Seven days.

I'd spent one hundred and sixty-eight hours trying to scrub the phantom sensation of those calloused hands off my skin. Every time I closed my eyes in the shower, I felt the bite of the cold stone against my back and the way that man had filled me until I couldn't breathe. I'd walked through the halls of Aethelgard like a ghost, looking at every tall, broad-shouldered man and wondering if he was the one who had claimed me in the dark.

"Sera? Are you even listening?"

I blinked, the sterile lights of the campus café snapping me back to reality. Dominic was staring at me, his "Golden Boy" smile not quite reaching his eyes. He looked perfect-pressed khakis, a cashmere sweater, and hair that cost more to maintain than my monthly grocery bill.

"Sorry," I muttered, stirring my black coffee. "Just stressed about the thesis."

"You worry too much," Dominic said, reaching across the table to pat my hand. His touch felt cold compared to the memory of the stranger. "You're a St. Claire. Even a fallen one has standards to uphold. My father is expecting you at the gala next month as my plus-one. Don't let the workload make you look haggard."

Haggard. Not 'I hope you're okay.' Just 'don't embarrass me.'

"I'll be there, Dom."

I waited until he left for his "lacrosse practice" before heading to the library archives. It was 11:00 PM. The archives were tucked in the basement of the North Wing, a labyrinth of dust and silence where the university kept the rare architectural blueprints. I had the keys because of my scholarship. I needed to upload the final 3D renders of my thesis to the main server. It was my ticket out of this gilded cage.

The air in the basement was damp and smelled of old paper. As I reached the heavy oak doors of the restricted stacks, I heard it.

A wet, rhythmic sound. A gasp.

I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs as I pushed the door open just a crack.

The light was dim, flickering from a single desk lamp. I expected to see a couple of freshmen fumbling in the dark. I didn't expect to see Dominic.

He wasn't at lacrosse. He was bent over a mahogany table, his pants around his ankles. And he wasn't alone. Isolde, his sister, was draped across the table, her blonde hair spilling over the blueprints of the campus chapel. Her skirt was pushed up to her waist, and her eyes were rolled back as Dominic hammered into her from behind.

"Harder, Dom," she hissed, her fingers clawing at the wood. "Show me how much you hate her."

"I don't hate her," Dominic grunted, his face contorted with a cruel sort of pleasure as he buried his cock inside her with a wet slap. "She's just a placeholder. A charity case to keep the Board happy. You're the only one who matters. The only one with the right blood."

I felt the bile rise in my throat. It wasn't just the cheating-it was the sickening, incestuous intimacy of it. They weren't just banging; they were sharing a secret that made my stomach turn.

I should have walked away. I should have run. But my hand slipped, and the heavy door creaked wide open.

Dominic froze. He didn't pull out. He just turned his head, looking at me with a cold, mocking expression as he stayed buried deep inside his sister. Isolde smirked, adjusted her position, and didn't even bother to cover herself.

"Sera," Dominic said, his voice devoid of any guilt. "You're early."

"You... you're disgusting," I choked out, my voice trembling. "I'm going to the Dean. I'm going to tell everyone what you are."

Dominic let out a short, bark-like laugh. He slowly pulled out of Isolde-the sound of his cock sliding out of her pussy making me want to vomit-and reached for his laptop on the desk next to them.

"You aren't going to do shit," he said calmly.

He tapped a few keys. I saw the Aethelgard internal server logo on the screen.

"You know, Sera, being a legacy student has its perks. Like administrative access to the architecture department's cloud."

My blood ran cold. "What are you doing?"

"Deleting a virus," he said, his finger hovering over the 'Enter' key. "Your senior thesis, Sera. The one you've spent three years building? It's gone. All the backups. All the renders. I just wiped the drive."

He pressed the key.

"No!" I lunged for the laptop, but he shoved me back. I hit the floor hard, the air leaving my lungs in a painful rush.

"Now," Dominic said, zipping his fly as he looked down at me like I was a bug he'd just stepped on. "Go ahead. Tell the Dean about me and Isolde. But remember: you have no thesis, no scholarship, and no future. And my father owns the Board. Who do you think they'll believe? A Calloway, or a girl whose father is a convicted fraud?"

Isolde stood up, smoothing her skirt. She walked over and looked down at me, her eyes dancing with malice. "You were always too cheap for him, Sera. Go find a gutter to crawl into."

They walked out, leaving me alone in the dark, surrounded by the smell of their sex and the digital graveyard of my future. I sat on the cold floor, my hands shaking so hard I couldn't even wipe the tears away.

I was ruined. I had nothing left to lose.

I didn't know that from the shadows of the mezzanine above, a pair of arctic-blue eyes had watched the entire thing.

The morning light felt like a physical assault. I sat in the back row of Lecture Hall 4, my skin crawling and my stomach tied in knots. I hadn't slept. I hadn't eaten. I just sat there, staring at the empty space on my laptop where three years of my life used to live.

Dominic was three rows ahead of me, laughing with a group of lacrosse players. He looked refreshed, a stark contrast to the monster I'd seen sweating over his sister in the archives. Every time he glanced back at me, his eyes held a smug, lethal triumph. He'd won. He'd erased me.

The heavy oak doors at the front of the hall slammed shut, and the room went dead silent.

Professor Caspian Blackwood didn't walk; he prowled. He was dressed in a charcoal suit that looked like it had been carved onto his frame. He didn't look like a teacher; he looked like the architect of a nightmare. He was only thirty-two, but he carried a gravity that made seasoned deans flinch.

"Architecture is the art of what remains when everything else is stripped away," he began, his voice a low, cold vibration that hummed in my marrow. My heart skipped. That voice. It was deeper than it had been in the garden, more clinical, but the resonance was unmistakable.

He turned to the digital board, pulling up a list of senior projects. My name was at the top, flagged in red. File Not Found.

"Miss St. Claire," he said, not even looking at me. "It seems your thesis has... vanished. A careless mistake for someone from a family known for losing things."

A few people snickered. Dominic's laugh was the loudest. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, a mix of shame and a sudden, violent urge to scream.

"I... I'm working on it, Professor," I managed to choke out.

"Don't lie to me," he snapped, finally turning. His eyes were like ice-shards, pinning me to my seat. "In this room, you are either a builder or a ruin. Right now, you look like a ruin. See me in my office after the lecture. The rest of you, open your blueprints."

The next hour was a blur of torture. When the bell finally rang, I moved like a convict to the gallows. His office was at the top of the North Tower, a brutalist space of glass and concrete that overlooked the gray Maine sea.

I knocked.

"Enter."

He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to me. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on.

"Close the door, Seraphina."

I did as I was told. My hands were shaking. "Professor, about my thesis... Dominic, he-"

"I don't care about your boyfriend's pathetic power plays," he said, turning around. He leaned against his desk, crossing his arms. "I care about debt. And right now, you're drowning in it."

He tossed a folder onto the desk. I opened it. My breath hitched. It wasn't academic records. It was a ledger of every cent my brother, Vane, owed to the O'Shea syndicate. Fifty thousand dollars.

"How do you have this?" I whispered.

"I bought it," Caspian said, his voice devoid of emotion. "The debt, the interest, and the contract on your brother's life. It all belongs to me now. Just like your scholarship, which the Board is prepared to revoke by five o'clock today."

I felt the world tilting. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

He took a step toward me, and the air seemed to vanish from the room. He was so close I could smell the sandalwood and the faint, metallic scent of expensive ink. He reached out, his thumb catching my chin and forcing me to look up.

"Because I want to bang the fight out of you," he whispered, his voice dropping into that raw, unfiltered growl from the garden. "I want the girl in the mask back. But this time, I want her silent."

My knees nearly buckled. It was him.

"I'm offering you a deal," he said, pulling back as if the touch disgusted him. "I will restore your thesis. I will pay off Vane's debt. In exchange, you will spend thirty days at my studio. You will be my muse. My model."

"Modeling? That's it?"

"Not just modeling," he said, his eyes darkening. "There are rules. You will wear a silk mask. You will wear a weighted collar. And most importantly, you will never speak. If you utter a single word, a single moan, the contract is void and your brother dies."

He pushed a paper toward me. A contract.

"Thirty days of silence, Seraphina. Thirty days where you belong to me, body and soul. Do we have a deal, or should I call the O'Sheas?"

I looked at the pen. I looked at the man who had ruined me in the dark and was now offering to save me in the light. I had no choice. I picked up the pen and signed my name.

"Good," he said, a ghost of a cruel smile touching his lips. "Report to The Glass Cage at midnight. And Sera?"

"Yes?"

"Bring your pussy. You won't be needing your voice."

The drive to the clifftop was a descent into a beautiful, jagged purgatory. The road twisted through the Maine pines until the trees gave way to a monolithic structure of gray concrete and floor-to-ceiling glass. "The Glass Cage" hung over the Atlantic like a dare, the waves below smashing against the rocks with a violence that matched the thrumming in my chest.

I stepped out of my beat-up sedan, the salt spray stinging my cheeks. I felt like a lamb walking into a den designed by a god who hated mercy.

The front door operated on a silent hydraulic hiss. I stepped inside. The interior was minimalist-all cold stone floors, sharp angles, and the smell of expensive turpentine and ozone. Caspian was standing at a massive drafting table in the center of the room, lit by a single, harsh spotlight. He didn't look up. He was wearing a black t-shirt that stretched over his shoulders, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms corded with muscle and stained with charcoal.

"You're three minutes late," he said, his voice echoing off the glass. "In this house, my time is the only currency that matters."

I opened my mouth to apologize, but he held up a finger.

"The rules start now. From this moment, you are a ghost. You are a shape. You are mine."

He walked toward a pedestal where a small box sat. He opened it, revealing a strip of black silk and a heavy, polished iron band. My breath hitched.

"Strip," he commanded.

I hesitated, my fingers trembling at the hem of my coat. "Here? Now?"

He took a step closer, his presence expanding until he filled my entire vision. "I don't remember 'negotiation' being part of the contract, Miss St. Claire. You signed away your voice and your pride to save your pathetic brother. Don't make me remind you how easily I can let the O'Sheas have him."

I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat. I let my coat hit the floor. Then my dress. Then my bra. Standing there in nothing but my lace panties, the cold air bit at my skin, making my nipples harden instantly. I felt exposed, small, and dangerously alive.

Caspian's eyes didn't flicker. He didn't look at me like a man looks at a woman; he looked at me like an engineer looks at a problem. He picked up the silk mask and stepped behind me.

He tied it tight. The world vanished, replaced by the scent of his skin and the pressure of the fabric. Then came the collar. It was cold and heavy, snapping shut around my neck with a definitive click. A small weight hung from the front, resting right between my collarbones, forcing me to keep my chin up and my spine straight.

"Walk to the platform," he whispered in my ear.

I moved blindly, my other senses sharpening to a painful degree. I felt the grit of the stone floor under my feet until I stepped onto the velvet-covered dais.

"Kneel. Arch your back. Hands behind your head."

I obeyed. I felt his hands on me then-not the frantic, primal grip from the garden, but something more terrifying. It was clinical. He gripped my thighs, forcing them wider, his fingers digging into my flesh. He adjusted the tilt of my pelvis, his palm flat against my lower stomach, pushing until I was stretched to the point of aching.

"Hold it," he growled.

He moved back to his board. The only sound was the rhythmic scritch-scritch of charcoal against heavy paper. It was a slow, psychological flaying. Every muscle in my body began to scream. My thighs trembled from the strain of the pose, but I knew if I moved, if I made a sound, it was over.

Minutes felt like hours. I could feel his gaze-it was a physical weight, stripping me faster than his hands ever could.

Suddenly, the charcoal stopped. I heard his footsteps approaching. He didn't speak until he was inches away. I felt the heat of him, the sheer size of the man blocking out the chill of the studio.

"You're shaking, Little Bird," he murmured. He reached out, his hand sliding over my hip, his thumb tracing the line where my panties met my skin. "Is it the cold? Or is it because you can still feel me banging the life out of you against that stone wall?"

I gasped, the sound muffled by the mask. My pussy throbbed, a treacherous, wet heat blooming between my legs at the memory.

He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "I've been drawing you for three years, Sera. Long before the masquerade. Long before Dominic touched you. I've lived in the shadows of your life, waiting for you to break."

He grabbed the iron collar, tilting my head back until I could feel the pulse in my throat.

"You think this is a deal? This is an ending. By the time I'm done with you, you won't even remember your own name. You'll only remember the sound of my voice and the way it feels to be owned."

He let go of the collar and walked back to the shadows.

"Session over. Get out. And Sera?"

I stood on shaky legs, reaching for my clothes in the dark.

"Wear something easier to remove tomorrow. I'm tired of waiting for the lace."