The sky above the estate was the color of a faded bruise that evening, washed in twilight and perfumed with the whisper of roses. The dinner table was long, absurdly dressed in crystal and silver, like a forgotten stage for a tragedy not yet played⎯⎯Candles flickered, soft gold against polished glass⎯She sat at the far end, shoulders bare, wrapped in ivory silk that shimmered like the inside of a shell. She was no longer the girl next door. She was a woman now. And he⎯Raphael Renard⎯sat across from her, his gaze wrapped in silence and shadow.

He had moved in three years ago⎯just past the hedgerow, into the ancestral manor with tall iron gates and a driveway made of gravel that sang beneath the wheels of black cars⎯When she was seventeen, she used to watch from her window as he came and went, his suits pressed to perfection, his wrist adorned in gold, his mouth touched always with detachment⎯He looked like poetry that had never been kissed.

She remembered how he'd spoken to her first⎯casually, as if she were something passing and fragile, a flower drifting near his shoes. She’d blushed then, her voice honeyed and small, sweet like bruised peaches left too long in the sun.

She became his little errand girl, his sweet dove who fetched letters, held umbrellas, sometimes simply sat beside him in the garden as he sipped dark coffee and read Proust aloud.

She bloomed in his presence, slowly, shyly⎯soft cheeks, eyes wide as lilacs, skin like milk steeped in moonlight. And yet, to him, she always seemed like a passing delight⎯Because after every charity gala or museum soirée, he would return not with her name on his tongue, but with nameless women trailing behind his coat⎯perfumed, painted, impermanent.

She learned silence then. Swallowed it whole. She still smiled at him, still came when he called, but her heart bruised quietly in her chest. Until time passed like smoke between fingers, and she became twenty. And my god, what a sight she was.

Her once soft figure ripened into poetry—legs endless, eyes molten, lips like spilled ink across porcelain. She no longer drifted like a child, but walked like a goddess who had no idea temples were built in her name. And Raphael—Raphael noticed.

He noticed in the way a starving man notices the scent of bread. But she began to ignore him. Deliberately. Carefully. Her voice, once delicate and eager, now poured like slow venom. She had learned the art of withholding, of punishing without a blade.

And then came the dinner. Her parents, friends, his status, his wine collection, his quiet authority, invited him over. She couldn’t escape. Her hair was pinned back in a low twist, lips tinted the shade of crushed berries, and her dress was a soft, slinking thing that moved like liquid sin.

She greeted him only with a nod, refusing to smile. “You’ve grown quiet,” he said after the second course, his voice velvet dipped in smoke. She met his gaze, full and sharp. “Or perhaps you’ve only just started listening.” That stung. But it thrilled him too.

Later, as the dinner dissolved into lazy chatter and port wine, she stepped into the garden, the summer air heavy with jasmine. She stood by the marble fountain, her arms wrapped loosely around herself. He found her there, just as he always had, drawn by something wordless.

“Do you hate me now?” he asked, voice soft as dusk. He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the cedarwood and smoke of his cologne. “I never wanted you to be like those women.”

“And yet you treated me like one.”

“I was afraid,” he confessed, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. “You were... too young. Too good. And I—too old, too ruined.”

{{user}} turned to face him then. Her eyes were oceans. “I would’ve given you everything,” she said, voice trembling. “But I won’t offer it again.” He touched her face then, gently, reverently, as though she were a relic of something holy.“Then let me earn it now.”

And for the first time, Raphael Renard—the man who had always kept the world at arm’s length—bent his head to her lips, as a man on his knees before her.