed, but it sounded like a sigh.
"You don't want me to stop," he whispered, his lips now dangerously close to my ear. His free hand slid under the hem of the t-shirt, his fingertips branding a path up my bare side. I gasped at the contact, my skin pebbling under his touch. "You want to pretend you do. For him. For yourself. But this…" His hand slid up further, his palm rough and hot as it cupped the fullness of my breast. He brushed his thumb over the peak, already tight and sensitive, and a jolt of pure, electric pleasure shot straight to my core.
A choked, involuntary moan escaped me. I tried to bite it back, but it was too late. He'd heard it.
His grin was triumphant, feral. "That's it," he coaxed, his voice dripping with dark promise. He bent his head, his mouth leaving a searing trail down my neck as his hand on my breast grew more insistent, kneading, his thumb circling that aching peak until I was squirming against him, my hips making a small, helpless rock against the hard plane of his stomach.
The friction was exquisite torture. A pulse of wet heat bloomed between my legs, so sudden and intense it stole my breath. Shame burned through me, but it was drowned out by a sharper, more primal need.
He kissed me then. It wasn't gentle. It was a conquest. A devouring. His tongue swept into my mouth, claiming it, and I kissed him back with a desperation that horrified me. My mouth opened under his, my tongue tangling with his in a wet, hungry dance. One of his hands fisted in the hair at the nape of my neck, holding me in place for his kiss, while the other left my breast, sliding down over the frantic trembling of my stomach.
His fingers dipped beneath the loose waistband of the shorts. I cried out against his mouth, a sound of pure shock and want. He found the damp, aching heart of me with unerring accuracy, the pad of his finger sliding through slick, desperate heat.
"Fuck," he growled against my lips, the crude word a vibration of pure male satisfaction. "Soaked for me. Already."
He began to move his finger, a slow, torturous circle that had my back arching off the cold granite. My head fell back, a broken whimper tearing from my throat. Every nerve ending was on fire, focused on that single point of contact. I was panting, my hips moving in tiny, involuntary circles against his hand, seeking more pressure, more friction, more of him.
That's when we heard it—the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching the kitchen door.
Soren reacted instantly. Before I could even process the sound, his arm hooked under my thighs, lifting me. My legs wrapped around his waist on pure instinct as he carried me the few short steps to a narrow pantry door. He shouldered it open, plunged us into total darkness, and kicked it shut just as the main kitchen lights flicked on.
We were sealed in blackness, pressed together in the confined space. The only sounds were our ragged breathing and the faint hum of the freezer from the other side of the wall. I could feel the hard evidence of his arousal pressing against me, and it made my own need clench violently in response.
He didn't hesitate. His mouth found mine again in the dark, hotter and more demanding than before. With the threat of discovery just outside the thin door, the danger amplified everything. His kiss was deeper, more possessive. One hand braced against the shelf behind my head, the other resumed its devastating work between my legs.
This time, he didn't tease. He was relentless. Two fingers slid inside me, curling, stroking a spot that made stars burst behind my clenched eyelids. My inner muscles gripped him, trying to pull him deeper. His thumb pressed tight, circling that swollen, aching bud in a rhythm that stole the very air from my lungs. I was unraveling fast, a coil wound too tight, every muscle tensing for the fall. Pleasure, sharp and blinding, built at the base of my spine, a wave cresting higher and higher.
My nails dug into his shoulders, my face buried against his neck to muffle the desperate, pleading sounds I was making. I was so close. So close I could taste it, a metallic spark on my tongue. My entire world had shrunk to the dark, to his scent, to the skilled, merciless motion of his hand.
"Come for me," he breathed, a dark command against my ear. "Let go, little ghost. Show me."
And I wanted to. God, I was about to. The release was right there, a trembling, breath-held promise.
That's when he stopped.
His fingers went still. They didn't withdraw, but the movement ceased completely, leaving me spasming around him, teetering on a precipice with no way to fall.
A ragged, wounded sound tore from my throat. It was a sob of pure, agonizing frustration. The need was a physical pain, a throbbing, empty ache.
He shifted, pressing his forehead against mine in the dark. His breath was hot and ragged against my lips. "No," he whispered, and the word was a cruel, final sentence. He slowly withdrew his hand, leaving me hollow and trembling. "You don't get to come. Not tonight."
He straightened my clothes with a detached, clinical precision that felt worse than any violence. He adjusted the oversized t-shirt, pulled the shorts back into place. Every brush of his fingers was a fresh torment on every hypersensitive inch of my skin. I was a raw, exposed nerve, vibrating with an energy that had nowhere to go.
"This," he said, his voice a low, instructional murmur, as if explaining a simple fact, "is for telling me no. For choosing him over me.For trying to pretend this doesn't exist." He tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, the gesture grotesquely gentle. "Remember this feeling, Zara. This ache. This need. Remember who holds the key."
He stepped back. The loss of his heat was a sudden, shocking chill. The pantry air felt stale and suffocating.
My body screamed in protest. A deep, visceral tremor ran through me, part shock, part furious, denied climax. My core clenched around nothing, a phantom, agonizing pulse. I could still feel the ghost of his touch, the imprint of his fingers, the exact path they had taken. It was a brand.
I heard the soft sigh of the kitchen door closing in the distance. Whoever was there was gone.
Soren looked at me, his silhouette a perfect, unruffled statue in the thin light under the door. I was a shattered mess against the shelves, breathing like I'd run a marathon, tears of humiliation and frustration stinging my eyes. He was utterly composed. He'd taken me apart without breaking a sweat.
A slow, satisfied smile touched his lips. It wasn't a grin of triumph; it was colder, more intimate. The smile of a collector who has just acquired a rare, fragile thing and enjoys knowing exactly how to make it tremble.
"Sweet dreams, little ghost," he murmured. "I hope you think of me."
Then he opened the pantry door and was gone. The soft click of the latch echoed in the silent darkness.
For a long time, I didn't move. I sat on the cold pantry floor, knees drawn to my chest, shaking. The physical aftermath was a storm. My heart hammered. Between my legs, a dull, relentless throb echoed the rhythm he'd created, a maddening reminder of the release he'd stolen. My skin felt too tight, buzzing with unmet potential. It was a specific, cruel kind of torture—to be wound so tightly and then abandoned, still vibrating.
Shame came in a hot, nauseating wave. I had been so close to coming apart in his hands. I had wanted to. The memory of my own begging whimpers, the way my body had arched and pleaded, filled me with a self-loathing so profound it stole my breath.
I finally pushed myself up, my legs wobbly. I stumbled out of the pantry into the empty, silent kitchen. The evidence of my normal morning—the clean pan, the fork in the drying rack—seemed to mock me. I moved on autopilot, putting everything away with numb fingers.
The walk back to Elio's room was a blur. Each step felt heavy, my body leaden with unshed tension and humiliation. I locked the door and stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the quiet evidence of Elio's care—the soft new clothes, the neatly made bed, the overall sense of order.
The contrast was unbearable.
I crawled into his bed, pulling the duvet over my head, but I didn't find comfort. The sheets smelled like him—soap and safety—but my own skin still felt like it smelled of Soren, of dark pantry and dangerous promise. My body wouldn't settle. The ache was a constant, pulsing hum. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt his hands. Heard his voice. Remember who holds the key.
Sleep was a taunting impossibility. I lay rigid, staring into the dark, trapped in a loop of sensation and shame. The cruelest part wasn't the violation.
It was the craving.
A deep, secret, addictive part of me was already calculating, already yearning for the next time. Wondering what it would take to earn the release he'd so expertly withheld.
The lesson wasn't just in the denial. It was in the awakening. He hadn't just punished my body.
He had claimed its hunger. And left me starving for more.