MasukHe called two days later, mid-afternoon, while I was standing in my mother’s kitchen staring at a grocery list I had no intention of following.“Are you free this evening?”No greeting. No unnecessary softness. Just the question and the low, measured voice that still made the air in the room feel tighter.“Yes.”“Come at seven. Use the side entrance. The front of the building is more visible from the street.”He hung up without waiting for confirmation. I stood with the phone still against my ear for a moment longer than necessary, then set it down and went to change.The side entrance of the converted warehouse opened into a narrow stairwell that smelled of concrete and rain. Callum was waiting at the top of the stairs.He stepped aside to let me in, closed the door, and locked it with a deliberateness that made the ordinary gesture feel like the drawing of a curtain.We did not speak at first. He walked me backward until my hips met the edge of the long kitchen counter, braced his h
The second kiss was slower only because Callum made it so.He pulled back just far enough to look at me, eyes dark in the low light, rain still hammering the tall windows behind him. Whatever internal vote he had taken during dinner had finished.The careful distance he had maintained for years — across dinner tables, in doorways, in the polite margins of being someone’s father — was no longer present in his hands or his mouth.“Bedroom,” he said quietly. “Not the sofa. Not the first time.”I nodded once.He stood and offered his hand. I took it. The loft felt larger as we moved through it — the open kitchen, the long stretch of brick, the corridor that led toward the private rooms. Callum’s bedroom was at the far end, past a study lined with books and a bathroom that still smelled faintly of his cologne. He pushed the door open and let me walk in first.It was exactly as composed as the rest of the space: dark wood, white bedding, a single lamp already lit on the far table. No photog
Thursday arrived with the low, metallic smell of rain that had not yet decided to fall.I spent most of the afternoon standing in front of my closet telling myself the dinner was only dinner — a civil gesture from a man who had once been something like family and was now simply being careful in public.By the time I pulled the dark green dress over my head the argument had thinned to almost nothing. The fabric sat against my skin like a decision I had already made and was only now dressing for.Callum’s address was a converted warehouse loft on the river side of town, the kind of place that had been industrial until money decided it should be quiet instead. I parked on the street and sat in the car for a full minute before walking to the entrance. He buzzed me up without speaking.The elevator was mirrored and slow. I watched my own reflection rise through the floors and tried to remember the last time I had seen him without Julian somewhere in the frame.He opened the door in a black
I had been back in town for six days before Callum Voss appeared on my mother’s porch.The knock was polite. Two short raps, the kind that assumed they would be answered. I opened the door in an old T-shirt and the shorts I had slept in, hair still damp from a late shower, and found him standing there with both hands in the pockets of a dark jacket, looking exactly as composed as he had every time I had seen him across a dinner table while dating his son.Forty-nine. Tall. Silver starting at the temples in a way that made the rest of him look deliberate rather than aging.The same quiet intensity that used to make me sit up straighter whenever he entered a room. Julian had always called it “Dad’s courtroom face.” I had always found it harder to look away from than I admitted.“Tessa,” he said. My name in his mouth still carried that low, measured weight.“Mr. Voss.”“Callum is fine. It always was.” A brief pause. “Your mother mentioned you were home for the summer. I wanted to see how
The last unrestricted night arrived with the heavy, electric air that always preceded a storm.Seventeen days had compressed into a series of locked side doors and deleted message threads. We had used the hours without waste — late afternoons when the street was empty, one long evening when Roman’s oldest colleague took him to dinner and he left the gate unlatched for me instead.Each time the sex carried the dual weight of need and countdown. Each time afterward the conversation returned, briefly, to the same quiet arithmetic: twelve days, then nine, then four.On the final night I arrived at 7:50. Roman opened the side door before I could use the key. He looked at me for a long second in the dim kitchen light, then walked me upstairs without speaking.In his bedroom the lamp was already on. The temporary bed had become the only piece of furniture in the house that felt honest.He undressed me slowly, as if the time left to do so had become finite in a way it hadn’t been at the begin
The texts became the new key.Short. Practical. 'Now.' or 'After seven.' or, once, 'The house is empty until midnight.' I answered each one by locking my own door behind me and driving the familiar route with the windows down, the humid night air doing nothing to cool the low-grade current that had taken up residence under my skin since the first time Roman closed his bedroom door.We stopped using the living room. The couch still belonged too visibly to the old version of the house — to movie nights with Sophie and the particular sprawl of a friendship that had never required this kind of silence.Instead we went upstairs as soon as the side door shut behind me. Roman’s childhood bedroom became the only room that could hold what we were doing without the walls themselves seeming to object.On a Thursday that smelled of rain and cut grass, I arrived at 8:10. Roman opened the side door before I could knock. He looked at me for a long second in the dim kitchen light, then walked me back
Chapter 4: Jealousy SparksSophie adjusted the strap of her sleek navy dress as she stepped into the executive lounge on the 28th floor the following afternoon. The company had hosted a brief networking lunch for key partners, and as the intern who’d helped compile the Milan materials, she’d been
Chapter 4: On Her KneesLila woke up throbbing. Her body remembered every second of last night—Marcus's mouth on her nipple, his thumb circling her clit, the way he'd made her come so hard she saw stars. But the orgasm had only sharpened her hunger. She needed more. Needed him inside her, claiming
Chapter 3: The First LessonLila barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she replayed Marcus’s voice—low, commanding, calling her “good girl.” The memory of his hand on her wrist, stopping her right at the edge, made her thighs press together under the sheets. She tossed and turned until the
Chapter 2: Caught in the ActLila's heart slammed against her ribs the second she saw him in the doorway. The lamp cast soft shadows across Marcus's face, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat worked as he swallowed. He hadn't moved yet—just stood there, one hand still on the







