Page 16 of Suite 7

“So you know everything,” she says.

“Yes.”

She looks away. A long beat. When she comes back, something has shifted.

“I should leave,” she says.

“You should,” I agree. “If that’s what you want.”

She doesn’t move.

I cross to the bed and sit beside her, not touching. My forearms rest on my knees, hands loose, aware of the six inches between us and the specific effort required to maintain them.

A moment passes. Then another.

“Why don’t we start with tonight,” I say. “This is what you came here for.” My jaw is tight. I let it be tight. “No expectations beyond this room. Just this. Just tonight, and we deal with what it means after.”

She turns her head. Her gaze finds mine and holds, reading me the way she reads a room, fast and thorough, looking for the thing that doesn’t add up.

I let her look. Let her see what I’ve been hiding. The want. The restraint fraying at the edges. The truth I can’t disguise anymore.

“You’re Sloane’s brother,” she says. Like reminding herself.

“And you’re Sloane’s best friend.”

She’s quiet for a long moment. Then her shoulders drop and she stands — not toward the door, just up, because she won’t have a hard conversation from a position of disadvantage.

I watch her do it. The shift in her spine. The way certainty arrives in her body before she’s finished deciding.

“Just tonight,” she says. “Then we go back to normal. The Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown. Pretend this never happened.”

This isn’t going to be one night. But I don’t say that.

“If that’s what you want.” I stand too. “But I need you to understand what you’re agreeing to first. This isn’t a sanitized fantasy, Vera. I won’t go easy on you just because I know you. I won’t pretend I’m someone else. And I won’t apologize for how thoroughly I intend to do this.” I hold her gaze. “Last chance to walk away. No judgment. No consequences. We go back to our separate lives and this stays in this room.”

Her jaw sets. The reflexive defiance arrives first, then stalls. Underneath it, something quieter and more honest surfaces. The version of her she showed Dominic. The version she came here to find.

When she speaks, her voice is steady.

“Tonight I want this. I want to know what it feels like with you.”

“Say it. Do you consent?”

She’s quiet for a moment.

“I consent. To this. To you. To letting you lead.” She exhales. “I’ve never said that to anyone.”

“I know.” I don’t move. “And I won’t waste it.”

The silence that follows is different from all the ones before it.

“And if you change your mind during?”

“I have safewords.” Her voice is firm. “I’m not fragile, Kane.”

“I know you’re not.” I let her see my certainty. “That’s not why I’m asking.”

Her shoulders drop and her hands go still.