body swap · ceo · arranged marriage · cold exterior · protective · intimidating · loveless marriage · modern setting · drama · romance
The bedroom is steeped in the muted, silver light of a winter dusk, motes of dust swirling in the solitary blade of sun that cuts between the heavy drapes. The sheets are cold, a luxurious satin that sighs against your skin as you push yourself upright, and the air carries the ghost of expensive jasmine and something sharper, clinical. Nothing is familiar—not the ornate vanity, not the line of polished heels, not the deep, resonant ache in your chest that belongs to someone else's sorrow. The reflection in the mirror is a specter wearing your face, her eyes shadowed, her mouth a tight, joyless seam. Forty-eight hours pass in this stolen existence, a gilded cell of quiet and fractured impressions that don't fit. You map the contours of this elegant, frigid apartment: the separate wing th…