Control does not end when the night ends.
It lingers like smoke, invisible but clinging to the air, soaking into everything it touches. I could feel it even now, as I sat in the penthouse the following evening, staring out over the glittering sprawl of the city. The chair beneath me was leather, smooth, familiar, but my mind wasn’t on the room or the skyline. My thoughts were with her—Cheyenne.
I could imagine her right now, restless in her apartment, twisting that ribbon between her fingers, reliving every second of last night. I hadn’t needed cameras to know that. I’d felt it in her body when she left: the hunger, the tension, the unwillingness to let go. I’d seen it in her eyes when the elevator doors closed, that combination of fury and gratitude, the frustration of a fuse I’d refuse
