Phei didn't stay exactly where he was with his shoulders rested against the dark wood of the double doors, hands slipped into the pockets of his low-slung trousers.
That faint, warm curve at the corner of his mouth was neither smile nor smirk but something far more dangerous: the quiet certainty after he heard the shape of her desire and had chosen, deliberately, to make her give it voice.
Because Catrina had spent her life learning how to disappear inside other people's expectations like her parents, how to soften her edges until she became background noise and let louder voices and bolder hands take what they wanted while she faded into the wallpaper of her own existence.
He would not let her fade from this; not when the morning light was already painting her like an offering she had placed on the altar herself.
"Look at me," he said but it was not a request.
