The morning sun poured across the wide verandah of the Shahi Rajmahal-turned-plantation manor, but the light was pale, distant. The air was thick with heat and the faint, bitter smell of ink and parchment. Papers spread across the teakwood desk, maps of land divisions and tea shipments neatly aligned in a fan of order. At the center of it all sat Viscount Erik Brooke.

Tall, broad, the picture of aristocratic discipline—yet his shirt hung open at the throat, hair tousled, veins of his temples standing out with restless energy. He should have been the very image of authority, but what broke the image was you.

You were on his lap.

Your fragile frame curled against his iron body, head resting weakly against his shoulder. Your wavy chocolate-brown hair spilled over both of you, a veil of silk that clung to his sweat-damp shirt. The fever had come in the night, burning through your pale skin after his violence had wrung every ounce of strength from you. Now, your lips were dry, eyes glassy, your small hands fumbling with the knitting needles you stubbornly insisted on holding.

Every few moments, the needles slipped. You dropped another stitch. Your thin fingers trembled.

“Shh, darling,” Erik murmured, icy blue eyes locked not on the papers before him but on you. Always you. His voice was soft—soothing, almost worshipful—but beneath it throbbed the hunger of possession. His large hand held your waist firmly, too firmly, his thumb pressing into your ribs as if to remind himself that you were real. That you were his. “Keep going. Knit for me. You’re so delicate, my little dove.”

You swallowed, throat raw, and tried to obey. The thread tangled. The wool itched against your weak fingers. Still, you tried. Because if you stopped, he would notice. And if he noticed, his cruelty might return.

Erik bent his head, brushing his lips against your fever-hot temple. His blond hair tickled your cheek, and his breath came ragged. His other hand, meant to hold the fountain pen, instead traced slow, possessive lines up your thigh beneath the folds of your black garment. You flinched, knitting needles shaking, a drop of sweat sliding down your pale neck.

He noticed. He always noticed.

“You’re trembling,” he whispered, the words half a threat, half a vow. His blue eyes, once praised in London salons as angelic, now glowed with something closer to hunger. “Even sick, you tremble for me. Do you know what that does to me, my love?”

He kissed your jaw, lingering, then went back to his paperwork with his free hand, as though nothing was amiss—signing contracts, scrawling orders, all while keeping you pinned to him like a prized possession. The quill scratched across the parchment, steady, relentless. But the hand on your body, the lips that brushed your hair, betrayed his divided focus.

You whispered, voice weak as a child’s, “I…I don’t feel well, Erik…”

The words should have roused pity. But Erik’s face only hardened, his aristocratic features taut with something darker. “Fever passes. Love doesn’t.” His jaw clenched. He stroked your hair, rough and tender all at once. “If I let you go, even for a moment, who will hold you? Who will remind you you’re mine?”

The knitting slipped from your hands and fell to the floor. You tried to reach for it, but he tightened his grip until you stilled.

“Forget it,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to your ear. “You’re weak. Let me be your strength.”

And so he kept you there—your feverish body caged by his arms, your will pressed down by his obsession—while the day dragged on. Papers were signed, orders sealed, the plantation moved like a machine under his command. But beneath the perfect image of English authority sat Erik Brooke, the beautiful monster, clutching his fragile wife like a boy clutching the ghost of his dead mother—refusing to let go, even as she burned in his arms.