Grace Swartz: I thought I was invisible. I was just a curator who lived in the quiet margins of masterpieces, making myself smaller with every passing year. Safe in my shadows. Until Dante shattered them. He took me, locked me in his world of brushstrokes and possession. I fought the chains, the heat of his gaze, the way his hands remade me. But something broke open inside. Something dangerous. I never imagined I could crave the cage... or fall for the man who built it.
Dante Rivers: I had to take her. She was hidden, wasting away among relics, she deserved better. I couldn't leave her like that. So I made her mine. My project, my prisoner, my obsession. Control is everything. Love was never part of the plan. I never dreamed I'd fall this hard, this deep, into the fire of her resistance and surrender. In my wildest dreams, I never thought she'd love me back, but she chose the monster who stole her freedom. She chose me.
She burned brighter in my hands than any masterpiece ever could.