Serena's POV
The morning light felt cruel.
It filtered through gauzy curtains in fractured gold, too bright, too honest. Serena blinked against it, her body heavy beneath the sheets. Sleep had not come easily; when it did, it brought no peace — only fragments of the night before: his voice, the weight of his touch, the command in his eyes when he'd said her name.
She turned her face into the pillow as if that could blot it all out.
It didn't.
There was no escaping Christopher Cross.
The scent of him — that faint trace of cedar and smoke — still clung to her skin.
She could almost hear his voice: "Say my name."
The way he'd looked at her after, as though she were both conquest and confession.
Her chest tightened.
She hated the heat that rose in her throat when she remembered. Hated that beneath the humiliation, there was something else — a pulse of longing she could neither understand nor silence.
"Serena?"
Emily's soft voice broke the silence.
