Then nothing.
She opened her eyes.
She lay beneath a white duvet, a lofty, expensive weight over a body that didn’t feel like hers.
She flexed her fingers. Slow. Deliberate.
Norestraints.
Tessa turned her head. Her hair slid against the pillow in loose waves, brushed out, not in the practical knot she wore to drive home. A silk scrunchie rested around her wrist like a bracelet.
She hadn’t put it there.
Her pulse kicked under the skin.
She eased one hand under the duvet. Cashmere met her fingers—pajama pants, a matching top. Quality. Chosen.
He undressed me.
He dressed me again.
And he took his time.
For one split second, her vision tunneled.
Heat crawled up her throat — not fear, not exactly. Violation.
They trained for this.
Not the room.
Not the cashmere.
But the moment when panic tried to take control.
Slow breath in.
Count.
Slow breath out.
She swallowed it down.
Then filed it. Panic wouldn’t change the fact.
He had taken her badge. Taken her gun.
No one had ever taken her skin.
She breathed in, slow and measured. The room smelled like new books and hotel soap. Under it, faint and human, a stranger’s cologne clung to her collarbone.
“Okay,” she whispered to the ceiling. Her voice came out rough, but it came. “Quinn. Wake up.”
She pushed the duvet back and sat up. The room swam, then steadied.
It was beautiful.
An antique desk anchored the far wall, the old Royal typewriter she’d seen the case for in Raines’s office centered on its surface.
