Chapter Twenty

Ava’s POV

I stared at the message for a long time after I sent it.

The blue tick appeared almost immediately, but Maya did not reply right away. I locked the phone and set it face down on the bed beside me, then rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. The cream dress was still on my body. The fabric felt too soft against my skin, too much like a reminder of the way Corren had pushed it aside in the car. My breasts still felt sensitive where his mouth had been. Between my legs the unfinished ache had settled into a low, stubborn throb that refused to fade no matter how still I lay.

I hated that he could leave me like this.

He had kissed me until I was breathless, sucked my nipples until they were tight and aching, worked two fingers inside me until I was wet and shaking—and then he had simply stopped, adjusted my clothes, and stepped out of the car as if the entire thing had been a minor interruption in his day. The silence at lunch had only made it worse. Every time I shifted in my chair I had been aware of the dampness in my underwear and the fact that he knew exactly what he had done to me. He had chosen not to finish it. That choice felt deliberate. It felt like another form of control.

I sat up slowly and pushed my hair back from my face. The shopping bags still sat near the closet where the maid had left them. New dresses. New shoes. A bag suitable for campus. On Monday I would leave the estate with a driver and step into classrooms full of people my own age, carrying books and schedules like a normal student. The thought should have felt like relief. Instead it felt complicated, tangled up with the man who had granted the permission and the conditions that came with it.

My phone vibrated once. I picked it up.

Maya: wait what?? school?? you’re actually going back?? Call me when you can, I need the full story.

I read the message twice, then locked the screen again without answering. I did not have a full story I could tell her. Not one that would make sense. Not one that would not expose everything I was still trying to understand myself.

I stood and walked to the window. The formal gardens stretched out below, neat and empty under the afternoon light. Beyond them the high walls kept the rest of the world at a distance. Somewhere on the other side of those walls ordinary life continued—classes, friends, conversations that did not require permission. Inside the walls everything moved according to Corren’s design. Including me.

The restlessness under my skin refused to settle. I changed out of the cream dress, left it folded on the chair, and pulled on a simple pair of shorts and a soft top from the clothes I still considered mine. I did not bother with shoes. The floors of the west wing were cool under my bare feet as I left the room and walked the quiet corridor toward the back of the house.

I needed air.

The path to the pool was familiar now. I had stood at the edge of it once before and decided not to go in. Today the water looked different—still, blue, reflecting the sky in clean sheets of light. No one else was there. The loungers sat empty. The cabana at the far end was closed. The only sound was the soft filter of the water and the occasional distant call of a bird beyond the walls.

I walked to the edge and sat down on the warm stone, letting my legs hang toward the water without touching it. The heat of the sun settled on my shoulders and the top of my head. For a while I simply breathed, trying to let the quiet loosen the tight feeling in my chest.

It did not work completely.

My mind kept returning to the car. To the way Corren had looked at me when he accused me of noticing Sebastian Langford’s stare. To the controlled anger under his voice. To the way he had touched me afterward—not with tenderness, but with a precise, deliberate intent to mark the difference between a stranger’s glance and his own claim. He had left me wet and aching on purpose. I could still feel the ghost of his fingers. I could still feel the empty throb he had refused to relieve.

I drew my knees up slightly and wrapped my arms around them, staring at the surface of the water. The afternoon light shifted across it in slow patterns. Somewhere inside the house Corren was probably already back at work, moving through calls and documents with the same calm precision he applied to everything else, including me. The idea that I occupied only a controlled portion of his attention while he occupied nearly all of mine made something sharp twist in my stomach.

I thought about Monday. About sitting in a classroom. About pretending to be a regular student while a driver waited outside and a man who required me to call him Daddy decided the boundaries of my day. I thought about Maya’s message and how impossible it would be to explain any of this in ordinary words. I thought about the way Sebastian Langford had looked at me in that courtyard—open curiosity, uncomplicated interest—and how quickly Corren had noticed and shut it down.

The memory of that look did not heat me the way Corren’s hands did. It only made the contrast clearer. One man’s attention had been simple. The other’s were total.

A soft breeze moved across the pool, lifting the surface of the water into small, brief wrinkles before it settled again. I watched it until my eyes lost focus. The unfinished need in my body had quieted into something duller but still present, a reminder that my responses no longer belonged entirely to me. Corren had made sure of that. In the restroom. In the study. In the back seat of the Maybach. Each time he had taken me further into a pattern I could not seem to break, even when part of me wanted to.

I lowered one foot and let my toes touch the cool water. The contrast against the heat of the stone was sharp and clarifying. I kept my eyes on the blue surface, on the way the light moved across it, and tried to sort the tangled thoughts into something that made sense. School. Rules. Silence. The weight of his gaze. The way my body answered him even when my mind was still arguing. The brief, unimportant attention of a billionaire’s son in a courtyard. The far more dangerous attention of the man who owned the walls around me.

None of it arranged itself cleanly.

I sat down in the swimming pool looking at the water and still thinking about the guy.