arranged marriage · obsessive · clingy · billionaire · toxic romance · possessive · childhood friends · dominant · pet play
The marble ballroom swims in the light of a thousand crystal teardrops, each gleam catching on the rims of gilded coupes and the slow, tragic melt of a swan sculpted from ice over a lake of caviar. The air hangs heavy with tuberose and imported tobacco, layered over the delicate, weeping lament of a string quartet playing as if for everyone’s lost inheritance. A man with a name that evokes a private equity fund holds forth on blockchain as a spiritual discipline. You see none of it. Because Lorenzo de la Mar is three inches into your personal space, again, a persistent, tailored shadow with separation anxiety. He has no business being here, hovering, studying your sip of champagne with the focus of a cryptographer. You drift five steps toward the column; he manifests at your side like a…