“Then show me.”

The words tasted like gunpowder on my tongue—hot, dangerous, and instantly flammable. I was asking the most ruthless man I had ever known, a man who had just confessed to dismantling his entire life for an obsessive pursuit, to prove he could exist without dominance. I had crossed his perimeter, but now I was forcing him to cross his own.

Adrian’s breath hitched. His eyes, usually a cold, brilliant amber when he was in control, darkened with a raw, agonizing confusion. He saw the shift in power, the challenge in my gaze, and the absolute necessity of my demand. If he failed this test, if he reverted to the Master, I would walk away forever, knowing I was choosing the relative safety of oblivion over the fire he offered.

He did not take my hand, which was the first and most crucial sign of his surrender. Instead, he slowly lowered his own hand, placing it flat against his side. The movement was a conscious act of restraint.

“What do you need me to show you, Sophie?” His voice was barely a rasp, stripped of its Professorial resonance.

“Show me the man who kissed me last night,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Show me the man who was tired, not controlling. Show me the man who knew how to touch me without owning me.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment, visibly resetting himself, shedding the wreckage of the confrontation. When his eyes opened, the desperate anger was gone, replaced by a devastating sadness.

He took a slow step back, increasing the distance between us, and then gestured toward the archway leading into the next room—the massive, sun-drenched library. “Come with me. We don’t have to stay in the wreckage of the drawing room.”

I walked past him, my skin prickling from the sheer proximity of his restrained energy. The library was my favorite room in the house, a towering sanctuary of dark wood and organized chaos. Here, the disorder was less noticeable. Books—the true loves of Adrian’s life—were the only things he hadn’t allowed to decay.

He walked to the sofa, a deep burgundy velvet piece that sat under the three-story wall of windows. He didn’t sit down; he remained standing, his hands now clasped loosely in front of him, the posture of a waiting student, not a commanding professor.

“When you left,” he began, his voice low, “I didn’t sleep for seventy-two hours. I called your phone until I broke the SIM card. I put PIs on you, not to find you, but to confirm you were safe. When they confirmed your address, your classes, your new job… I let them go. I told myself it was enough to know you were alive and building a better life. But it wasn’t.”

He finally walked to the sofa and sat down on the edge, leaving half the cushion empty—the exact amount of space that screamed invitation without being an order.

I walked over and sat down, my body angled away from him, ready to spring up and run if the slightest command entered his voice.

“I missed your mind, Sophie,” he continued, not looking at me, but staring at the bookshelf across the room. “I missed the arguments we would have in the kitchen at 3 AM about narrative voice. I missed the way you challenged my certainty. In the classroom, I am the authority. In this house, I was the Master. But with you, in those moments, I was just Adrian, who had to defend his thesis.”

The confession of intellectual longing was an unexpected, potent arrow. It aimed for the literature student, the part of me that still needed to feel intelligent and valuable outside of my body.

He turned his head slowly, finally allowing his gaze to rest on me. His eyes were soft, almost pleading.

“I missed you,” he whispered, the sound raw and thick. “The whole you.”

“You will always have a choice left, Sophie,” he whispered, his thumb resting lightly over the throbbing artery. “That was the rule, wasn’t it? Free will is the most exhilarating component. If you are coerced, you are worthless to me. If I had wanted a puppet, I would have found one.”

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