POV Mara
I woke to morning light cutting through unfamiliar curtains and the immediate, pathetic disappointment that I was alone.
The guest room—of course it was the guest room—wrapped around me with its careful neutrality, its polite distance from wherever Adrian had slept.
Fresh packages lined the dresser like apologies or bribes, replacing everything that had burned with the safehouse.
The thoughtfulness of it made something twist in my chest—anger at being handled, gratitude I couldn't afford, and beneath both, that persistent ache that he'd carried me here but hadn't kept me.
The shower stripped away wine-fog and the phantom weight of his arms, hot water beating sense back into my skull.
Sober, I could catalog my stupidity properly—the way I'd wanted him to take me to his bed, how my drunk body had practically begged for it. The humiliation burned hotter than the water.
In his kitchen, I found pre-made sandwiches with a sticky note that just said "reheat." His handwriting was precise, controlled, nothing like the chaos he created in my chest.
I demolished them standing at the counter, the penthouse so quiet I could hear my own chewing, my own treacherous thoughts wondering where he'd gone, when he'd come back, whether he'd thought about carrying me somewhere else entirely.
The silence pulled me through his space until I caught it—the mechanical whir of effort, the specific rhythm of someone punishing their body. I followed the sound to a compact gym tucked behind what I'd thought was just another closet door.
Adrian was destroying himself on an assault bike, wearing nothing but shorts and headphones, shoulders slick with sweat that traced paths I wanted to follow with my tongue.
His legs worked with mechanical precision, powerful and relentless, and I let myself look—memorizing the way muscle moved under skin, the controlled violence of his breathing, the focus that made him beautiful in his suffering.
He spotted me and coasted to a stop, pulling out one earbud with a casualness that didn't match the way his eyes tracked over me.
"You installed a private gym when this building definitely has something obscene on the amenity floor?" I said, needing words between us before I did something catastrophic like lick the sweat from his collarbone.
"Yes," he said, reaching for a towel that did nothing to make him less distracting. "But solitude is a luxury. Besides, big-box gyms mean attention I have to decline, which earns me enemies with perfect nails and wounded egos."
"You flatter yourself," I said, even as my eyes betrayed me by following a drop of sweat down his chest.
"Maybe." His smile turned knowing. "Are you jealous?"
The question landed too close to the truth, so I deflected hard. "Does the building gym have a boxing ring?"
"It does." He tilted his head, reading the challenge before I voiced it. "Why?"
"You owe me a fair fight," I said, the words coming out steadier than my racing pulse. "No staging, no pulled punches. I want to know if I could have put you down that day if you hadn't let me."
His laugh was warm and genuinely amused. "Mara, I already flattened you by that car you tried to steal. Remember? You went down pretty easily."
The spark caught and burned. "That was a surprise. This would be skill."
"You're serious." Not a question, just recognition of the inevitability building between us.
"Dead serious."
"Twenty minutes," he said. "Meet you by the elevator."
* * *
We met in matching sweats that shouldn't have felt like armor but did. The elevator arrived with a soft chime, and we stepped in, maintaining that careful distance until another rider joined us two floors down—a woman who looked at Adrian like he was a meal she'd already ordered.
Without hesitation, he pulled me against his side, his arm settling around my waist with that casual possession that made my brain short-circuit.
I didn't resist—couldn't, wouldn't, didn't want to. His thumb traced a small circle against my hip, and I had to focus on breathing normally while the other woman's interest curdled into irritation.
The gym at noon was packed with bodies that turned toward Adrian like flowers to sun, then frosted over when they registered me attached to him. Their hostility tasted like vindication and warning mixed together.
At the ring, a floor coach fetched gloves while I said, "You're already warm. I need to stretch."
Adrian leaned against the ropes, and I felt his gaze as I worked through my routine—deliberate, thorough, saving the best for last.
When I hooked my leg up to the top rope in a clean, unhurried split, holding it just long enough to make a point, he actually exhaled—this small, involuntary sound that sent power shooting through my veins.
"Can you do that?" I asked, deadpan, lowering my leg with deliberate slowness.
"Not even close," he admitted, his voice rougher than before.
The coach returned with wraps, reaching for Adrian's hands first. "Let's get you ready—"
"Start with her," Adrian said, but I was already demonstrating, wrapping my own hands with the quick efficiency of someone who'd done this more than him, who'd learned to armor herself long before he'd entered the picture.
The gloves went on like old friends, a familiar weight that made my body remember what it was built for. We climbed into the ring, and the noise of the gym faded to white static.
Adrian held out his gloves, and I touched them with mine—that ritual acknowledgment of what we were about to do to each other.
"Ready to lose?" I asked, tipping my chin up, letting the challenge sharpen my voice even as want softened my bones.
His eyes held mine, and something shifted in them—heat and recognition and this devastating honesty that knocked the air from my lungs.
"To you," he said quietly, before we'd even started, "I lost a long time ago."