"It’s fine."

Viktor sat.

Directly, without inspection, the way a man sits in a room he’s comfortable in. He looked around once — the window, the mantelpiece, the portrait of a younger Eliantra above the fireplace that she’d stopped noticing was there — and then settled with his elbows on his knees and looked at her.

"It’s good enough."

Eliantra straightened.

Looked around at the sitting room with the eyes of a woman suddenly aware that she has guests and no household to support the fact.

"My bad," she said again. "There’s not even anyone to— wait, let me go. I’ll bring some cakes. There should be something in the—"

"No."

"It’s really no trouble, I just need to—" 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"I’d rather," Viktor said, "have the cake I can see."

She stopped.

Turned.

He was looking at her.

Not at her face.

Her back had been to him as she moved toward the door — the robe over the nightgown, the loose hair, the specific, generous architecture of a woman who had been seated at a desk since before dawn and whose body reflected twelve years of good meals and a sedentary occupation and the particular fullness that middle age had added to what had already been a substantial figure.

He was looking at her ass.

The direct, unembarrassed attention of someone who has decided they find something interesting and sees no reason to pretend otherwise.

She stared at him.

He looked up.

Met her eyes.

Said nothing.

Her mouth opened.

Closed.

"Come on," he said, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Take a seat."

He reached forward.

His hand found her wrist — the light grip, nothing forceful, just ’directional’ — and pulled.

The physics of it were straightforward. His pull, her momentum, the distance between them — her body came forward and landed against his chest with the specific, soft, comprehensive impact of a full figure in a thin robe making contact with a man who did not move to soften it.

His arms caught her.

Not by design. Instinct. Both hands at her waist, the automatic catch of someone who had been catching things for the past twelve hours and had very good reflexes.

He felt her.

The full weight of her against him — the thick, warm, cushioned reality of a body that Eliantra wore like something she’d stopped paying attention to and which his hands were now cataloguing with the involuntary thoroughness of an incubus who cannot touch a woman without assessing her.

’Dense. Real. Soft in the specific way that young women aren’t. Her waist is— and her chest just—’

His internal voice completed the sentence with a thought that was not appropriate to the nature of their relationship and which he had the specific discipline not to say out loud.

’Elena,’ he thought instead, ’your mother is genuinely a gorgeous woman. Unlike you.’

The comparison was not flattering to Elena.

Eliantra, meanwhile, was having what could charitably be called a moment.

Her palms were flat against his chest. Her face was approximately four inches from his jaw. She could feel the warmth of him through the suit fabric, could feel both his hands at her waist, and she was experiencing the specific, bewildering, ’inconvenient’ reaction of a woman who has been touch-starved for longer than she’d consciously admitted and has just been caught by someone who smells like — she couldn’t name it — something warm and purple and ’wrong’ in the most confusing way.

She pushed back.

Both palms against his chest. Got upright. Got seated on the far end of the sofa with approximately six inches of respectful distance that she immediately wanted to have been a foot.

She straightened her robe.

Fixed her hair.

Fixed it again.

"By the way," she said, in the tone of a woman changing the subject with the grace of a carriage making a sudden turn on wet cobblestone, "where is Helena?"

She looked at Rihana.

"And who is—"

Rihana, who had been standing near the door with the quiet, observant patience of a woman doing active field research on human relationship dynamics, looked up.

Her expression had been doing something throughout the last four minutes that could be described as ’recalibrating.’

She had entered this mansion understanding Viktor as: the man who had bred her, whose seed was currently growing inside her, whose cock she had spent twelve hours learning the geography of, her master.

She had not understood him as: someone with a mother-figure who was gorgeous and flustered and clearly experiencing feelings she hadn’t signed up for.

The revision was ’interesting.’

She stepped forward. Smoothed her commoner skirt. Straightened her back, which had the effect — inevitable, architectural — of her full chest pressing prominently against the fabric of her blouse.

A small bow.

Her voice, when she spoke, carried that quality — the Siren warmth, the specific melodic undertone that made whatever she said sound like something worth listening to, like the opening line of a song you already knew you liked.

"Greetings, my lady. I am Sir Viktor’s—"

"Bed-warming maid."

Viktor, from the sofa, without looking up from his tea. The words delivered with the flat, factual tone of a man completing a sentence accurately.

Eliantra’s neck turned.

Her eyes found him.

He was drinking tea.

The expression on his face was ’completely neutral.’

"What," she said.

Not a question. The word of a woman who has heard something and requires it to not have been what it sounded like.

"What does that mean."

"You know what it means."

Her mouth pressed into a line.

"Viktor."

"You already know what’s been happening.’ You ’heard."

Her jaw worked.

She looked at Rihana. At the thick, warm, entirely composed woman standing near the door with the expression of someone who has been professionally introduced in worse ways and considers this adequate.

She looked at Viktor.

At his profile. The clean jaw. The purple eyes turned toward the window. The specific, infuriating composure of a man who has decided to let a sentence sit in a room and see what it does.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

"Elena shouldn’t have—" She stopped. Restarted. "I knew that child was going to— her father’s influence, I always said—"

"It’s fine."

She blinked.

"No, but—"

"I was stressed," Viktor said. "Then I wasn’t." He set the teacup down. Looked at her. "Everything is fine now."

He was looking at her the way he’d looked at her in the hallway.

The specific, steady, unhurried attention that felt like being assessed from the inside out.

Eliantra looked away first.

At the window. At her hands. At absolutely anything.

thump

Her heart betrayed her first.

A sudden, heavy thump — then another, quicker, louder — as if something inside her had been struck awake without warning.

The image rose uninvited: his skin, too clean, too untouched, like something that had never known imperfection; those eyes, not young at all, but deep and steady with a man’s awareness — the kind that didn’t just look, but saw, peeled, lingered. It was improper. Vulgar, even. And yet it clung to her thoughts, tightening something low in her stomach.

He felt older than he should have been, sharper, more formed — and the awareness of it made her shift slightly where she sat, her fingers curling into her robe as her thighs pressed together on instinct.

It didn’t make sense. None of it did. And that only made it worse.

"Indeed," she said, and heard her own voice come out soft and slightly dazed and entirely not what she’d intended. "You look — fine."