Aria lasted exactly forty-three minutes staring at the ceiling before she gave up pretending she could sleep.
The collar felt heavier tonight.
It didn’t buzz, didn’t shock, didn’t tighten, but it sat against her skin like a hand that refused to move, humming faintly with its own quiet pulse. Every time she swallowed, she felt it. Every time she shifted, the cool metal kissed her throat and reminded her—Wolfe Tower owned her. Damian Wolfe owned her.
She turned onto her side. The city lights leaked in through the slit between the blackout curtains, faint lines of gold carving shadows along the wall. Somewhere above, somewhere not nearly far enough away, he was awake. She knew it in the same bone-deep way you knew when a storm was rolling toward your house.
Her throat was dry. Her head ached.
Fine.
She swung her legs off the bed and stood, the concrete floor cold under her bare feet. The door recognized the collar and unlocked with a soft click, a reminder that even her freedom of movement belonged to someone else’s system.
The penthouse was half-dark, half-glass. City glow slipped through the living room windows, painting everything in muted silver. Aria walked slowly, hugging herself, the hem of the oversized T-shirt she’d been given brushing the tops of her thighs. She padded into the kitchen, reaching blindly for a glass from the cabinet.
She didn’t see him at first.
She felt him.
“Couldn’t decide whether to steal or haunt?”
His voice floated out of the shadows, low, rougher than usual, coiled with something she couldn’t quite name.
Aria froze.
Damian stood near the far counter, half in darkness. The only light touched the edge of his profile—strong jaw, sharp cheekbones, eyes glinting faintly. His shirt was undone halfway, hanging open enough to reveal a stretch of hard chest, muscles shifting with every slow, tightly controlled breath. His hair was slightly mussed, as if he’d run his hands through it one too many times.
He looked less like a CEO and more like something that stalked war zones.
She swallowed, fingers tightening on the glass. “I just wanted water.”
“Your room has a bathroom,” he said. “A sink. You could drink from that.”
“That’s not water,” she muttered before she could stop herself. “That’s punishment in plumbing form.”
Damian’s head turned a fraction, eyes narrowing. “Careful.”
Tiredness frayed her fear. “You asked.”
His gaze dropped to the collar, then back to her face. “What are you doing out of your room, Aria?”
“I told you.” She forced her shoulders to stay straight. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So you decided to walk through my space like you own it?”
“This isn’t your space?” She heaved a shallow breath, anger simmering under her skin. “Is there anywhere in this tower that isn’t yours?”
He stared at her for a beat too long.
Then he pushed away from the counter.
He moved slowly, deliberately, not with the quick violence she’d seen in meetings but with the lazy precision of a predator who knew the prey had nowhere to go. Each step was soundless on the polished floor, but the air changed with his approach—thicker, heavier, charged.
“I gave you a room,” he said. “I gave you work. I gave you rules.” His gaze dragged over her, taking in bare legs, oversized shirt, collar glinting at the base of her throat. There was nothing overtly lewd in his stare, but it stripped her all the same. “I did not give you permission to wander my penthouse at night.”
He kept walking.
Aria’s back brushed the edge of the kitchen island. She hadn’t meant to retreat, but her body seemed to understand something her pride refused to admit: there was nowhere to run that didn’t end with him.
“I can’t live like a ghost,” she whispered.
He stopped a foot from her. “You already do. You just haven’t accepted it.”
Her pulse stuttered. “I’m not a possession.”
The corner of his mouth twisted, humorless. “The collar disagrees.”
His hand lifted, fingers brushing the chain attachment lightly, making the ring at the front click against the metal. “You feel it, don’t you? Every time you breathe?”
“Yes,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
“Good.” His voice dropped. “You’re supposed to.”
She tried to step sideways.
He shifted with her, cutting off the escape.
In the next breath, he had her boxed in—one hand braced on the counter beside her hip, the other landing flat on the surface behind her, his arm blocking the other side. His body didn’t touch hers, but the heat of him pressed against her skin like a second atmosphere.
“You’re invading my space,” he said quietly. “You’re under my roof, wearing my chain, breathing my air, and somehow you’ve convinced yourself you’re not bound by my rules.”
“I just walked to the kitchen,” Aria shot back, voice softer but steady. “I didn’t break a treaty.”
“You broke distance.” His eyes burned into hers. “You’re under my skin.”
The admission shocked her.
It seemed to shock him, too.
His jaw clenched. “You’re in my meetings. In my tower. In their mouths. Every decision I make lately has Navarro written all over it because of you. I feel you in rooms you’re not even in.”
Her breath caught. “I don’t want that.”
“No?” He leaned in, breath warm on her face, the faint scent of whiskey and something darker wrapping around her. “Could have fooled me. You walk through my world looking fragile and furious at the same time and then act surprised when people react.”
“I didn’t ask you to react,” she whispered, chest rising and falling too fast. “I don’t want you to feel anything.”
A laugh slipped from him then—low, rough, broken around the edges. It wasn’t amused. It wasn’t sane. It made the hairs on her arms rise.
“That’s not how it works,” he murmured. “You don’t get to tell me what to feel.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“But you do,” he said. “You push. You talk back. You look at me like you’re trying to figure out if there’s anything left of whatever I was before your father carved him up. And I hate it.” His fingers twitched against the counter. “I hate that it doesn’t always work.”
“Doesn’t what work?”
“The hatred.”
Silence rang between them.
His hand lifted slowly from the counter, hovering near her face. He didn’t touch her immediately, as if he was wrestling with the impulse even as it dragged him closer. At the last second, his fingers closed gently—too gently—around her chin, thumb pressed against the soft indentation beneath her lower lip.
He tilted her face up.
Her breath hitched. His gaze dropped—once—to her mouth.
The world narrowed to three points: his hand on her, his breath on her skin, the racing of her own pulse clawing against the collar.
“For the record,” he said quietly, words brushing her lips, “I don’t want to feel anything either.”
The truth of it burned.
For a moment, everything else fell away—the Syndicate, the vote, the cages, the war. The only thing in the room was the sharp, unbearable pull between a man who had been taught that feeling was weakness and a girl who had been taught that love could be bought with blood.
He leaned in closer.
His nose brushed hers, not quite a touch, almost an accident. His thumb dragged a fraction higher, skimming the edge of her mouth. His eyes looked tortured, furious, hungry, like he was standing at the edge of a cliff he’d promised never to go near again.
Aria’s lips parted on a shivery inhale.
His entire body went rigid.
And then he ripped himself away from her like she was fire.
He stepped back so fast the loss of his presence felt like a slap. His hand left her chin as if her skin had burned him. His other fist slammed into the wall beside the fridge with a sound like cracking stone.
She flinched.
“Dammit,” he snarled under his breath, knuckles pressed to the dent in the drywall, shoulders heaving. “This is exactly—”
He cut himself off.
His head bowed for a heartbeat. When he looked at her again, the shutters were back in place. The monster mask. The cold.
“Go back to your room,” he said.
His voice wasn’t smooth this time. It scraped out of him low and hoarse, frayed at the edges with something he refused to name.
Aria’s heart pounded against her ribs, chest tight, throat too aware of the collar’s weight. She nodded once, unable to string a reply together. Her feet moved before her mind caught up, carrying her past him, through the living room, down the hall.
He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t stop her.
But she felt his eyes on her back until the door closed.
She pressed her forehead against it once it locked, breathing hard, hands shaking as she touched the collar.
It felt different now.
Not heavier.
Just… aware.
Inside the kitchen, Damian stayed where he was for a long time, palm throbbing, pulse racing, eyes fixed on the faint mark his fist had left in the wall.
He had faced cages. Blood. Torture. War. He had walked through fire and built an empire on top of the ashes.
None of that had terrified him the way that almost-moment had. The fraction of an inch. The almost-contact. The way his body had betrayed him at the sound of her breath.
Neither of them slept.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the way his fingers had held her chin as if he didn’t know how to be gentle but was trying anyway.
He stood in the dark kitchen, eyes closed, replaying the way her lips had parted under his hand like she wasn’t afraid of him—or worse, like she was.
Hate had been simple. Whatever this was becoming would not be.