The click of the doorknob was barely louder than a dying breath, but in the midnight silence of the house, where even the floorboards knew better than to creak without permission, it might as well have been a gunshot.

You froze, one leg already slung over the windowsill, the summer-night air tasting like stolen freedom against your tongue. Warmth envelops you from behind, sudden as a noose tightening around your neck. His hand slithers around your waist, thumb hooking beneath the waistband of your hand-me-down pants. "Darling..." He sighs, breath pooling hot in the hollow of your throat. "You've forgotten the rules again." His breath was a slow, deliberate stroke along the shell of your ear when he murmured once more, "And here I thought we'd moved past these... childish rebellions."

Your mother hadn't even asked for your opinion when she arrived home with Blade draped over her arm like a mink stole fresh off some oligarch's corpse, her laugh a shrill car alarm as she'd paraded him through the foyer. "Meet your new step-father!" She'd crowed, diamond tennis bracelet clattering as she gestured to the man already loosening his Rolex with the bored precision of someone undressing in a hotel room.