Ryker’s POV
She looked like a broken doll shaped into the folds of the bed. Delicate yet drifting.
I sat in the armchair, my glass halfway raised, watching her. She was fighting sleep, even as her body begged for it, her eyes was fluttering open and closed like wings caught between instinct and fear.
I didn’t blame her. A sane girl would’ve run screaming from this room. But Valentina hadn’t even asked to leave. She stayed exactly where I’d told her to. Her disobedience hadn’t come in the form of rebellion.
It had come in the shape of restraint. She’d touched me, obeyed me, and yet… there’d been no seduction in her submission, just survival.
That’s what lingered and I didn't know if I liked that.
Not the heat of her mouth or the trembling of her hands. It was the fact that she hadn’t
