Chapter 4

Lila's POV

The famous dom had rules.

No face reveals. No real names. No meeting requests from strangers — he only played with partners he'd vetted personally, and the vetting process was rumored to take weeks. His posts on the forum were sparse and clinical — every word measured, nothing wasted.

Half the women on the site would have given anything for one session with him.

I wasn't one of them. I was a writer. I studied his posts the way I studied syntax — to understand how authority sounded when it didn't need to perform. His phrasing had the same quality as the man in room 619. Controlled. Specific. No wasted words.

But the photo from last night was different. That wasn't a post about technique or limits. That was personal — a piece of his real life slipped through the curtain. And the silhouette behind it looked like a ghost I couldn't stop seeing.

I closed the forum and opened a blank document.

I'd been thinking about the hotel room all week. Not the heartbreak part — not the boyfriend, not the cheerleader's voice through the wall. That I could file away. But the other part. The room I'd walked into by mistake. The dark. The silk. The voice that said stay, and the hands that made me want to.

So I wrote it.

I changed enough to make it fiction. A college girl, shy and sheltered, stumbles into the wrong hotel room during a pack celebration. A stranger in the dark. A blindfold. No names, no faces. Just a night that taught her more about herself than three years of dating ever had.

I posted it on the writing platform under my usual pen name. By the time I brushed my teeth, it had three hundred views. By morning, over a thousand. Comments flooded in — "this feels SO real" and "are you sure this isn't a true story?" and "the dom's voice gave me chills."

I stared at that last one and almost laughed.

If they only knew.

I thought about my ex. Three years. Three years of waiting. Of telling myself his patience meant something noble, when really it just meant he was getting what he needed next door. And here I was — still a virgin. Still the girl who'd never been touched past second base by anyone who actually wanted her.

Part of me was angry about it. Part of me was relieved. At least the first man who'd made my body sing wasn't the one who'd called me useless behind my back.

Gemma showed up Saturday afternoon with a shopping bag and a plan.

"We're going out."

"I'm writing."

"You've been writing for four days. You need air. You need alcohol. You need —" She dumped the bag on my bed. Something silky spilled out. "— to remind a certain football captain what he lost."

"I don't care what he —"

"You don't have to care. You just have to look incredible." She held up the dress. A halter-neck lace camisole in black, the hem short enough to make my stomach flip. "I bought this last month and it's too small on me. Try it."

I stared at it the way you'd stare at a weapon you didn't know how to use.

Ten minutes later, I was standing in front of the mirror in someone else's body.

The black dress clung to curves I didn't know I had. My collarbones looked sharp. My legs looked long. Gemma had lined my eyes and twisted my hair up with two pins, and the girl staring back at me was not the girl who wore plaid shirts and thick glasses and spent her Saturdays in the library.

"There." Gemma grinned. "That's the face that's going to haunt him."

"I look like I'm borrowing someone's identity."

"You look like yourself for the first time."

The bar was everything I'd expected and nothing I was ready for.

Bass thumped through the floor. The air smelled like spilled beer and cologne and something sour underneath. Bodies pressed against each other on the dance floor while colored lights strobed across the ceiling. A woman on a raised platform danced around a chrome pole with her eyes closed.

I stood by the entrance in my borrowed dress and wanted to leave.

"Come on." Gemma grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the bar. "One drink. Then if you hate it, we'll go."

One drink turned into three. The cocktails were sweet and fruity, stronger than they tasted.

The cheerleader straddling my ex in room 616. The way he'd said wolfless is just a fancy word for useless. The professor telling me to get my wolf first.

I ordered a fourth.

The room softened. The music got louder. Or maybe I just stopped fighting it.

The woman on the platform finished her set and stepped down. The pole stood empty, gleaming under the lights. A few girls near the front laughed and dared each other. Nobody moved.

I moved.

I didn't decide to. My body just stood up and crossed the floor and my hands found the cold metal and I pulled myself up. The pole was slippery and my arms shook and I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to hook my knee around it the way the dancer had and nearly slid off.

Someone whistled. Someone laughed.

I didn't care. I was drunk and I was angry and the dress was riding up and the music was loud enough to drown out every voice that had ever told me I was less. I moved the way my body wanted to move. Graceless, fierce, nothing like the dancer and nothing like the girl who folded her hands in her lap during lectures.

The bass rattled through me. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I scanned the crowd without knowing why.

And across the room, in the dim corner near the back wall, a man sat alone with a glass of something dark. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows. His posture was straight even while leaning back. And his eyes — fixed, steady, not looking away — were on me.

I blinked through the haze of alcohol. The lights shifted and his face disappeared into shadow.

But I could still feel him looking.