Chapter Nineteen

Ava’s POV

I followed him and came down from the car.

The moment my feet touched the gravel, the quiet order of the estate closed around us again. The air felt cooler here than it had in the city, cleaner, as if even the atmosphere belonged to him. One of the maids was already waiting near the front steps, hands folded, eyes lowered. Without being told, she moved to the Maybach, gathered the shopping bags from the trunk, and carried them inside toward the west wing. I watched her disappear up the staircase with the new clothes Corren had chosen for me—the navy dress, the black one, the shoes, the structured bag. Each item was a reminder of the afternoon: his voice deciding what I would wear, his hands adjusting fabric on my shoulders, his mouth on my breasts in the back seat of the car, his fingers inside me until I was wet and shaking, and then the way he had simply stopped and left me there.

The ache between my legs had not faded. It pulsed with every step I took behind him into the house, a stubborn, unfinished heat that made my face feel warm and my thoughts disorderly. I kept my eyes on his back as he walked through the foyer. His posture was the same as always—controlled, unhurried, completely unaffected. I hated how differently the same encounter had left us. He looked composed. I felt undone.

Corren walked ahead of me into the small dining room. Lunch had already been set. Two places. His at the head of the table, mine at his right. He took his seat without looking at me and gestured once for me to sit. I sat. The chair felt too firm under me. The cream dress I still wore suddenly seemed too thin, as if it could not adequately cover the way my body was still reacting to what he had done in the car.

The food was simple and carefully prepared—grilled fish, roasted vegetables, a light salad, fresh bread. Under normal circumstances it would have looked appealing. Today my appetite was tangled up with the leftover tension in my stomach and the throbbing awareness between my thighs. Corren began to eat without a word. His movements were precise and unhurried. The quiet clink of his cutlery against the plate was the loudest sound in the room.

I tried to bring out conversation.

I needed something ordinary to cut through the thick silence and the memory of his fingers. I cleared my throat softly.

“The navy dress you picked is beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.”

He did not look up from his plate. He cut a piece of fish, brought it to his mouth, chewed, and swallowed as if I had not spoken at all. The dismissal was quiet but absolute. Heat rose in my cheeks—part embarrassment, part the lingering arousal he had refused to finish.

I tried again, softer.

“I was thinking about the schedule for Monday. I can send you the list of classes tonight if you want to review the times before—”

“Eat your food.”

The words were low, calm, and final. His eyes finally lifted and met mine across the short distance of the table. There was no anger in them. There was only cool authority, the same authority that had ordered me onto my knees in a restroom, that had told me not to touch myself, that had pulled his fingers out of me in the car when I was closest to breaking. The look he gave me now said the discussion was over before it had begun.

I closed my mouth.

My throat felt tight. I picked up my fork and did as I was told. The food had little taste. I chewed slowly, forcing myself to focus on the simple mechanical act of eating instead of the way my body still felt open and unfinished. Every shift in my chair reminded me of the wetness he had left behind. Every glance I risked in his direction showed me the same composed profile, as if the entire ride back to the estate had been nothing remarkable to him.

The silence stretched. I could hear the distant movement of staff somewhere in the house, the faint sound of water running in another room, the soft tick of the clock on the sideboard. None of it was loud enough to cover the tension sitting between us. Corren ate steadily. He did not look at me again. He did not speak. The longer the quiet continued, the more aware I became of my own breathing, of the flush that refused to leave my cheeks, of the restless press of my thighs against each other under the table.

I finished what I could. The portion on my plate slowly disappeared. When the last of it was gone I set the fork down carefully, aligned it with the knife, and waited a second longer in case he might say something else. He did not. He continued with his own meal as if I had already been dismissed.

I stood.

The legs of the chair made a soft sound against the floor. Corren’s eyes flicked up once, just long enough to register that I was leaving, then returned to his plate. No permission. No further instruction. The message was clear enough. I was free to go—on his terms, in his silence.

I left the dining room straight to my room.

The walk through the foyer and up the staircase felt longer than usual. My body was still humming with the leftover heat of the car. Each step made me conscious of the damp fabric of my underwear and the way the cream dress brushed my sensitive skin. By the time I reached the west wing and closed my bedroom door behind me, my pulse was unsteady for reasons that had nothing to do with climbing the stairs.

I did not bother changing out of the dress. I walked directly to the bed and lay down on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling for a moment while the quiet of the room settled around me. The shopping bags had already been placed neatly near the closet. The new clothes were here. The schedule for school would begin on Monday. Everything was moving forward according to the structure he had allowed. And yet my body still felt like it was waiting for something he had deliberately withheld.

I turned onto my side, reached for my phone on the nightstand, and brought it in front of me. The screen lit up. I opened the messaging app, found Maya’s name, and typed the words carefully, as if writing them down might make the new reality feel more solid.

hw is school over here, because I would be starting school on Monday.