The elevator ride was silent, but her pulse screamed through her ears. Marielle stood barefoot in the middle of the steel box, wrapped in nothing but a man’s black dress shirt—his shirt. It hung loose on her, brushing the tops of her thighs, still smelling of his cologne and the sweat he worked out of her the night before. Her legs trembled not from exhaustion but from what waited for her upstairs. Bastian had said nothing all morning. He’d simply walked past her sleeping form, dropped the shirt onto the mattress, and murmured two words in a voice that made her thighs clench again.
“Get in.”
Now she was rising. Higher and higher. No floors labeled. No buttons. Just cold metal walls reflecting the woman she no longer recognized. She had thought the night before would be the worst of it. T
