BUT YOU BELONG TO ME ✦ RHYS

“Ask it. You’ve been circling it two sessions. Just ask it.”

Dr. LeBlanc looks up, studying him a moment, the kind of look that would unsettle most people but has never worked on him.

“Fine.” She sets the pen down. “No more dressing it up.” A pause. “Do you think what you feel for her is love, or is it something else entirely and you’ve simply chosen the word that’s easier to live with?”

“It doesn’t split that clean. People need separate words for it so they can decide which one they’re allowed to admit to. I’ve never needed that permission.”

“Convenient answer, Rhysand.”

“Correct one.” He says it without hurry. “You want me to flinch at the word obsession. I won’t.”

“I didn’t say obsession.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Dr. LeBlanc studies him. “Right. What are you, then? In your own words.”

“A man who knows exactly what he wants and has never once needed to apologize for the shape of it.”

“Some would call that dangerous.” She sets her pen down against the notepad, crosses one leg over the other, waiting to see if the word lands anywhere.

He doesn’t argue or bother to defend it, like the accusation simply doesn’t carry enough weight to earn the effort.

“I’m not here to convince you otherwise. I’m here to make sure it never becomes anything other than mine to carry.”

“And if it did?”

“It won’t.” He says it simply, no theater in it. “I’ve built a life around making sure of that.”

“Again, a convenient answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re going to get.”

She lets the silence sit, tapping the pen twice against the notepad before setting it down again, watching him as always, like she’s still hoping the stillness will crack something open.

Waste of time. He’s comfortable in it the same way he’s comfortable in most rooms, hands loose, nothing about him bracing for the next question.

“Have you thought about what happens if she finds out?”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“She won’t find out.” He leans back.

“But if it happens?” She presses. “Have you thought about it?”

“Yes.” He says it plainly. “I’ve thought about it extensively.”

“And?”

“And I’ve made peace with every version of that conversation. I don’t fear it.”

She studies him for a moment, the particular scrutiny of someone paid to notice what he doesn’t say aloud. “Why not?”

“Because even in every negative version of it, the ending is still the same. It ends with me and her, together.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, the posture of a man closing an argument rather than opening one. “And I don’t doubt that. Doubt would mean thinking I’m wrong to believe it. I’m not. All that’s missing is her having the full picture. That’s not the same thing as me being wrong.”

Dr. LeBlanc exhales slowly, shaking her head, the closest she comes to visible concession.

“You’d have made a formidable litigator, Rhysand.” She glances at the clock, then back at him, deciding something before she speaks again. “One more, then I’ll let you go.” She picks the pen back up. “If the day comes and she says no. Not a maybe, not a not yet. An actual no. What happens to all of this?”

He takes a beat, not because it rattles him, but because it deserves an honest answer instead of a rehearsed one. “Then it stays mine. If she says no, she gets to live a life that never knew what almost surrounded it. That’s the deal I made with myself a long time ago. I don’t renegotiate it just because the ending isn’t the one I want.”

“That’s a very controlled answer for something you clearly want more than anything else in your life.”

“Control is the only reason I get to want it this much and still be sitting across from you instead of somewhere far worse.”

She holds his gaze a second longer, then closes her notebook. “I don’t doubt that you believe you’re right.”

Another pause. “Same time next week, Rhysand.”

His grip is steady when he shakes her hand, warm and certain in a way that makes people trust him before they’ve decided whether they should.

Outside, he doesn’t go home. Not straight away. Never does after these sessions.

The Escalade eats the road in silence, no music, no calls, the same route he could drive with his eyes shut. He parks tucked between the pines at the overlook, invisible from the road below, the property in full view from here.

The engine fell silent.

He already knows she is inside, of course. He watched her leave earlier, watched the direction she took, the same way he tracks most things concerning her, without effort.

His phone rests against his thigh.

Rhys thinks of the excuse he gave her weeks ago, the casual mention that his runs and his errands happen to cross the same streets she favors, that Asheville is smaller than people think, that seeing her from a distance now and then is nothing stranger than coincidence dressed up as a small town although they never exchanged photos yet.

The excuse worked effortlessly. There was no reason it wouldn’t have.

It’s the one lie he built carefully enough to survive scrutiny, and it buys him exactly what he needs.

He looked toward the house again. The moment she stepped into his line of sight, he picked up his phone and began typing:

I’m sitting in front of my fireplace right now, thinking about you.

Then he pressed send.

Octavia turned toward their guest with the kind of practiced warmth she reserved only for a select few.

“But this is my husband.” She countered smoothly in response to what Julian Hargrove had said. “He collects competent men, just as others collect art.” Octavia took a calculated sip from her glass.

Hargrove laughed, taking a sip of his own whiskey while resting his free hand in the pocket of his trousers. “Ah, we know that well. I’ll take the comparison gladly.”

“You should. It’s the nicest thing she’s said about anyone all year.” Vance remarked, earning the faintest curve at the corner of his wife’s mouth, an amusement she rarely extended past her husband. “Rhysand won’t let me lie.”

Rhys gave a short nod, just enough to show he was paying attention to the conversation. In the same breath, Octavia turned her attention to their son with the particular scrutiny of a woman who had spent twenty-seven years trying to find the seams in someone who had never once handed her any.

She let Vance and Julian continue their conversation, then slowly approached Rhys.

“You’ve hardly said a word tonight.” She commented, as if it were nothing, but Rhysand knew better than to take it as a casual remark from a concerned mother.

Octavia had never been like that with him. Not with him. Never with him.

“I’ve said what needed saying.” He replied with an indifferent look. “Besides, you’ve been busy enough handling that part for both of us.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly, her smile returning and tightening at the corners. “Someone has to keep the night interesting.” Octavia arched an eyebrow, then paused, letting their private conversation grow even more charged. “You know, I was watching you during dinner tonight in a way I haven’t done in some time.” She let the words settle. “Do you know what I realized?”

Rhys crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’m eager to hear it.”

She smiled. Malicious. Resentful.

“You sit like your brother used to. Exactly the same.” Her hazel eyes locked onto him. Rhys drew in a slow breath.

“And?” He tilted his head slightly. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

His answer made Octavia’s grip on her glass tighten noticeably. The malicious smile on her face froze, and she stared at him for long, slow seconds. “No. I suppose not, Rhysand.”

“That’s what I thought, Mother.”

His words landed exactly where he intended. Octavia’s expression flickered, something hard and displeased crossing it before she smoothed it back into place with the practiced ease of a woman who had spent a lifetime never letting a room see her lose.

“You’ve gotten sharper with age. I used to think that was Vance’s influence. I’m starting to suspect it was always just you.”

“It was always just me.” Rhys agreed. “You simply weren’t looking closely enough to notice until it became inconvenient.”

“Careful, my son.” She warned. “That almost sounded like an accusation.”

“It was an observation. I leave the accusations to you. You’ve always had the better aim.”

Vance laughed at something Hargrove said, immersed in his own business conversation with his old partner, completely oblivious to the undercurrent passing between his wife and son.

Octavia stared at Rhys for a fraction of a second, but she soon had to redirect her attention to their guest and her husband, unable to come up with a sharp enough reply.

“Julian, let’s finish this in my office. We’ll crack open that old Macallan before you head to the airport.” Vance said after a while.

“I still have about thirty minutes.” Hargrove announced, checking his watch.

“Unfortunately, I can’t afford to extend the night any further.”

“Well then, let’s go.”

The men excused themselves. Vance kissed Octavia on the cheek and squeezed Rhys’s shoulder before the two of them headed inside the mansion.

Octavia stopped Rhys as he tried to walk past her and leave now that he no longer had to play host. “Rhysand.” Her nostrils flared slightly. “Next time, show a little more respect when you speak to me.”

“I always do, Mother,” Rhys replied. “I just don’t speak to you with the respect you want.” He added: “That’s the part you can’t stand. Not that it’s going to change anything.”

Octavia’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve always been my most difficult child.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mother.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

He made his way back to the mansion. On the second floor, he knocked on his father’s office door and entered when he heard his voice. “Heading out, son?” Vance arched a dark eyebrow.

“Yeah. I still have some Callahan Cybersecurity matters to handle before the night ends.” His phone buzzed once, then twice against his thigh. “See? Probably my secretary losing her mind not knowing what to do.”

But the rhythm was different from anything in his usual routine. People didn’t message him at this hour, and if it were an emergency, they wouldn’t send more than one.

It pulled his attention taut.

“I’ll see you at Sunday lunch, then?”

“Of course, Dad.”

“I’ll take Rhysand’s cue and head out too.” Hargrove said, checking his watch for the second time. “Walk me out?”

“Sure.” Rhys nodded, already moving.

He waited until he was inside the car to check his phone’s notification bar.

{{user}} had texted him.

The first message was pure curiosity, asking what he was doing. The second was just a question mark. The corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly. He took two seconds before replying after reading them.

Dinner with my parents. Heading home now. What are you doing?

The typing bubbles appeared, then stopped, then appeared again. This repeated for three full minutes, three minutes in which he patiently waited before putting the Escalade in drive and heading home.

Once there, the first thing he did was take a shower and change into nothing but a pair of black linen pants.

Rhys opened a bottle of sparkling water and was about to drink when his phone lit up on the fireplace mantel. He moved over and picked it up, unlocking it.

Her name sat above the new notification, but this wasn’t a text message. No.

It was a photo.

He opened it, and the composure he had maintained all evening, the same one that had survived his mother’s usual excavations, hung by a thread, barely surviving what his eyes registered the second the photo filled his phone screen.

He exhaled sharply through his teeth.

The image was of her in nothing but pajamas. Her face wasn’t visible, of course, but it didn’t need to be. He had already memorized every feature.

Their recent conversations had been growing more intimate. It had been subtle, natural, and had come especially from her side, because he obviously wouldn’t make the first move in that direction in their dynamic.

And she had just done it.

His jaw tightened. Some old, starving part of him went still, as a man does right before the ground shifts permanently beneath him.

A second notification came while the photo was still open. His thumb moved slowly upward and tapped it.

The second photo opened, and what remained of his composure, already hanging by a thin, almost invisible thread, completely shattered.

{{user}}. Naked. Completely fucking naked.

His gaze traveled over every inch of exposed skin, cataloging her body. From her neck to her collarbone, then her breasts. Perfect. Perfect for his hands, perfect nipples for his mouth.

Then his eyes moved down to her stomach, her navel, and finally there.

Her pussy.

“Fuck.” He didn’t just say the word, he growled it.

His attention lingered for another slow second before his fingers hovered over the keyboard and began typing.

My little witch, you have no idea what you just did to the rest of my night.

He stared at the words for a moment before sending them. The hunger he had deliberately kept locked behind iron bars was finally clawing at the walls.

Then: Want to see what you did to me?

He sent it. And waited for her reply.

{{user}} had broken Caroline Foster’s nose.

It happened that morning behind the athletics building, in front of enough witnesses that by dinner the story had already fractured into a dozen worse versions circulating across Halcyon University’s campus.

Rhys heard it secondhand from his cousin Peyton, who delivered the news too fast, half delighted, with none of the caution the situation probably deserved. For a few seconds after, even he wasn’t sure what to think.

But whatever had pushed {{user}} to the point of using physical force wasn’t information he wanted, and he wasn’t about to go digging for it.

He didn’t need the play-by-play to know how this would look from the outside: a fight, a broken nose, a girl walking around campus with two black eyes. Not just any girl, but the daughter of Daniel Foster, Dean of Halcyon University.

He needed exactly two facts to know how tonight would end. Daniel would want someone’s head for what happened to his daughter by morning, and the head he’d want was hers.

That second fact was the one that put Rhys in his car.

He knew the building he was heading to better than most people who still worked there. Founders Hall, west wing, the one with his family’s name carved into the stone above the entrance, because a Callahan endowment had rebuilt half of Halcyon University a generation before he’d ever set foot on campus as a student.

Rhys didn’t call ahead.

Men like Foster behaved differently when they had time to prepare, and he preferred him without it.

The dean was in his office, lights on behind the blinds. He came to the door himself once campus security radioed up that Rhys was waiting outside.

“Rhysand Callahan.” Foster waved him in. “God, it’s been years since the last time I saw you. How is your family?”

“Good. How are things here?” Rhys let Foster walk him through the usual script anyway: the new science wing, half-funded by a gift his father had made years ago, some upcoming alumni gala the dean clearly hoped he’d attend.

“Please, call me Daniel, son.” He adjusted the tie at his neck. “Things are going well here, thanks to your father, especially.”

“I see.” Rhys agreed with a nod.

“A good man, no doubt. Your mother too. Please send my regards to both of them. I’m looking forward to seeing them at the next fundraising gala next week.” He flashed a bright, overly whitened smile and moved toward the good scotch he kept for donors and trustees.

“You can count on it.” Rhys paused, his eyes catching the bottle. “I don’t drink.” He warned, then crossed his arms unhurriedly over his chest. “Besides, I don’t plan to stay long.” He said. “I’m here because I heard about Caroline.”

Foster’s smile thinned. “Oh?” He stopped before even opening the bottle. “Then you heard what that girl did to her.”

“I heard what happened.” Not quite the same sentence, and he let the gap sit there.

“That... girl broke my daughter’s nose.” He huffed. “In front of half the athletics department.”

“I’m aware.” Rhys declared. “I’m also aware you’re exactly the kind of man who’d want to make an example out of it. Something loud enough for the trustees to hear it went through proper channels.”

Foster didn’t answer. And that told Rhys everything he needed to know.

“I’d think carefully before any of that.” He uncrossed his arms but didn’t move from where he stood. “Your daughter is fine, dean. She’ll heal. Besides, you have a lot on your plate with that event next week.” He let the last words hang in the air for a few seconds. “So what I need you to understand is that nothing is going to happen to that girl.” Another deliberate pause. “Do you understand?”

Foster’s jaw worked, the muscle there flexing.

“Is that a threat, son?”

“No. It’s a fact.” Rhys held his gaze for a few seconds. “It was good to see you. My best regards to your daughter.”

He didn’t wait for a reaction or verbal response from Foster before turning and leaving the office, making his way out of the building and toward his GMC Sierra.

Once inside, he drove home and, as had been happening for the past days, tried to force what remained of his day into an ordinary shape anyway.

He returned two calls he’d been putting off, sat with contracts at his desk longer than they required, and, as usual, ate alone in the dining room. When he finished and organized what was left to organize, he turned off all the lights and went upstairs.

But none of it stuck.

That was why, at some point, he stopped pretending.

Rhys got up, dressed again in the dark and didn’t let himself deliberate a second time after quickly checking his phone for the tenth time for a new message from her. Nothing.

Whatever restraint had carried him through Foster’s office had nothing left to hold the steel bars he had methodically built.

Outside the house, the cold was punishing, but no more than the rain that began to fall as soon as he got behind the wheel. But not even the heavy downpour, which turned the road ahead into something he navigated more by memory than sight, made him slow down.

Some nights called for caution.

Tonight wasn’t one of them.

By the time Rhys turned onto the street he knew like the back of his hand, his tires cutting through standing water, and his headlights slicing through the rain toward the house on the hill, he had completely stopped pretending he was still capable of staying in the shadows the way he had for years.

All he did, however, was cut the engine and feed her porch with high beams.

His eyes moved, tracking the house and its dark windows. He had no plans to knock or to go any closer than he already was because, even though he had decided he’d had enough, the final choice was still hers.

Still, he had no real intention of leaving either.

Not until she told him to.

His phone lit up the inside of the car, the only source of light after he turned off the headlights. Rhys didn’t search for soft or careful words when his fingers began moving across the keyboard. What had been happening between them didn’t leave room for that, not at this point, not with the way things had been unfolding over the last few weeks, but mostly because he knew her well enough to know that although the message he was writing might sound incredibly intense to any other woman her age, it wouldn’t to her.

“You’re awake. I know you are.” He murmured, not thoughtfully, but as a statement of fact.

He knew her routine well enough to be aware that her insomnia kept her awake every day at this hour.

I’m parked outside your house.

He finally sent it, not stopping there.

Tell me to go home and I will. Stay exactly where you are and I will leave. Anything you do that doesn’t include you opening the front door will make me leave.

Another send. Then, finally:

But if you do, if you open that door, I’ll get out of this car and come to you.

After sending that one, he let the phone lock, setting it face-up on his thigh. And he simply waited.

“Come on, little witch.” Rhys whispered. “Give me this.”

Rhys woke up in her bed, not his, sunlight already cutting thin lines through the gaps in her curtains. The sheet had tangled low over his hip sometime in the night, after exhaustion finally took them both a little over an hour ago.

And {{user}} was curled into his side.

Because they had finally crossed the line.

He lay there a long time without moving, watching her breathe, cataloguing every small detail of a morning he had spent years imagining.

“Perfect.” He whispered, brushing a thin strand of hair away from her face. “You’re perfect.”

His attention dropped to the bruise at the top of her breast, just below where the sheet still hid the rest of her bare body. He moved his fingers there, pushing the fabric lower so he could see more of her.

Her neck had been left untouched. He hadn’t been that merciful with the rest of her.

Finger marks. Mouth marks. The faint imprint of his hand across the curve of her ass.

He whistled low between his teeth. The sight of her, and of what he’d done to her only a few hours earlier, made his cock stir against his stomach.

He stared at her for a few more seconds before letting his gaze travel to his phone when the screen lit up on her nightstand, right next to the blister pack of painkillers he’d given her two of not long ago.

His hand left the sheet. He picked up the phone and checked the notification bar without unlocking it.

Package arrival confirmed. Signature required.

Then another one came through:

ETA forty-five minutes.

He’d been waiting six weeks on that delivery. Any other morning he would have resented the timing without a second thought. This morning he simply gave himself another few minutes before pulling away and standing up.

He went into the bathroom, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth with the spare toothbrush that was already his, and came back into the room.

Rhys dressed quietly, then sat on the edge of the mattress once he was ready. He brushed a strand of hair off her face, but there was no softness left in the gesture now. His eyes were locked on hers.

“I have an important delivery coming in. I can’t push it back because it’s for the company, and no one else can take it. It needs my signature specifically.” He kept his voice even. “So I have to head back to my place.” He didn’t stand. “Even with the painkillers, you’re still sore. I don’t want you out of my sight for the next few hours. You’re coming with me.”

They were on the road within twenty minutes. The sky was still half-clouded and the asphalt remained damp from the earlier rain.

Rhys kept one hand over {{user}}’s more often than he kept it on the wheel.

The gates opened the second the truck’s sensor cleared the first camera post, and the property unfolded ahead of them.

The delivery van was already idling in the circular drive by the time he parked.

“Mr. Callahan, good to see you again.” The courier stepped down with a tablet under one arm and the reinforced case in the other, a keypad lock built into the handle. “I’ll need your signature and thumbprint first. Once that’s done, I’ll walk you through verifying the seal before I can officially hand off custody.”

“Sure.”

Rhys signed where he needed to, then pressed his thumb against the sensor. He crouched to check the tamper seal along the edge of the case, running a finger over the raised numbers stamped into the metal until they matched the string still sitting in a message on his phone.

“Seal looks intact on my end. We’re good.”

“Perfect, sir. That’s what I like to hear.” The courier held the tablet out one more time. “This last one just confirms the transfer is complete. Once you sign it, it’s officially yours. At that point Helion’s insurance stops covering it, so it’s all on you from here.”

Rhys signed again, then watched the van pull away down the long drive.

“Come on, little witch.”

Upstairs, he set the case down in the study without opening it. Six weeks of waiting could survive one more hour before he contacted his people at the company.

He had something more important occupying his attention now.

Rhys found {{user}} in the second-floor hallway.

“Come here.” He crossed his arms, giving her a moment to move, then uncrossed them and took her face in his hands. “I can make you breakfast, or we can order something if you’d rather.” His left hand slid to the back of her neck, thumb stroking just behind her ear. “But I want to shower with you before you decide.”

With that, he guided her into the bathroom off his bedroom. One wall was floor-to-ceiling glass. The shower itself was large enough for two people to stand without ever having to touch.

That was not what he wanted.

He turned the water on hot and waited until steam started fogging the glass. Then he helped her out of her clothes with careful attention.

He washed her slower still, saving her second pass of soap for last, and never once looked away from the way the water ran down her bare body. His eyes followed every ordinary drop as it moved over her skin. After they stepped out and dried off, he pulled one of his own shirts over her head before bothering to get dressed himself.

“Don’t wear panties.”

Before any protest could form, he took her hand and led her downstairs.

On the way to the kitchen, he stopped, forcing her to stop with him. They stood directly in front of the room where he kept the drawings he’d been making of her for years, each one framed and hanging on the walls.

Still, none of those pieces had ever been finished the way he actually wanted them finished. Because in none of them had she been truly present. Not in the flesh.

Not until now.

Rhys stepped in front of her, close enough to feel the shift in her breathing. His eyes held hers for a fraction of a second before he gave the thought a voice:

“I want to draw you naked.”

ᅠ