Chapter 198: Chapter 198: Bent

Rafael stared at the door for one long moment, then back at Gregoris, as if perhaps the universe would still intervene out of basic decency.

It did not.

“You really locked me in,” Rafael repeated, with the grave disbelief of a man discovering a constitutional violation in his own marriage.

Gregoris unfastened the cuffs of his shirt, his long fingers moving without hurry. “Yes.”

“That is deeply hostile behavior toward a duke.”

“You’ll survive.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Gregoris pulled the shirt off entirely and set it aside on the nearest bench, leaving himself in a fitted black undershirt that did nothing to improve Rafael’s mood because it made the problem in front of him look even more like a deliberate act of intimidation. Broad shoulders. Scarred forearms. The unbothered stillness of a man who could probably break the training hall in half and then repair it before dinner.

Rafael folded his arms. “I would like it noted for history that I entered this room under protest.”

Gregoris glanced at him. “You were escorted.”

Rafael drew himself up with all the dignity available to a man wearing silk loungewear and righteous offense. “I am not lifting anything heavier than Natalie.”

Gregoris walked past him toward the center of the hall. “You’re starting with stretches.”

Rafael looked personally wounded. “That’s somehow more insulting.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“It is when you say it like I’m ninety.”

Gregoris turned, silver eyes cool and attentive, already in that infuriatingly composed state that meant he had decided how the next hour would go and saw no reason to negotiate with reality. “You’re flexible. That’s not the same thing as conditioned.”

Rafael smiled sweetly. “I condition rooms with my presence.”

Gregoris pointed at the floor.

Rafael looked at the indicated spot as if it might be cursed. “No.”

Gregoris said nothing.

That was the worst part of him, sometimes. The silence. The patience. The way he could wait a person into their own defeat without moving more than a fraction.

Rafael sighed like a tragic hero abandoned by the gods, then drifted forward with great theatrical reluctance and took his place on the marked line.

“There,” he said. “I’m here. I hope you’re happy.”

Gregoris’s gaze skimmed over him once, assessing posture, balance, and the slight favoring of Rafael’s left side that he probably believed no one noticed. “Raise your arms.”

Rafael did, but slowly, with the attitude of a man being asked to perform manual labor in public.

“Higher,” Gregoris said.

Rafael lifted them another inch and gave him a flat look. “This is abuse.”

“Hm.”

“That wasn’t agreement. That was indifference.”

Gregoris stepped in behind him before Rafael could retreat, close enough that the hall seemed to shift around the fact of him. Large hands settled briefly at Rafael’s elbows, guiding them up, then at his shoulders, easing them back with careful pressure.

Rafael went still.

It was deeply inconvenient, the way Gregoris could turn even instruction into something that settled under Rafael’s skin.

Gregoris touched him like he was handling something precious and troublesome at the same time.

“There,” Gregoris said quietly.

Rafael stared ahead. “You’re making this suspicious.”

“I’m adjusting your posture.”

“You’re looming.”

“Yes.”

Rafael breathed out through his nose, loudly, because he refused to let the moment become anything remotely sincere. “I hate that you know me.”

Gregoris’s hands left him. “Bend.”

Rafael turned his head slowly, as if he had not heard correctly.

Gregoris, unfortunately, looked entirely serious.

“Bend,” he repeated.

And that was when Rafael, standing in the middle of his own training hall prison in silk loungewear and mounting indignation, realized something bright and wicked.

’Oh.’

’Oh, this could be used.’

Rafael’s expression changed so subtly that anyone else would have missed it. Gregoris did not miss things, but what he saw first was only the pause, the slight tilt of Rafael’s mouth, the spark of calculation behind his eyes.

Gregoris narrowed his gaze a fraction. “Forward.”

Rafael blinked at him with wounded innocence. “You continue to phrase things like an indecent proposal.”

Gregoris didn’t say anything for a minute.

Then a grin spread slowly across his face.

Rafael did not see it.

But he felt it. Some ancient, deeply self-preserving part of him that had survived court, politics, assassination attempts by etiquette, and marriage to a very large shadow commander. The fine hairs along the back of his neck rose all at once.

’Oh, no.’

That was not the expression of a man being embarrassed.

That was the expression of a predator who had finally decided to stop enduring and start playing.

Rafael straightened a fraction too fast and turned his head. “Why are you smiling like that?”

Gregoris’s voice came out calm. “Like what?”

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “Like you’re about to commit a felony.”

Gregoris took one slow step forward.

Rafael took one back on instinct.

The grin did not leave Gregoris’s face. It only deepened, subtle and dangerous and far too pleased for Rafael’s comfort. In the training hall, with the warded floor underfoot and the pale etherlight catching in his silver eyes, Gregoris looked less like a husband and more like the very loved predator Rafael had spent years wisely avoiding in this room.

And now, apparently, courting disaster by choice.

“You want it noted?” Gregoris asked.

Rafael lifted his chin. “Yes.”

Gregoris kept walking.

Rafael kept retreating.

“Fine,” Gregoris said. “Let it be noted that my husband walked into a locked room, saw me take off my shirt, and instead of behaving like a reasonable person, decided to turn stretches into foreplay.”

Rafael blinked once.

Twice.

Then he pointed at him with sharp indignation. “That is a slanderous summary of events.”

“It’s accurate.”

“It is biased.”

Gregoris tilted his head. “You said the optics were appalling.”

“They were.”

“And yet you kept talking.”

Rafael’s mouth opened, ready with a cutting reply, but Gregoris was still coming, unhurried and broad-shouldered and smiling that smile, and something in Rafael’s body abruptly remembered every bad idea he had ever enjoyed.

He retreated another step.

Gregoris noticed that too, and his grin sharpened.

Rafael’s suspicion turned into offense. “Don’t look pleased.”

“You noticed.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“It is to me.”

Rafael scoffed, but the sound came out thinner than he would have liked. “You think one smile is going to intimidate me?”

Gregoris stopped only when Rafael reached the edge of the marked training ring and had nowhere left to go without either stepping fully into it or making a humiliating dash toward the weapons rack, which he suspected would end badly for his dignity.

Then Gregoris said, very mildly, “Bend.”

Rafael stared at him.

The grin stayed.

And that, more than the order itself, made Rafael’s pulse jump.

Because Gregoris almost never looked openly entertained in the middle of discipline. He could be dry. He could be ruthless. He could be quietly affectionate in ways that bordered on lethal. But this, this pleased amusement with teeth under it, was the face of a man who had decided Rafael’s game was his now too.

Rafael swallowed once, then rallied. “You know, that sounded much worse with the smile.”

Gregoris lifted one brow. “Did it?”

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