The mansion was silent in the hour before dawn, that breathless pocket of time when even the staff had not yet stirred. Elena should have been in the guest wing, the room she had claimed after Marcus stopped pretending to share a bed. Instead, she found herself drifting through the dark hallways in nothing but a silk robe, her bare feet silent on the cold marble, her body still humming from Adrian's touch hours earlier. Sleep was impossible. He had taken her against the library shelves that night, her spine pressed into first editions while he whispered filthy promises about what he would do to her tomorrow. Her thighs were still slick with him, a fact that made her robe cling and her pulse skip every time she moved.