Three days passed like knives turning slowly in the wound.
The shop no longer smelled only of lanolin and clean thread. Beneath everything clung the stubborn, intimate rot: faint copper from the blood she had bitten from her own palm, the sour reek of shame that no open window could chase away, and the faint, ghostly musk of his seed that had seeped so deeply into the worktable's grain that even after three scalding scrubs with lye and sandpaper the wood still exhaled betrayal when she leaned close.
She worked without pause. Pinned hems. Measured cuffs. Threaded needles with fingers that refused to tremble because trembling would mean admitting she still felt something. She had become a machine of stitches and silence.
Aiden had come downstairs that first morning after. He stopped on the bottom step. Nostrils flared once. Eyes flicked to the table, then slid away so fast it was almost violent. He ate the bread she set before him without tasting it. Drank the tea without looking at her face. Left for the academy. Returned each night hollowed out, polite as a stranger. The space between them grew teeth, then claws.
She told herself it was only grief for Seraphina. She told herself the boy was still mourning, still wounded. She told herself the scent would fade. She told herself she was still his mother.
Every lie tasted like bile.
At mid-afternoon on the third day the bell chimed.
Liora kept her head bent over a half-finished greatcoat. Needle flashing. Breath held. But her body knew. The air thickened. The pale winter light seemed to bend and darken around the doorway.
Victor stepped inside. Coat buttoned this time. Silver hair tied neatly back. Uniform pristine. He could have passed for any senior cadet, except for the way the room shrank, the way oxygen grew thin, the way her pulse slammed against her ribs like a trapped animal.
He closed the door. The bell gave its small, traitorous chime.
Liora's needle froze mid-stitch.
She forced the words out.
"Aiden is at the academy until dusk."
"I know."
He crossed the room in four deliberate strides. Stopped on the opposite side of the worktable. The same scarred, damned table.
Liora kept her eyes on the wool.
"What do you want?"
"You know what I want."
Her fingers tightened until the steel drew a thin bead of blood.
"I scrubbed your filth from this table," she said, voice barely above a whisper. "Three times. It still smells like you. Like what I let you do."
Victor's mouth curved. Not quite a smile. Something darker.
"Good."
She looked at him then.
His eyes were calm. Almost tender. The tenderness gutted her worse than cruelty ever had.
"You think this is finished?" she asked. The question cracked open like bone.
"No." He leaned forward, palms flat on the wood. "I think we're only beginning to carve the guilt deep enough that it becomes part of you."
Liora's breath hitched once, sharp, and involuntary.
She should have screamed. Should have snatched the heavy shears from the drawer and buried them in his throat. Should have run upstairs and barred the door and sobbed until Aiden came home and found her ruined but still fighting.
Instead, the old heat uncoiled low in her belly slow, sick, and inevitable. The same heat that had left her trembling and leaking his claim while her son slept one floor above. The same heat that had made her whisper her own son's name like a curse while another man filled her.
Victor saw it bloom across her face: the shame, the hunger, the horror at her own hunger.
He circled the table slowly.
Liora did not move.
When he reached her side, he still did not touch her. He stood close enough that she could smell him: clean wool, winter air, the faint metallic bite of sorcery, and beneath it the dark, thickening musk of arousal already rising.
"Lift your skirt again," he said. Voice low. Not command. Invitation wrapped in certainty.
Liora closed her eyes.
A tear slipped free. Then another. Hot tracks down cold cheeks.
"I hate you," she breathed.
"I know."
"I hate myself more."
"I know that too."
Her hands moved slow, shaking, and condemned to the hem of her skirt. The black wool felt like lead as she drew it upward. Cool air kissed the insides of her thighs. No smallclothes. She had stopped wearing them after the first time. Some part of her had already surrendered the lie that this would end.
Her sex was already swollen, slick, and glistening betraying her before his eyes even touched her.
Victor exhaled once soft, almost reverent.
"Beautiful," he murmured. "Still dripping for the man who ruined your son's heart—and now yours."
Liora sobbed quiet, and shattered.
He stepped between her thighs. Pushed them wider with his hips. One hand caught her wrist gently, almost careful and guided her palm to the front of his trousers. She felt him: thick, brutally hard, straining, already leaking through fabric.
"Undo me."
Her fingers shook as they worked the fastenings. When his cock sprang free it slapped heavily against her soft belly, hot and wet at the tip. The blunt head smeared a glistening trail across her skin.
Victor lifted her onto the table in one smooth motion. Her ass hit wood. Skirt rucked to her waist. Thighs splayed wide.
He aligned himself. Nudged her entrance.
"Look at me."
Liora opened her eyes. Tears streaked her face. Hazel met black.
"When I'm inside you," he said quietly, "you're going to think about Aiden. Every thrust. Every time I bottom out against your womb. Every time your nectar clenches around me like it's trying to keep me there forever. You're going to remember that your son is walking the academy halls right now, carrying the wound I gave him, while his mother spreads her legs for me again—and likes it."
A low, anguished sound tore from her throat half denial, half surrender.
Victor thrust slow, and inexorable burying himself to the root in one long, punishing slide.
Liora's head fell back. Mouth open on a silent scream. Walls fluttered wildly around him, greedy despite the grief ripping through her.
He fucked her steadily. Deep. Each plunge dragged along every sensitive ridge inside her. Her heavy breasts bounced beneath the bodice with every stroke. Nipples scraped wool until they burned.
She bit her lip until copper flooded her mouth again.
Victor leaned down. Mouth at her ear.
"Say his name."
She shook her head frantic, and desperate.
"Say it."
A sob ripped free.
"Aiden…"
Victor thrust harder, deeper.
"Louder."
"Aiden…"
He caught one nipple through fabric, pinched viciously.
"Again."
"Aiden!" The name broke on a wail raw, grieving, and obscene.
Victor fucked her relentlessly wet slaps echoing in the quiet shop hand sliding between them to grind merciless circles on her clit.
"Come," he ordered. "Come thinking of the boy sleeping above us last time. Come knowing you'll spread for me again tomorrow. And the day after. Until the guilt stops hurting and starts feeling like ecstasy. Until you forget there was ever a version of you who loved him more than this."
Liora shattered, violently, nectar clamping down in rhythmic, milking spasms. Hot nectar gushed around him, soaking his balls, dripping onto the table in thick strings. A low, keening sob tore from her throat, his name and her son's tangled together in the wreckage of the sound.
Victor drove through it, faster, deeper until his control snapped.
Buried to the hilt and erupted thick, scalding pulses flooding her depths, overflowing, spilling down her thighs in creamy rivulets.
He stayed locked inside her grinding slow, possessive circles—savoring the aftershocks that trembled through her body like dying sobs.
Only then did he withdraw, watching his seed pour from her swollen, abused nectar.
Liora slumped backward, chest heaving, tears streaming unchecked, eyes glassy and distant.
Victor tucked himself away. Fastened his trousers with calm precision.
He leaned down. Kissed her forehead soft, almost tender then her swollen, bloodied lips.
"Tomorrow," he whispered. "Same time."
He turned.
Crossed to the door.
The bell chimed soft, mocking.
Liora remained sprawled legs open, dripping, trembling, tears pooling in the hollow of her throat.
But the scent of fresh sex saturated the air.
And somewhere in the academy halls, a boy felt an inexplicable chill crawl up his spine sharper this time, closer to recognition.
The ruin deepened.
One visit at a time. One betrayal carved deeper into the bone.
XXXX
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