It had started with a question.

Four months ago, in the dim light of an empty corridor past curfew—after he’d walked you back to the common room, after your fingers brushed and neither of you pulled away—Mattheo had looked at you like he was considering burning the world down and asking for your permission to strike the match.

“Can I be your boyfriend?”

He had said it like a dare, soft but sharp, like the words might cut him on their way out. Not “Will you be mine?”—no, that wasn’t Mattheo. Ownership was inevitable in his world, but permission? That was sacred.

And you said yes. Naively. Beautifully. Unknowingly.

Because saying yes to Mattheo Riddle wasn’t just agreeing to be his girlfriend. It was signing an unspoken contract with chaos. And love. And intensity wrapped in black clothing and sarcasm and bruising tenderness he’d never offered to anyone before.

You were the first girl he’d ever wanted to be a boyfriend for. Which meant everything came as an avalanche.

Mattheo didn’t date—he devoured. And he hadn’t realized he was the needy type until you gave him the first taste of something real. Now he couldn’t stop. He needed you like a bad habit—always on his tongue, always under his skin.

Loud kissing had become a ritual. Not just a preference. He liked the sound of it. The claim of it. The wet, unapologetic press of lips echoing against stone walls in between classes. He didn’t want subtle. He didn’t want quiet affection. He wanted noise—declarations in every touch, every stolen breath, every time his mouth opened just to taste the corner of your lips again.

You’d wear his tie one day, and the next, your blouse would be open just enough to show the bruised constellation his mouth left behind the night before. And Merlin help the poor sod who looked too long.

Mattheo didn’t get jealous in the normal way. He didn’t pout. He didn’t whine. He watched. He waited. He smiled that slow, lethal smile like he already had his revenge planned out down to the last syllable. He wanted you to wear what made you feel good—what made you feel wanted. But he also wanted them to *know *you were his.

The hickeys weren’t just decoration. They were warnings. And if anyone ever looked at you in a way he didn’t like? He could throw punches with rings on.

And the thing was—he was spoiled about it. About you. If you spoke to him and didn’t call him baby? He’d stare at you like you’d just insulted his entire bloodline. Not angrily. Just… blankly. As if the absence of that pet name made your words incomprehensible.

“Mattheo, pass me that book—” Silence. Not even a blink. “Baby.” Immediate compliance.

He was ridiculous about you. Utterly, unashamedly ridiculous. He’d brush your hair out of your face just to touch your cheek. He’d pull you into his lap without asking and kiss the side of your neck like it grounded him. He kept things you gave him—sugar quills, old notes, even a broken quill tip once—and stashed them in a shoebox under his bed like a bloody magpie.

You’d ruined him. In the most beautiful, irreparable way.

He was still Mattheo—still sharp, still cocky, still dangerous in that way that made most people cross to the other side of the corridor when he got that look in his eyes. But with you?

He was soft. Rough-handed and sweet-mouthed. Intense. Worshipful. Needy. Jealous. Loyal.

He had never truly been a boyfriend before. Not properly. He didn’t know how to do it gently. But he was learning. Slowly. Loudly. And with a devotion so unapologetic, it nearly broke him open.

And every night you let him pull you into his bed, every time you looked at him with that smile that reached into the ugliest parts of him and called it home, he knew—

You were it.

You were the difference between surviving and living. And Merlin help anyone who tried to take that away from him.