Bitten affection

Previously

…The words echoed in the sudden, heavy silence that followed. Jillian’s breath hitched. The world outside her apartment, with its worried families and concerned friends, felt impossibly distant, a fading dream. Here, in the suffocating embrace of Lucian’s presence, in the chilling certainty of his gaze, a new reality was being forged, one that promised both an exquisite terror and a profound, unshakeable belonging. The choice, she knew, was no longer hers to make. Or perhaps, it had never been.