The morning after the studio encounter, I woke up with my fingers stained grey. No matter how hard I scrubbed in the marble bathtub, the charcoal from the night before seemed to have seeped into my very pores, a permanent shadow of the man who had claimed me amidst the paints.
Adrian was gone by the time the sun hit the peaks, likely back in the city to manage the empire he had built on the bones of his enemies. But his presence was everywhere. It was in the high-protein meal the silent maid brought to my room, in the vitamin pills I was forced to swallow under the watchful eye of a security camera, and in the weight of the silver choker that now felt like a part of my own anatomy.
At exactly noon, the intercom in my bedroom crackled to life.
"The studio is waiting, Elara."
It was Adri
