The gold in her reflection wasn’t a trick of the light. It was a twenty-two-year-old lie catching fire.
Jane stared at the glass, her chest rising and falling in jagged, violent snaps. The eyes staring back at her didn't belong to the obedient, submissive breeding mare her father had raised. They were the eyes of a predator. Luminous. Terrifying. Sovereign.
Beneath her, the ruined silk sheets were soaked in blood, sweat, and the heavy, musky scent of Michael’s feral knot. But there was another scent in the room now. It was slicing through the thick air of the penthouse, sharp and suffocatingly pure. It smelled like ozone and crushed pine needles. It smelled like absolute authority.
It was coming from her.
Michael slowly withdrew from her body. The slick, wet sound of the physical separ
