His breath stayed level. Barely.
I stepped farther into the room. “Because you claimed me in public without asking. Because I woke up with your dream in my body. Because I’m trapped in this building with your bond in my chest, and every person around me has an opinion about what I should do with you.”
Dominic held still through all of it. No defense. No correction. No careful legal distinction between claim and choice.
Just controlled stillness.
“Yes,” he said. “Because of all of that.”
His agreement sharpened the room.
For one second, I thought he would finally give me the easy thing. An apology. A retreat. Then both of us could pretend we had solved something.
He didn’t.
“But I cannot stop wanting you,” he said.
Then he continued, “I can leave this room now. Tell me to.”
He took one slow and controlled breath. “But I cannot make my body not know you.”
The air between us thinned.
I had come here furious, underslept, and still warm from a dream that hadn’t belonged to me. I should crawl back through the access shaft and add the entire interaction to the dragons-were-a-terrible-idea file.
Instead, I said, “Tell me about the dream.”
His pupils went vertical.
Fast.
“I worshiped you.” The words came out rough.
My pulse hit my collarbone. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only answer that does not make it smaller than it was.”
I swallowed. The movement felt too visible.
“You were angry in the dream,” he said. “You came to me anyway. You put your hands on me first. I kept waiting for you to step back.”
“Did I?”
“No.”
My breath went shallow.
He didn’t move.
“I wanted my mouth on every place I had not taken,” he said. “Your throat. Not the mark. Beside it. Below it. The soft places I have no right to know yet.”
Heat broke in me so quickly my knees forgot their job for one humiliating second.
I stayed upright through spite alone.
“I wanted to learn you slowly enough that the bond could not take credit for it,” he said. “I wanted to know what you sound like when you choose not to be quiet. I wanted your hands in my hair because you put them there. I wanted you above me, under me, and me around you.”
I was probably leaving fingerprints in the wood.
