Three days.
For three days, the Selene Suite was a sealed world. I was its only visitor. The world outside—the shipments, the rivalries, the endless calculus of power—faded to a distant hum. My focus had narrowed to a single point: the woman in the room that smelled of peaches, medicine, and my own lingering roses.
I entered each day at noon, a ritual. I brought things. Not just the mandatory supplies—the nutrient drinks, the specialized thermoregulating gels, the fresh suppressant patches. I brought other things. Day one: a stack of rare, first-edition detective novels from my own library. Day two: a simple, absurdly soft cashmere throw in dove grey. Day three: a single, perfect white orchid in a black ceramic pot.
I never stayed long. Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. I would place the items on the table by the door, ask the same three questions.
"Is the fever manageable?"
"Are you in pain?"
"Do you need anything else?"
Her answers were monosyllabic at first. A nod. A shake of her head. "No."
She spent the first day asleep, the patch and her exhausted body pulling her under. The second day, she was awake but distant, wrapped in the grey throw on the sofa, staring at the city without seeing it. She was wrestling with the humiliation, the vulnerability. I let her.
On the third day, the dynamic shifted. The acute phase of the heat had passed, leaving the lingering, weary aftermath. She was showered, dressed in the simple, high-quality lounge clothes my staff had provided. She looked clearer. More herself. And more dangerous to my equilibrium.
When I entered with the orchid, she was waiting. Not on the sofa, but standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed. Her detective's gaze was back, sharp, assessing.
"You're a surprisingly attentive jailer," she said. Her voice was stronger.
"I'm not your jailer, Ava." I set the orchid down. Its delicate scent was a pale ghost next to the memory of peaches. "I'm your… custodian. Until you are well."
"And when will you decide I'm well enough to release?" She took a step closer. The space between us crackled. She was testing the boundaries of this new, strange dynamic.
"When you can walk out of here without collapsing," I said, meeting her gaze. "And when we have an understanding."
"An understanding." She repeated the words as if they were a foreign phrase. "You mean my silence. My surrender on the docks case."
"That is part of it." I moved past her, toward the window, needing to break the intensity of her stare. "But not all."
I heard her soft footsteps behind me. She stopped a few feet away, her reflection a phantom in the glass beside mine. "What's the rest?"
I turned to face her. The afternoon sun caught the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. "You live in a crumbling apartment with faulty locks. Your parents have a key and treat you like an ATM. Your job pays you in trauma and stale coffee." I listed the facts, my voice devoid of pity, just stark reality. "You are a brilliant flame in a drafty room. It's wasteful. It's… irritating to watch."
Her cheeks flushed with anger. "My life is not your concern."
"It became my concern the moment you stumbled onto my dock," I countered, my voice dropping, becoming more intimate. "You are a liability, Ava. But you could be an asset. A protected one."
She scoffed. "You want to hire me? A police detective?"
"I want to patronize you," I corrected, the word deliberate, ancient. "The suite is yours. Not just for heats. Whenever you need sanctuary. From your family, from your job, from the world. In return, you cease your investigation into my affairs. You look the other way when you see certain things. You live. Well."
It was a brazen offer. A mafia boss offering a detective a bribe of safety and comfort in exchange for her soul. I held my breath, waiting for the furious refusal.
It didn't come. She searched my face, her own a mask of conflicted calculation. I saw it then—the weariness that went bone-deep. The exhaustion of a lifetime of fighting for every crumb. The offer of a fortress, even a gilded, cursed one, was a siren song to that part of her.
"And what do you get out of this?" she whispered. "Besides my silence?"
You. The answer was so immediate it stunned me. Your presence. Your mind. The challenge of you. The scent of you in my space.
"Satisfaction," I said instead, a cool, controlled word. "Knowing a unique thing is not being ground into dust by a world too brutish to appreciate it. And," I added, tilting my head, "the interesting company of a woman who isn't afraid to look me in the eye."
A long, heavy silence stretched between us. The city hummed below, oblivious.
Finally, she looked away, her shoulders slumping not in defeat, but in a profound, weary acceptance. "I can't just drop my case. There's paperwork. My lieutenant…"
"A transfer will be arranged," I said smoothly. "To a white-collar division. Better hours. A safer precinct. A significant pay raise. It will seem like a reward for diligence."
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. "You can do that?"
I gave her a small, humorless smile. "Ava. I had you kidnapped from an active crime scene and installed in a luxury suite. Arranging a bureaucratic transfer is a phone call."
She let out a shaky breath, a laugh that held no humor. "Right." She wrapped her arms around herself, the gesture self-protective. She was at the cliff's edge. I could see the temptation to fall into the safety I offered warring with every moral fiber in her being.
"Think of it as witness protection," I murmured, taking a half-step closer. My rose scent gently enveloped her. "Without the terrible pasta and the lonely farmhouse."
That almost got a real smile. A flicker, then gone.
She looked up at me, and in her eyes, I saw the surrender. Not of her body, not this time. But of her fight. The terms were too favorable, the abyss of her current life too dark. She was choosing the devil she knew.
"Okay," she said, the word so soft I barely heard it. "The terms… are accepted."
A victory. It should have tasted sweet. It tasted like ash and responsibility.
"Good." I reached out, my hand hovering near her arm before I let it fall back to my side. Touching her now felt like crossing a new, irrevocable line. "Rest today. Tomorrow, I'll have your new assignment details. And the deed to the suite will be transferred to a trust in your name."
Her eyes widened. "The… deed?"
"A sanctuary you can't be thrown out of," I said simply, and turned to leave. The transaction was complete. I had bought her compliance, her safety, a piece of her peace.
As my hand touched the door handle, her voice stopped me.
"Ling?"
I turned.
She was still standing there, looking small and immense all at once. "Thank you," she said, the words clearly foreign on her tongue. "For the patch. For… not being what I expected."
The heat that flashed through me then had nothing to do with Alpha instinct and everything to do with her. It was a white-hot spark of pure, undiluted possession.
"You're welcome, Ava," I said, my voice thick. "Welcome to your new life."
I left her then, standing in the sunlit room that was now hers. The line between captor and benefactor had blurred into something else entirely. Something far more complex, and far more dangerous. The game was over. The arrangement had begun.
---
Thank you for reading my novel