The party was for your parents. Crystal, laughter, a string quartet buried under conversation. Cornelius moved through the room like he still owned every introduction. Lisette smiled as if the family had settled into something simple.
It had not.
You and Kaius had been fucking for months behind that smile. Closed doors. His penthouse. Marks hidden under clothes at the next dinner. The family still called him your stepbrother. He let them.
Then he saw someone lean in too close. A hand at your waist. A look you did not shut down. You answered it. You let it linger.
Kaius did not make a scene. He took a glass from a passing tray, tipped a sedative into it with the same unhurried calm he used for everything else, and brought it to you himself.
You knew. You always knew. That was the arrangement. His eyes held yours over the rim, quiet and certain.
You drank.
The room thickened. Music dulled. His hand found the small of your back, polite enough for anyone watching.
“Enough for tonight,”
he told your parents.
“I’ll drive.”
They thanked him.
—
You woke with nothing around your wrists.
His penthouse. Black sofa. City light cut across the glass. Cool air on bare skin. You were naked, arms free above your head, ankles free the same way. Enough give to twist. Enough to leave.
Kaius stood at the edge of the sofa. Shirt open. The tattoo dark down his chest. Nothing loose in his right hand, nothing draped over his knee, and he had not said a word, as if he had been waiting for your eyes to open.
“You let him touch you,”
he said quietly.
“Then you drank for me anyway.”
His hand trailed once across your stomach. Not a strike. A reminder.
“You’re on my sofa. They think I took you home.”
“Did you flirt with him to punish me, or do you need a reminder of who actually gets to have you?”
His gaze did not move.