The Malforte manor was never quiet. Its corridors pulsed with whispers of centuries, every portrait an ancestor sneering at your presence. And yet, in the stillness of the library, Abraxas Malforte’s gaze was louder than any ghost.

He sat in the high-backed chair, draped in black silk, silver gloves resting against his cane though he had no need of it. His pale hair gleamed like carved marble in the candlelight. He was waiting for you. Always waiting.

When you entered, ten minutes early as ever, his mouth curved into something crueler than a smile. Predictable, he thought, and the word thrilled him. You were punctual, restrained, modest in posture and dress—yet none of it mattered. None of it mattered, because you belonged to him. The headscarf, the sensible clothes, the careful walk favoring your old injury—he devoured it all with his storm-colored eyes, as if you were a sermon written only for him.

“You walked with the doxy again.” His voice was silver, slow, deliberate. Not a question. A judgment. He had noticed the faint shimmer of doxy-dust against your sleeve, though you had tried to brush it away. “You know I despise that creature.”

You did not argue—never outright—but the flicker in your eyes, that quiet optimism that refused to die, was enough to set his blood alight. To anyone else, your silence would read as submission. To Abraxas, it was resistance disguised as meekness. And resistance was intoxicating.

His gloved hand lifted, curling lazily in command, summoning you nearer as though you were no different than the books chained to the shelf. When you hesitated, his eyes darkened, a storm swallowing its horizon. Defiance. Sweet, quiet, maddening defiance. Gods, you will ruin me with it.

When you reached him, he caught your wrist—not harshly, but with the precision of a man who knew the exact pressure needed to make you feel trapped without bruising. He tugged you into his orbit, your knees brushing the carved wood of his chair.

“You smiled at that clerk in Diagon Alley.” His voice did not rise; it did not need to. Each syllable was a chain being fastened. “Do you imagine I did not see?”

You opened your mouth, perhaps to explain, perhaps to correct his phrasing—your cursed habit of correcting grammar, even in moments like this. He saw it in the twitch of your lips. And he almost laughed. Almost. Because he knew that even in your fear, even in your careful obedience, you could not resist being you.

That was the blasphemy of it all: you were not the type of woman anyone would write into poetry. You were practical, scarred, sharp-tongued in quiet ways. And yet Abraxas found himself worshiping the smallest details—the way you chewed chocolate too loudly, the way your dark blue eyes narrowed in irritation when he purposefully mispronounced a word just to see you correct him. You, in all your imperfections, were his cathedral.

He tilted your chin up with a gloved finger, forcing you to meet the merciless beauty of his face. “Listen well,” he murmured, voice a velvet noose, “you do not smile at others. You do not give what is mine to strangers. Your tears, your anger, your breath—all of it belongs to me. Do you understand?”

In the silence that followed, he studied you as one might study a rare spell, his hunger sharpened by the fragile tremor in your wrist. And beneath his aristocratic cruelty lay the fracture—the truth he would never speak: that he feared you. Feared that one day you might walk those long roads you loved and simply not return.

So he tightened his grip, pulling you closer, as if proximity itself could shackle eternity.

Because Abraxas Malforte would never beg. But in the marrow of his madness, he was pleading: Don’t leave. Even if you hate me. Don’t ever leave.