His eyes found mine. Two seconds. The current that ran between us was so immediate and so specific that I felt it in my teeth.
"Get dressed," he said. "We have business."
He set the garment bag on the bed. The shoebox beside it. Turned and left. The door closed. Not locked—just closed. A distinction that mattered.
I stared at the garment bag for ten seconds. Then I unzipped it.
The dress came out like water. Black silk, the real kind—not satin, not polyester pretending, but silk that moved with the weight and cool of something alive. A wrap style, simple, the ties crossing at the waist. No embellishment. No beading or hardware or anything that tried to be more than what it was. The fabric didn't need help. It was the kind of dress that announced itself through touch, not appearance—the kind you felt before you saw.
I ran the silk through my fingers. The sensation was obscene. After six days of the same unwashed jeans and long-sleeve shirt,the fabric registered against my skin like a language I'd forgotten I spoke. Soft. Impossibly soft. The kind of soft that made my nerve endings sit up and pay attention and ask where this had been and why it had taken so long. Butter.
The shoes were next. Low heels, black, simple. My size. Not approximately my size, not close enough—my exact size, which meant he'd looked at my boots, the boots I'd been wearing since the night I broke in, and he'd read the number inside and remembered it.
And then. Underneath the tissue paper at the bottom of the bag.
Underwear.
Fuck.
A bra and panties, matched, black lace so fine it was nearly sheer. The bra was unlined—no padding, no structure, just the lace against skin. The panties were a bikini cut, the elastic edges finished with a scallop that looked like it had been designed by someone who understood that the line between functional and filthy was a matter of millimeters.
He'd guessed my size.
The bra was right. The underwear was right. Not close, not in the ballpark, not the approximation of a man who'd grabbed something off a rack and hoped for the best. Correct. Precisely, specifically, disconcertingly correct, which meant he'd been looking at my body with a level of attention that went past casual observation into the territory of study.
I put it on.
The lace first. Against my skin—my skin that hadn't felt anything except cotton and denim in six days, that had forgotten the sensation of fabric designed to be felt—the lace was electric. Every thread registered. The bra cupped me with a precision that made my breath catch, the unlined lace conforming to the shape of my breasts with the intimacy of hands. His hands. Thethought arrived before I could stop it, and the heat that followed the thought was immediate and devastating.
The dress. I pulled it on, wrapped it, tied it at the waist. The silk settled against my body like a decision—final, complete, the fabric knowing exactly where it wanted to be and going there without hesitation. It skimmed my hips. It crossed at my chest in a V that showed the edge of the lace underneath if I moved a certain way, if I breathed a certain way, if I stood in a certain light.
The shoes. I slid my feet in. The leather was new but not stiff, the heel adding two inches that shifted my posture, my center of gravity, the way I carried myself through space.
I went to the bathroom mirror.
The woman who looked back was a stranger.
Same dark hair. Same warm brown skin. Same scar through the left eyebrow, same scab on the cheekbone healing into something permanent. Same scarred knuckles, same lean arms, same body built by survival and push-ups and not enough meals.
But framed in black silk, standing in low heels on cool tile, she looked like someone who belonged in a house like this. Next to a man like him. She looked like someone who had been chosen—specifically, deliberately, by someone who'd studied the shape of her and built the frame to match.
I hated how much I liked it.
I hated how the silk moved when I moved. I hated how the lace felt against my nipples, a constant low-grade awareness that kept my body in a state of alert. I hated how the dress made my waist look small and my hips look deliberate and the V at my chest look like an invitation written in a language I didn't remember agreeing to speak.
I hated how much I likedhim.How much I wanted to walk downstairs and see his face and watch his eyes do the thing they did—that slow, cataloging sweep that felt like being touchedwithout being touched, that felt like being read, that felt like being known.
I went downstairs.
He was at the kitchen island.
Charcoal suit. White shirt, open at the collar, no tie. The jacket cut close to his shoulders—those shoulders, the ones I'd been pressed against in the yard, the ones that had carried me across frozen ground while I cursed in two languages. The shirt was bright against his skin, the collar open enough to show the beginning of ink where the Madonna started her climb up his chest. His hair was still slightly damp. He'd shaved—not clean, but close, the stubble reduced to a shadow that made his jaw look like it had been carved from something harder than bone.
He looked up.
His eyes moved over me. Once. Slow. Starting at the shoes and climbing—calves, knees, the hem of the dress at mid-thigh, the wrap at my waist, the V at my chest where the lace whispered underneath the silk, my throat, my mouth, my eyes.
His jaw tightened. That specific, visible compression of muscle along the hinge. The same one I'd seen in the kitchen the morning I picked his lock. Except this time it wasn't frustration.