The hand over my mouth is firm but not cruel. Which somehow makes it worse because I can't decide if I should be terrified or just deeply confused.
My wrists are bound to the headboard with something soft—rope, though it's hard to confirm when your brain is screaming. Not painful. Just secure enough to make the point that I'm not going anywhere.
The room is pitch black. Not "turn on a light" dark. This is "someone actively removed every photon" dark.
I try to speak against the palm covering my mouth, but it comes out as muffled nonsense. The universal language of "what the actual hell is happening."
when the hand lifts slowly, I suck in air and immediately demand, "Who's there?"
My voice cracks halfway through, which doesn't exactly project the confidence I was going for.
"I said who's—"
Silence. The aggressive kind that makes you realize how loud your own breathing is.
"Answer me, damn you!" I pull against the restraints, but they hold. Of course they hold. Because tonight is going great. "I swear if you don't—"
"Close your eyes." The voice is low, calm, coming from somewhere near the foot of the bed.
Male and controlled in a way that suggests he's done this before. Which is a thought I really didn't need right now.
"No." The word comes out steadier than I feel. "I'm not closing anything. Untie me. Now!"
"Close your eyes, Valentina."
The use of my name makes my stomach drop. This isn't random. This is planned. Targeted. Someone in this house knows exactly who I am and decided midnight bondage was a totally reasonable activity.
"No." I repeat it louder. "You don't get to—"
I feel him move closer. Not hear—feel. The air shifts. The temperature changes. And then there's a scent. Faint at first, drifting toward me like a ghost I thought I'd buried.
Sandalwood.
My blood turns to ice. Then fire. Then back to ice because my circulatory system apparently can't commit to a temperature during existential crises.
It can't be. It's impossible. Hundreds of men use that cologne. This is just coincidence. My brain playing tricks because I'm scared and tied up and—
The scent grows stronger as he moves closer still.
No. No, I'm imagining it. It's been five years. My memory is unreliable. I'm projecting. This is what trauma does—it makes you see ghosts in every shadow, smell the past in every breeze.
"Close your eyes."
His voice is closer now. Right beside the bed.
My breath comes faster and I squeeze my eyes shut because what else am I supposed to do?
Something soft slides over my face. Silk. A blindfold being tied carefully at the back of my head. My heart pounds so hard I can hear it in my ears, feel it in my throat.
I wait for pain. For violence. For whatever punishment I've apparently earned by existing in this house.
Instead, there's just breath, warm and slow against my neck.
I flinch, or try to, but the restraints remind me that flinching is currently off the menu.
His breath trails along my skin, deliberate and unhurried. Like he's got all the time in the world and I'm a puzzle he's solving one piece at a time. Then lips press against my pulse point. Gentle. So gentle it makes me shake.
This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong.
I should be screaming. Fighting. Doing literally anything except lying here while my body betrays me by responding to touches from a stranger in the dark.
The cologne fills my senses now, overwhelming everything else. That specific combination of sandalwood and something darker, something earthy and rich.
The same scent from my dream earlier tonight.
The same scent from five years ago when I was young and stupid and believed in happy endings.
But that's impossible. I'm imagining it. I have to be imagining it.
Hands trail along my jaw, fingers tracing the line of bone like he's memorizing it. They move to my hair, threading through the strands. Down to my collarbones, where they pause, thumbs pressing gently into the hollow of my throat.
Terror wars with something else. Something hot and unwanted that coils low in my stomach. My body doesn't care that this is wrong. Doesn't care that I'm tied up and blindfolded and being touched by someone who won't even let me see his face.
It just responds. Treacherous thing.
The touches continue, never crossing into violence, never quite crossing into intimacy. Just exploring. Learning. Tasting.
His lips follow where his hands have been—jaw, neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear that makes me gasp before I can stop myself.
I hate that gasp. Hate what it reveals.
Hate that my body is keeping score and apparently I'm losing.
His fingers trace my collarbones again, then trail down slightly before retreating. Testing boundaries. Seeing how far he can go before I break or beg or do something equally humiliating.
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper. Focusing on that pain instead of the heat building inside me. Instead of the way my skin burns everywhere he touches. Instead of the familiar scent that can't possibly be real.
Time stretches. Could be minutes. Could be hours. In the dark, restrained and blindfolded, I've lost all sense of measurement. There's just sensation—breath and touch and that damned cologne making me question reality.
Then suddenly, it stops.
The hands withdraw. The warmth of his presence pulls back. I hear a soft sound—metal on rope maybe—and my wrists go slack. Cut free.
Footsteps move away. Quick. Purposeful. Heading for the door.
I tear the blindfold off with shaking hands, blinking against the darkness that's somehow less dark now. The room is empty. Just me and rumpled sheets and the rapidly fading scent of sandalwood.
The door clicks shut.
I'm alone.
I sit up slowly, examining my wrists in what little moonlight filters through the window. No marks. No bruising. Just faint red lines from the rope that are already fading.
Like maybe this didn't happen at all.
Like maybe I imagined the whole thing.
Except I can still smell it. Still feel the ghost of touches on my skin.
I check the door on trembling legs. Unlocked. I could leave right now. Could run. Could find Enzo or Lucia or literally anyone and report that someone just broke into my room and… And what?
Tied me up and touched me gently before leaving?
That someone knew my name and smelled like a man I haven't seen in five years?
I press my forehead against the door, breathing hard.
Where would I even go? Back to my apartment with no money for rent? To the hospital to tell Mama I failed? That I couldn't last one week in this place?
I think of her in that hospital bed, finally getting treatment. Think of the money that's keeping her alive. Money I accepted. Money I agreed to earn by staying here for one year.
I sink back onto the bed, pulling my knees to my chest.
I need to see this through. Need to get the money. Need to figure out why my body responded the way it did to perverted games in the dark.
I will not run.