We're too close now. Close enough that I can see the way her pupils have dilated, the way her lips part slightly as her breathing changes. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin, to catch the faint scent of her that's become so familiar from working in proximity all these weeks.
This makes no sense. We barely know each other. We've spent more time in mutual hostility than anything resembling comfort. By all rational measures, I should feel nothing for this human laborer beyond professional assessment of her utility.
But rational measures stopped applying weeks ago.
I raise my hand slowly, giving her time to pull away. To break this moment before it becomes something neither of us can take back.
She doesn't pull away.
My fingers brush her jaw, and the contact sends electricity racing through my entire system. That same overwhelming rightness from the binding ritual, but intensified now. More focused. Morepresent.
Touching her feels right.
Her eyes lock onto mine, and I see my own confusion reflected there. The same disorientation, the same certainty that this shouldn't work but somehow does. Neither of us moves, caught in this suspended moment where everything feels balanced on a knife's edge.
Then she does something that breaks me completely.
She leans into my touch, her cheek pressing against my palm like she's seeking more contact. Seekingme.
I step closer still, until there's barely any space left between us. My other hand finds her waist—the curve of it fitting against my palm exactly as it did in the binding ritual, as it does in the dreams I can't escape.
"Lenna." Her name comes out rough, carrying all the questions I can't ask and confusion I can't articulate.
She tilts her face up toward mine, and the moonlight catches in her eyes. Makes them luminous and deep and full of the same longing I feel burning through my own chest.
I'm going to kiss her.
The realization hits with absolute clarity even as every logical part of my mind screams that this is wrong. That we shouldn't like each other. That this attraction doesn't make sense given our history. That I'm her superior and she's technically under my authority and there are about fifteen different protocols this would violate.
But none of that matters anymore.
Because she's leaning up into me, her hand coming to rest against my chest where my heart is beating far too fast. Because the way she's looking at me makes my breath stop entirely. Because touching her like this—standing here with her in the moonlight while the rest of the world sleeps—feels more right than anything has felt in longer than I can remember.
I lower my head, watching her eyes flutter closed. My thumb brushes across her cheekbone, and she makes a small sound that destroys the last of my control.
When I kiss her, it feels exactly like the dreams.
No—it feels like those dreams were memories and this is confirmation. Like I've kissed her a thousand times before and my body remembers even though my conscious mind insists this is new. Her lips are soft and warm and she responds immediately, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt as she pulls herself closer.
I feel her everywhere. The press of her body against mine, the way her other hand slides up to cup the back of my neck, the small desperate sounds she makes as I deepen the kiss. All of it familiar. All of it impossible.
All of it completely, devastatingly right.
My arm tightens around her waist, pulling her flush against me as I kiss her harder. She opens for me without hesitation, and the taste of her floods my senses. Makes everything else fade into irrelevance—the auction, the estate, the careful distance we've been maintaining. None of it exists anymore. Just this. Just her.
Just the overwhelming certainty that I've done this before, held her like this before, kissed her exactly like this in moments that should exist in my memory but don't.
Nothing makes sense.
But she does. Even if she shouldn't.
11
LENNA
My hands shake as I secure the final containment lock on the new beast's enclosure. The volcanic serpent—sleek and deadly, with scales that shimmer like molten copper—coils in the center of its designated space, watching me with vertical pupils that glow faintly in the dim light. It's been a smooth transport, all things considered. No major behavioral incidents, no complications with the binding wards during the journey back to the estate.
I should feel relieved. Focused on the work.
