The door shut with a soft click behind me. The sound might as well have been a fucking gavel.

Adrian didn’t speak at first. Just moved with that calculated stillness that somehow managed to fill the entire room. The shadows from his pretentious floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretched across the space like prison bars, and honestly? The metaphor wasn’t lost on me.

He turned slowly, hands sliding into his pockets with the kind of practiced control that probably took years to perfect. “What were you doing with Vaughn?”

I blinked. “She called me into her office. I was just walking by and—”

“Cut the bullshit, Sophie.”

Right. Apparently we were skipping the pleasantries today.

“She wanted to discuss my post-graduation plans,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Said I had potential. Warned me not to let anyone… derail my future.”

His jaw tightened. “Of course she fucking did.”

I took a step forward because his tone was setting off about fifteen different alarm bells in my head. “Why do you say it like that?”

His eyes snapped to mine—cold, sharp, dangerous. And that’s when I remembered his stupid rule about only speaking when spoken to.

Shit.

I dropped my gaze, shame crawling up my neck like a rash. My fingers twisted at the hem of my sleeve because apparently I was twelve years old now.

He exhaled once, then stepped closer. The space between us contracted like the room itself was holding its breath.

“Dr. Vaughn,” he said, voice smooth but with an edge that could cut glass, “isn’t concerned with your future. She’s concerned with destroying mine.”

I looked up slowly. “Why?”

He watched me carefully, like he was deciding how much truth I could handle. “Because once upon a time, she thought I belonged to her. She was spectacularly wrong.”

My stomach did this weird flip thing. “She’s jealous?”

The words slipped out before I could stop them, and he raised an eyebrow that clearly said ‘you’re pushing it.’

“Sorry,” I muttered.

He took another step, close enough that I could smell his cologne—something expensive and distracting.

“She’s not just jealous,” he said. “She’s calculating. Manipulative. She’ll use whatever leverage she can find to get to me, including you.”

A chill ran down my spine. “So I should stay away from her.”

“Smart girl.”

The silence that followed was loaded with about seventeen different kinds of tension. My heart was doing this annoying thing where it forgot how to beat normally.

His gaze swept down my body and back up, like he was conducting some kind of inventory.

“Come here.” I stepped closer because apparently my brain had outsourced all decision-making to my feet. “Closer.”

My chest brushed his, and I could feel the heat radiating off him. He didn’t touch me—didn’t need to. His presence was gravitational force, pulling me into an orbit I wasn’t sure I wanted to escape.

“You need to understand something,” he said, voice dropping to that dangerous whisper that made my knees go weak. “Vaughn will try to get inside your head. She’ll make you doubt everything—me, yourself, what you want.”

“And what do I want?” I asked, because apparently I was a glutton for punishment.

His smile was sharp enough to draw blood. “That’s what we’re going to figure out.”

He walked around me slowly, then stopped at his desk and leaned back against it.

“Bend over,” he said. “Hands flat. Legs apart.”

My breath hitched. Still, I obeyed.

The desk was cool beneath my palms. My hair fell around my face, curtain-like. The leather of his belt creaked softly behind me. I didn’t know what he was doing, but every moment felt like I was suspended on the edge of something sharp and holy.

Adrian didn’t touch me right away.

He let the silence stretch, charged and suffocating. It wasn’t empty—it was full of him. Full of control. Full of every dark promise he’d ever made me without words.

“I don’t like being challenged,” he said at last, his voice brushing over me like smoke. “But what I hate more…” A pause, deliberate. “Is someone else thinking they can even look at what’s already mine.”

His fingers pressed the inside of my thigh, nudging it wider. I complied, the position exposing me entirely—dripping, throbbing, needy. I braced myself harder against the desk.

“Do you like how I look at you?”

He leaned in, lips ghosting over my ear. “This isn’t about lessons. It’s about claiming. And I will claim every part of you.”

“Please what?” he asked, his tone dark silk. “Please touch you? Please fuck you? Please wreck you until the only word you remember is ‘mine’?”

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