“And mine?”
“Yours is inconvenient.”
I almost laughed again, but there was no air left in me. “What do you want?”
He looked down at his wrist, the same place I had grabbed him in his office. “When you touched me, I felt heat.”
“That’s what happens when people touch. Skin is warm.”
“No.” His voice sharpened. “Not like that.”
The privacy screen slid up between us and the driver without Adrian touching a button.
His eyes returned to mine.
“I have not felt direct physical sensation from another person in twelve years.”
I stared at him.
“You mean emotionally?”
“I mean physically.”
“That’s impossible.”
“So was what happened tonight.”
The car pulled away from the hospital. Chicago moved around us in streaks of amber light and rain-dark pavement.
Adrian leaned back, but tension held him rigid. “After an accident when I was twenty-six, my nervous system stopped processing certain forms of touch. Pressure, pain, texture—I feel those. Temperature too, from objects. But human contact registers as nothing. Empty air.”
I remembered the way he had frozen.
Not with disgust.
With shock.
“You wear gloves because…”
“Because people try to touch what belongs to them, what they admire, what they want to own.” His mouth tightened. “It became easier to remove the opportunity.”
There was something beneath the coldness then. Not softness. Nothing so simple. More like an old room sealed for years, the air inside untouched and dangerous.
“And me?”
“You touched me and I felt it.”
“That doesn’t make me your employee.”
“No,” he said. “The debt does.”
My hands curled into fists. “My grandmother told me not to sell my soul.”
“You’re not selling it. You’re renting your time.”
“For twelve hours a day.”
“For six days a week.”
“At your home.”
“At my penthouse.”
“You expect me to cook and clean while you study me like a lab rat?”
“I expect you to fulfill a contract.”
“I never signed one.”
He reached into the side compartment and withdrew a folder.
Of course he did.
Inside was a printed agreement with my name already typed at the top.
Mara Denise Coleman.
My whole life reduced to ink.
“You are free to refuse,” he said.
“And the hospital?”
“I won’t withdraw payment already made.”
That surprised me enough to silence me.
Adrian looked out the window. “But the post-operative care is ongoing. Specialists. Rehabilitation. Medication. A private recovery room if complications arise. Those expenses remain unsecured.”
There it was.
The leash.
I hated him for offering it.
I hated myself more for reaching toward it.
“How long?” I asked.
“Until the debt is settled or until I decide your presence is no longer useful.”
“No.” My voice hardened. “Six months. You get six months. My wages go toward the debt, but I keep enough to pay rent and food. You do not touch me whenever you want. You do not call me at night. You do not own me.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
I leaned closer. “And if my grandmother dies, the deal is over. I won’t polish your silver while burying the woman who raised me.”
Something passed across his face. Brief. Controlled. Gone.