Chapter 184: Tonight, the Main Dish Is You

Chapter 184: Chapter 184: Tonight, the Main Dish Is You

The older attendant who had been running the measurements went still for half a second, then cleared her throat with professional speed.

"I... I will find something that matches the size."

She disappeared into the back with the kind of urgency usually reserved for residual containment breaches.

The remaining junior attendant suddenly found the floating slate extremely interesting and refused to look at either of us.

Giselle stood where she was, one hand loosely open at her side.

A thin thread of spark flickered across her fingers and vanished again: control, not threat.

Barely.

I raised both hands in mock surrender.

"Relax. That was a joke. JOKE. Don’t you people laugh in this sector?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"Stop with this act. You clearly don’t want to use the power on me, yet you keep acting as if you want me."

"I can want you without using the power. Those two things don’t have to correlate."

"Speaking like some experienced fucker."

"How do you know I’m not?"

I closed the distance until we were almost the same height in the atelier light.

The system answered the intention before I finished the thought.

[Pheromone Trace — Active]

[Low-output dispersion | Non-magical Signature]

[Target proximity: Optimal]

The microscopic cooling trace slid into the air between us.

Giselle’s nostrils flared once, almost too small to notice.

She didn’t step back.

"You never let me inside to test it out," I said, voice low enough that the remaining attendant could pretend she hadn’t heard.

Giselle’s red eyes stayed on mine.

The fragment of her core under my ribs pulsed in time with the silence.

"You’re doing it again," she said.

"Doing what?"

"The thing where you talk like the violation was a shared experiment instead of you taking something I didn’t offer."

"I took it while the alternative was watching my close one get thrown off a building. You’re the one who kept coming back at midnight to see if it still answered."

Her jaw tightened.

"That was a test and data collection."

"Data collection doesn’t leave bite marks on my shoulder or make you hit me afterward like you’re angry at yourself for enjoying it."

The junior attendant made a small, strangled sound and decided the far wall needed urgent inspection.

Giselle’s voice dropped.

"You’re very confident for someone who still can’t access the fragment without me taking the collar off."

"I’m very aware of the leverage I don’t have. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend the energy doesn’t move when you stand this close."

She studied me for another long second.

The pheromone trace kept working in the background: subtle, non-magical, the kind of biological bias the system had designed to slip under most scans.

Giselle’s breathing had changed by a fraction.

"What are you doing?"

"Making you feel good. It just makes the air around me a little more... persuasive."

"Turn it off."

"Make me. A kiss is all it takes."

For a moment I thought she might actually put the collar through my sternum in the middle of the atelier.

Instead, she exhaled through her nose, slow and controlled, and the tension in her shoulders shifted into something colder and more deliberate.

"You’re going to walk into a room full of women who have broken supports for less than what you just said to me," she said.

"If you try this tone with the wrong one, Draven won’t need to punish you. They will."

"Then it’s a good thing the only Empress-line currently sitting inside my core belongs to you."

"I won’t care if someone takes you."

The attendant returned at exactly the wrong moment, arms full of dark formal pieces, nothing flashy, everything expensive enough to signal that the wearer belonged in the room even if half the room wanted him dead.

"Fitting room is to your left," she said, eyes fixed firmly on the middle distance.

"Please cycle the energy while the final seals set."

I took the clothes and stepped behind the privacy screen.

Soft light, mirrored walls.

On the other side of the screen, I could hear Giselle answering short, precise questions about colour temperature and signature suppression.

Her voice stayed perfectly level.

The fragment under my ribs didn’t.

When I stepped back out, the clothes fit with the kind of precision that only came from technology and money refusing to accept error.

Giselle looked me over once.

"Not bad?"

"It’ll do."

"Do you like it?"

"Why do you care?"

I met her eyes and let the truth sit in the open between us.

"I care because if we were to fuck behind a group of powerful women tonight, I want to look handsome doing it."

The junior attendant dropped her stylus.

Giselle didn’t look away.

"You’re not the same person from the test..."

"I’m consistent. You spent two nights making me like this. That reads as someone who wants the power and hates that she wants the person attached to it."

"Keep your voice down."

"They’re already pretending they can’t hear us. It’s fine."

She stepped closer.

Not enough to touch.

Enough that the pheromone trace had nowhere left to go except across her senses.

"You think this is still a game," she said quietly.

"It isn’t. My mother will be in that ballroom. She watched you take a piece of me in front of every camera that mattered. She will decide, in real time, whether you leave the party as a guest, a specimen, or a cautionary story. Flirting with me in a fitting room does not improve your odds."

"Flirting with you is the only reason I can keep my mind sane without worrying about your mother."

Giselle’s mouth tightened.

"Turn the scent off before I put you through the wall."

I let the skill drop.

The air between us cooled by a degree.

"Better?"

"Marginally."

She turned toward the exit.

The attendants suddenly became extremely busy with inventory that did not need attention.

"We have two hours before the first arrivals," Giselle said without looking back.

"You’re going to learn the basic hierarchy of who can end you with a glance and who merely wants to own a piece of whatever you did to me on that rooftop. Fail the social test, and my mother won’t need to lift a finger. The room will do it for her."

"Anyone I should be wary of?"

"Everyone. Tonight, the main dish is you."