The elevator remained perfectly still.
No alarms. No emergency lights. No automated voice offering reassurance. Just polished steel, mirrored walls, and the heavy silence of two men who had turned confinement into a battlefield.
Shawn stood inches away, one hand braced beside my head against the cool mirror. His body heat bled through the narrow space, warming my skin even though he wasn’t touching me. The other hand hung loose at his side, fingers deceptively relaxed—the same hand that had pinned my wrists above my head three nights ago while he drove into me with slow, devastating control.
Above us, Charles’s voice floated through the speaker like smoke.
“Well?” he asked, deceptively light. “Have I won by innovation alone?”
I exhaled slowly, thighs pressed tight together. “No one ha
