That night, David entered the master bedroom without knocking. Elara was sitting at the vanity, brushing her hair with mechanical movements, her mind still wandering on the dark terrace and the burning memories. She saw his reflection in the mirror before she turned.
"David," she murmured, putting down her brush.
He didn't answer. He just stood there, wearing a silk kimono, looking at her with an intensity that made her feel like an object about to be possessed. There was a different fire in his eyes—not passion, but a need to dominate.
"Hear me, Elara," his voice was low but deadly, cutting through the already tense air. "You belong to me." He stepped closer, his strong hand gripping her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. "Only to me."
Elara could feel every muscle in her body tense. As David lowered her onto the bed, his kiss felt like a stamp of ownership, not an expression of love. There was a harshness in his touch tonight, a steely determination to reaffirm what he felt had almost been taken from him.
He held her tightly, his hands and lips moving with sure mastery. Elara closed her eyes, trying to surrender to the familiar rhythm, trying to be fully present in this moment with her husband. She returned his kiss, trying to extinguish the memory of another fire burning on her lips.
But as David's hands explored her body, her mind drifted.
David's touch felt planned, like a sequence he had mastered. Kael's touch on the terrace felt wild, desperate, and born from an uncontrollable explosion of emotion.
As David moved over her, heavy and dominating, the shadow emerged cruelly. She imagined different, coarser hair between her fingers, more muscular shoulders under her palms, a hiss of a different name—Kael—almost escaping her tightly sealed lips.
She turned her face away, hiding it in the pillow, but David immediately pulled her face back.
"Look at me,"he growled, his breath heavy. "I want you to see who owns you now."
At the peak of their intimacy, David said it again, his voice hoarse and triumphant: "You... belong to me, Elara. Only... to me."
The moan that escaped Elara's lips sounded like despair. She clenched her fists in the silk sheets, trying to anchor herself in reality, in her husband, in the life she had chosen.
But the memory was stronger. The honesty in Kael's roughness felt more real than David's claims of ownership. A silent tear streamed from the corner of her eye, absorbed by the expensive fabric.
When it was over, David fell asleep quickly, his arm thrown possessively over her waist, locking her in place. Elara lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling. The imprint of her husband's touch was still on her skin, but what haunted her was the ghost of another touch—a touch that, though it lasted only a moment, felt more like freedom than ownership.
David's words "You belong to me" still echoed in her ears, but what her soul remembered was Kael's whisper: "What we feel is still the same."
She was no longer just trapped in a gilded cage. Now, the cage had a voice, and that voice constantly reminded her that she was property, not a person with her own desires. And in the midst of it all, her torn heart only yearned more for the honest silence she had shared with Kael.