Chapter 108: Master and Slave

Elias woke first.

The room was still dim, the curtains only barely letting in the gray light of morning. The first thing he saw was a few loose strands of black hair hanging across his face. He reached up, brushed them aside, and found Serena sleeping inches away from him.

Without her usual sharp gaze, without the cold control in her expression, she looked almost peaceful. Her breathing was even. Her face, framed by dark hair spilled over the pillow, looked older than Liora’s and softer in sleep than it ever did while she was awake. For a moment, Elias just lay there looking at her.

Then he remembered last night.

He had to admit it. As far as Serena’s performances went, that had easily been her best one so far. The thought made him almost feel generous.

Since he was a man of his word, he decided to reward her.

He shifted back a little, drew up one leg, planted the sole of his foot against her lower stomach, and kicked with his full strength.

Serena’s body dropped off the bed with a heavy thud.

The floor was hardwood instead of tile. Elias did not think he had kicked hard enough to seriously injure her. He propped himself up on one elbow and waited, already preparing himself for the fury that was supposed to come next. Getting thrown out of sleep and kicked onto the floor was the kind of thing that would have set Serena off even on her best day.

A few seconds passed.

Nothing.

Elias frowned.

Another second. Still nothing.

He rolled across the mattress, leaned over the edge, and looked down.

Serena was lying on the floor like a corpse.

She was not moving.

His pupils tightened at once.

"Serena!"

Not long after, Serena was back in bed and her private doctor was standing at the bedside. Elias stood off to one side in an oversized T-shirt that clearly did not belong to him, arms folded, watching the doctor finish the examination.

He looked from Serena’s flushed face to the doctor and asked, "Well?"

The doctor pressed his lips together and met Elias’s eyes with the kind of patient expression adults used on children who obviously knew what they had done but were pretending they did not.

"I understand that both of you are young and healthy," he said, voice careful in a way that made Elias instantly suspicious, "but some restraint is still necessary."

Elias stared at him.

So that was what he meant.

The doctor thought Serena had fainted because Elias had overworked her.

That was slander.

Pure slander.

Serena was obviously just physically weak and running a fever. If anything, that only proved her body was worse than he had realized.

[Doesn’t that just make it sound even more like you drained her dry?]

System Theta’s voice came softly through his mind.

Elias blinked once. That almost sounded reasonable.

Then he immediately rejected the thought.

This was a modern world. A completely ordinary modern world. There were no succubi, no vampires, no demonic constitutions, no hidden bloodlines with strange powers. If some lunatic suddenly showed up with supernatural abilities, he was going to file a complaint all the way up the chain and make the Trash Trope Bureau explain itself.

"I’ll keep it in mind," he said aloud.

The doctor gave him several more instructions about fluids, rest, and fever management, then finally left the room.

Once the door shut behind him, Elias turned back toward the bed.

Serena’s face was still red from the fever. Lying there quiet and half out of it, she no longer looked like the woman who had pinned him down the night before. She looked like a sick dog that had barked too much and worn itself out.

Some rare scrap of pity stirred in him.

He stepped closer, reached out, and smoothed the hair back from her damp temple. "When you wake up," he said softly, "I’m making you work out."

He meant it.

Not because he cared about her health in any noble sense. He just had no interest in discovering too late that whatever strange residue of his old worlds might still be clinging to him was enough to wreck someone this fragile. If Serena kept going like this, he really might wear her out for good.

He turned his head toward the other person in the room.

Liora was standing nearby, quiet as ever, watching without expression.

"You too," Elias started to say. "You should remember to exe..."

He never got to finish.

Liora turned and walked out.

Elias stared after her.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

A second later he went after her, caught up in the hall, and grabbed her by the arm. "Hey. Why are you ignoring me?"

There was a trace of grievance in his voice, and a trace of something softer, something that sounded close enough to a complaint to pass for one.

Liora turned her head and looked him up and down once.

"Go back," she said coolly, "and put on some pants."

Elias glanced down at himself.

He was wearing one of Serena’s T-shirts. It was loose enough to cover the tops of his thighs, but only barely. Below that was nothing but bare skin. Long pale legs, a dangerous amount of exposed thigh, and nothing to stop the scene from becoming obscene if he moved the wrong way. The effect was somehow worse than nakedness. Nakedness at least made its own rules. This looked careless in exactly the kind of way that invited people to stare.

Elias had been about to laugh it off as jealousy.

Then he saw the angle of Liora’s mouth and stopped.

That was not wounded jealousy.

That was contempt.

"The doctor saw me," Elias said, smiling a little as if the problem were trivial. "So what? He’s your private doctor. That makes him practically family."

"Family?" Liora gave a short, humorless laugh. "Your status in this house changes quickly."

That threw him.

He studied her face properly then. The coldness in it was real. It had started the moment she saw him standing by Serena’s bed in Serena’s shirt, looking worried enough to forget he was half dressed.

His thoughts began lining themselves up.

This was not how jealousy should look, not at her current level. Liora was possessive by temperament, but not enough to sour over this alone. Not yet.

So what had changed?

He looked at himself again.

The shirt. The bare legs. The fact that he had rushed out after Serena without even thinking about what he was wearing. The doctor had seen him like this. Liora had seen him like this. And worse than that, she had seen what it implied.

Concern. Belonging. Attachment.

Something in Elias clicked into place.

Of course.

What had drawn Liora in from the beginning was not tenderness. It was not domesticity. It was certainly not the image of him already settling into another woman’s house like he belonged there. What hooked her was the opposite: the fact that he slipped through people’s hands, that he stayed slippery and unclaimed, that he moved between women like he belonged to none of them and could not be fully possessed by any of them.

That was the charm.

That was the danger.

That was what made him worth chasing.

If he started looking like somebody’s kept thing, somebody’s favorite, somebody’s soft little concern in an oversized borrowed shirt, that whole appeal thinned out at once.

Which meant the answer was simple.

Liora only wanted him as long as he remained exactly what he was best at being.

A beautiful problem. A shameless little disaster. A man no one could keep.

In plainer terms, she liked him best when he acted like a whore.

Elias smiled to himself.

How wonderfully cheap.

He started walking toward her.

Liora did not move at first. Then, when she realized he was not stopping, she took one step back. He kept coming. Another step. Another. He followed at the same measured pace until he had crowded her all the way to the staircase landing.

Downstairs, the household staff moved in and out of sight, busy with their work. From the right angle, anyone could look up.

Elias came right up against her.

"So that’s what upset you," he said quietly. "You’re angry because I’m not wearing pants."

His tone had changed. The lazy grievance was gone. In its place was the soft, night-dark voice he used when he wanted to drag someone back into the exact kind of trouble they had decided to avoid.

He lifted one finger and laid it against her clothes.

The touch was light, almost careless, but it traveled. Up along her throat. Under her chin. Then it tipped her face back just enough that she had to lean into the polished railing behind her for balance.

The pose was dangerous. A little too exposed. A little too intimate. If anyone looked up now, they would not see everything, but they would see enough.

Liora’s back rested against the banister. She held herself perfectly still.

Elias used his other hand to catch the hem of the T-shirt.

He lifted it slowly.

A strip of pale, tight waist appeared in the open air. Then more.

And below that, exactly what he wanted her to realize.

Nothing.

Not just no pants.

Nothing.

The servants on the first floor only had to raise their heads.

Liora’s expression changed at last, but only by a fraction.

Elias saw it and smiled wider.

His face held that bright, fox-quick mischief of his, but there was something else in it too. Something sweeter than it should have been. Something wicked enough to make sweetness feel like a trap. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He leaned in until his breath brushed her face.

"I’d love to put some on," he said in a low voice. "Unfortunately my pants seem to have gone missing. I looked everywhere."

His fingertip stayed beneath her chin. His body remained pressed close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the thin shirt.

Then he tilted his head and gave her a smile that made the whole thing worse.

"Can you help your master find them?" he asked softly. "My little slave."