The house still choked on the ghosts of its past, a cloying blend of scorched sugar and stale, sour whiskey clinging to every cracked tile and peeling surface.
Eve paused at the threshold of the bakery's kitchen, her hand a white-knuckled claw on the doorframe, the wood rough beneath her touch. Her other hand pressed instinctively to the faint, insistent ache beneath her ribs—a phantom heat, a memory of a scar that pulsed like a dying ember. It remembered every belt buckle, every backhand, every brutal lesson her father had dealt. The cavernous ovens, once roaring beasts, were cold and dark now. The floor was a mosaic of shattered dreams and fractured tiles, and the cutting board, scarred with the deep, angry notches of his fists, still bore witness to her childhood failures, to dough never kneaded quite to his tyrannical liking.
Home sweet fucking tomb.
Behind her, Micah was a nervous shadow, a whisper of breath on a cold pane of glass—quiet, anxious, and perpetually fogging up the air around him. He clutched the scuffed suitcase she'd told him to bring, his frame whittled down to something slighter, sharper than she remembered. Wasted potential, wrapped in a threadbare hoodie, his fingers stained with the phantom ink of countless lines of code. His eyes—those soft, storm-cloud eyes, perpetually on the verge of breaking—stayed fixed on her back, as if she were the last beacon on a shipwreck-strewn coast and he was already drowning.
She didn't turn. Not yet. The words were a taste on her tongue, sharp and sweet.
"Place is a wreck," she said, her voice a deceptively smooth cherry syrup, laced with the razor edge of broken glass. "I'll need you to help fix it."
He nodded, a silent, almost imperceptible dip of his head, even though she couldn't see. She always knew he would. Micah was a creature of habit and devotion, a constant in her tumultuous orbit.
Finally, she turned.
Their gazes locked, a jolt of recognition, raw and electric, passing between them.
And just like always, he didn't look away. Never had. Never would.
Micah hadn't known a gentle touch since the fragile innocence of his thirteenth year. Hands on him had always meant pain. Meant dominance. Meant the sharp, clipped words of his mother's cold contempt, or the shrill, mocking laughter of his sisters echoing down the hallway as they chased him, a red-hot curling iron in hand, a cruel promise in their eyes.
Eve was different.
Not gentle, no. Never gentle.
Just… different.
Her sugar-dusted fingers, still faintly scented with the ghost of flour and vanilla, cupped his jaw. She looked at him with an unnerving intensity, as if he were some exquisitely ruined pastry, something she hadn't quite decided whether to resurrect with careful hands or simply devour whole. The pads of her thumbs dragged across the tender skin beneath his eyes, not with tenderness, but with a cool, clinical assessment.
"Still haven't grown into that pretty face, huh?" Her lips curved into a faint, predatory smile.
He swallowed, the sound like sandpaper in his throat. "I—"
She silenced him with a kiss.
There was nothing remotely tender about it. It was a declaration, a reclamation.
Her mouth moved like a divine commandment, absolute and unyielding. Her tongue, a velvet blade, claimed space, demanded entry. He tried to kiss back, a desperate, clumsy attempt, but she shoved him against the flour-smeared refrigerator with a dull thud that rattled his bones. She bit his lower lip, a sharp, sudden nip, until he whimpered, a low, helpless sound. A coppery tang bloomed between them—his blood, hot and metallic, mingling with her cool breath, and the low, guttural moan that rumbled deep in her throat, as if she'd been waiting for this particular flavour, this precise moment, her entire life.
"Still sweet," she whispered, her voice rough, primal, as she licked the taste of him from her teeth, a slow, deliberate movement that made his skin prickle. "Even after all this time."
He flushed, a furious, mortifying heat that started at his collarbones and rushed down his neck, across his chest, and lower—where his belt suddenly felt impossibly tight. He hated that he flushed. Despised the undeniable, visceral reaction. But Eve's grin, a slow, knowing curl of her lips, told him she'd noticed. She always did.
She pulled back, just enough for the air to rush between them, just enough to speak.
"I'm going to make you mine again, Micah." The words were a promise and a threat, delivered with the absolute certainty of a queen addressing her subject.
He shivered, a tremor that ran deep into his bones.
Her voice dropped to a silken purr. "You never stopped being mine."
Later, upstairs, the bedroom was still a crime scene of memories, each one more oppressive than the last. The same faded bedsheets her father used to sweat into, thick with the scent of stale fear and decay. The same cramped closet where she used to hide, a small, trembling bird, as screaming echoed like thunder down the hall. Now, she claimed it, not as a sanctuary, but as a throne, a stage for her dominion.
Micah sat on the very edge of the bed, a study in taut obedience.
Tense. Vulnerable.
Like a dog waiting for the whip—or perhaps, the longed-for treat.
She straddled him, a slow, deliberate descent, pushing him down with a force that was both gentle and utterly unyielding. Her palms planted him firmly, like stakes driven deep into fertile soil.
"Don't move," she commanded, her voice a low, throaty purr, dripping with absolute authority.
Her hand, warm and heavy, slid down his chest, her nails dragging lightly, like breadcrumbs scoring dough-soft skin. His breath hitched, a sharp, desperate intake of air, when she deftly undid his pants. Her movements were practised, precise, and economical. It was as if she were crafting something new from him, moulding him to her will.
And in a way, she was.
This was her form of baking now—not with flour and sugar, but with power. With control. With his raw, trembling vulnerability.
She kissed down his stomach, her lips tracing a blazing path, heat licking every nerve ending like fire consuming dry parchment. Then lower. And lower still.
He gasped, a strangled, animal sound, when her mouth closed around him.
No warning.
No mercy.
Just immediate heat, searing wetness, and the unyielding drag of her tongue, as if she were determined to lick the truth from the very tip of him, to draw out every hidden secret. His hands balled into the crumpled sheets, knuckles white, veins standing out like cords. She pinned his hips down with bruising force, a silent, iron-clad refusal, when he tried to buck, a desperate, futile attempt at escape.
"You don't move," she reminded him, her voice muffled, a low rumble against his skin, a visceral hum that vibrated through his very core.
He whimpered—pathetic, breathless, lost—and she moaned, a low, satisfied sound that was all primal hunger.
That was what she loved most.
Not the taste, though it was sweet.
Not even the power, though it was intoxicating.
The control. The absolute, undeniable control.
That he gave it to her, even now, even after everything. That he surrendered.
After he came—a shuddering, shameful climax, his body wracked with tremors, whispering her name like both a prayer and a curse—she didn't allow him a moment's rest. She climbed on top of him, straddling his hips, and deliberately shoved his shirt up, exposing his trembling ribs, the flush blooming across his chest like bruised petals. She wanted to see every single, raw reaction.
"I'm not done with you," she said, her voice a low, unwavering promise.
She never was.
She never would be.