She does not belong in my house.
I stand in the kitchen doorway, motionless, watching Skye from behind. The thin fabric of her old t-shirt hits mid-thigh, and the morning light through the window turns the cotton nearly translucent.
I can see the shape of her through it—the line of her spine, the curve of her waist, bare legs that go on longer than they have any right to.
She is too soft, too unguarded, and too real for the performance of wealth and propriety my father maintains.
I want to scare her. The impulse rises clean and simple, uncomplicated by the reasons I shouldn't. I stay in the doorframe, using it like a frame for a painting, and speak without raising my voice.
"Didn't take you for a morning person."
She jumps, then spins. Her shirt shifts with the motion, and I see the rest of what I suspected: no bra, the shape of her breasts, the dark suggestion of nipples against worn fabric.
I hold her gaze deliberately, making sure she knows what I've seen, what I'm noticing, what I'm imagining doing with the information.
The conversation that follows becomes a blur almost immediately. My brain keeps sliding sideways, catching on the image of her standing there defiant and half-dressed, so I miss chunks of what she says.
I register only fragments—her voice, sharp; the way she angles her body away from me without actually retreating, maintaining the fiction that she's not affected.
She tells me my outfit is nice, but I know what she is thinking. Her eyes betray her—the way they drop to my bare chest and linger a half-second too long before snapping back to my face. The way her throat moves when she swallows.
I have spent years learning to read women, cataloguing the small involuntary signals that reveal what their mouths refuse to admit.
Skye Fraser is no different. She wants to look. She wants to do more than look. And the fact that she hates herself for it makes the whole thing infinitely more satisfying.
I am hungry. The morning routine has hollowed me out, so I push off the doorframe and walk toward the island where her sandwich sits. I reach across and pick it up, taking a bite before she can stop me.
She tries to protest, and I love how her voice pitches higher when she is indignant. There is something deeply entertaining about watching a woman who prides herself on composure lose her grip on it over a stolen sandwich.
She snatches it back and takes a pointed bite, chewing with exaggerated defiance as if reclaiming the sandwich is some kind of victory.
Then she tries to draw some lines—the kind of neat, sensible boundaries that work in theory and crumble the moment someone decides not to respect them.
"There is a very clear line between us," she says.
I almost laugh. The line she is describing stopped existing the moment she wrapped her legs around my waist and kissed me like she was trying to climb inside my skin.
"Go fuck yourself, Kai," I hear her say.
Should I tell her I already did?
I already went and fucked myself this morning in the shower, thinking of her. And I would gladly fuck her instead, given any opening.
The memory surfaces unbidden—her bent over the desk, her voice breaking, her body yielding—and I feel myself getting hard again, right there in the kitchen, three feet from her.
I shift my weight, angle my hips away, drop Dylan Cooley’s name like a stone into still water, and watch for ripples.
They come, but not the ones I expect.
Her stillness is immediate and total. The color doesn't leave her face in stages—it drains all at once, like someone pulled a plug, leaving her skin bloodless and strange.
But her body doesn't move. Her breathing doesn't hitch. She stands there with her jaw locked and her eyes fixed on some point between us, and something about this composure scrapes against my nerves.
I want a reaction. A flinch. A lie.
"Nothing to say?" I keep my voice light, conversational. "No explanation?"
She doesn't flinch, doesn't blink. Just stands there with that glassy self-control, as if she's already rehearsed this moment, as if she expected it.
"How do you know that name?" she asks.
"I asked first," I press.
She's close enough that I can catalogue her entirely. The tension in her shoulders. The way her mouth opens slightly while her eyes stay stubborn, refusing to soften.
I wait for the performance—the deflection, the explanation, the careful construction of innocence that everyone offers when cornered.
She doesn't try. She wears that still face like armor, steps back one deliberate pace, and demands: "And I'm asking now. How do you know that name, Kai?"
I consider telling her the truth: that I went through my father's files, that the safe code is my birthday and has been since I was twelve, that I read everything about her because information is the only currency that matters.
"It doesn't matter how I know." I watch her face for cracks. "What matters is what I do with this knowledge."
"And what exactly do you plan to do with it?' She does not retreat, even when I stop close enough to see the pulse jumping at her throat.
"I haven't decided yet." I let the words land slow. "Maybe I mention it to my father over breakfast. Maybe I send an anonymous tip to Whitmore's board. Or maybe I just hold onto it, keep it warm, wait for the moment when you forget your place and need reminding."
"Blackmail.'"She says it flatly, without surprise. "How original."
"I prefer leverage. It sounds less criminal."
"Call it whatever you want." Her chin lifts, and there is no fear in her eyes. "But if we're comparing secrets, you might want to remember what I walked in on my first day. Ms. Dotson bent over that desk."
"Emily is a consenting adult who wanted everything she got."
"I'm sure the administration would see it that way." Her voice drips with mock sympathy. "A student sleeping with his teacher. Very wholesome."
"Emily is leaving in two weeks." I lean closer, crowding her space. "Whatever you think you have disappears with her."
I watch her face, expecting fear, expecting the collapse of that maddening composure. Expecting her to realize that her only weapon has an expiration date.
Skye smiles. It is small and knowing and it transforms her completely—still not afraid, suddenly dangerous.
"You think Emily is my only card?" She tilts her head, studying me like I am a puzzle she has already solved. "I don't believe for a second she's the only one, Kai," she says, her voice light as observation. "A boy who learned to trade favors once probably learned to trade them twice. Three times. As many as necessary."
My face betrays me. I feel it happen—the flicker of recognition, the involuntary tightening around my eyes.
"There it is." Her smile widens. "I wonder what your father would think. Principled, honest Heinrich Becker, learning that his son has been fucking his way to a diploma."
I stare at her. The satisfaction in her expression is unbearable.
Satisfied, she gathers her sandwich and her coffee. She passes close enough that her arm brushes my chest, deliberate or accidental I can't tell. She moves upstairs without looking back.
I smell her as she goes. Lily of the valley—my mother's favorite, the one she wore in the hollow of her throat before she left.
The scent is deceptively delicate, those tiny white bells hiding poison in every part, and it clings to Skye's skin like something that belongs to colder climates, cleaner air.
Too fragile for this house with its locked doors. I stand in the kitchen long after she's gone, staring at the space where she stood, and think how good it would feel to crush those bells in my fist.
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