The door opened and Alex went completely still.

Linda stood framed in the doorway, backlit by the warm glow of the house behind her, and for a moment... just one suspended, crystalline moment... Alex couldn't process what he was seeing.

Not because she looked different.

But because he was seeing her with different eyes.

The blue silk blouse caught the porch light, the fabric seeming to shimmer with each slight movement of her breathing. Deep, rich blue... the kind that made her eyes look luminous even in the dim evening light.

It draped across her shoulders with deliberate elegance, the neckline sitting lower than she usually wore, drawing his attention to the curve of her throat, the delicate hollow at the base where her pulse visibly fluttered.

She was nervous.

Excited.

Terrified.

All of it written in that single tell... the rapid beat beneath pale skin.

Alex's eyes tracked downward almost involuntarily, taking in details he'd never let himself notice before.

The way the silk skimmed her collarbone. The subtle shape of her beneath fabric that wasn't meant to hide but to suggest.

The skirt that fell just so, elegant and understated but chosen with care... chosen for him.

Every detail was deliberate.

The hair she'd left loose instead of pulled back. The faint scent of perfume reaching him even from the doorway... something floral and subtle that he'd never noticed her wearing before.

The way she stood, weight slightly forward, leaning into the moment with unconscious eagerness.

She'd prepared for this.

Spent time choosing each element, considering what would catch his eye, what would make her seem desirable instead of motherly.

And God, she'd succeeded.

That was the thing that hit Alex with unexpected force... not that Linda looked beautiful though she did, but that he was allowing himself to see it.

Really see it.

Without the walls of propriety and family boundaries that had always stood between observation and acknowledgment.

Before tonight, his mind would have skipped past these details, categorized her appearance as "appropriate" or "nice" and moved on, the way you'd notice a relative at a holiday gathering without really seeing them.

But now...

Now those walls were gone.

Kicked off their hinges, as Lilith had said.

And what remained was brutal, clear observation.

Linda Morrison was beautiful.

Not in the polished, artificial way Sophia had been... all sharp edges and calculated presentation designed to seduce and destroy.

This was something else. Something warmer. Softer. More genuine in its vulnerability.

She looked like a woman who'd spent weeks building courage for this moment. Who'd stood in front of her mirror second-guessing every choice.

Who'd been terrified he wouldn't show up, and now that he had, was equally terrified of what came next.

She wants this so desperately, his mind noted with detached precision. Look at the effort. The hope in her eyes. The way her hands are trembling slightly at her sides.

She'd given him leverage without even realizing it.

Had shown him exactly how much this meant to her, how vulnerable she'd made herself, how completely she'd invested in the fantasy of being seen, chosen, wanted by him.

And Alex, watching her with these new eyes... cold eyes, survivor's eyes... understood that this was just the beginning of what Lilith had been teaching him all along.

Power wasn't just about physical strength or system enhancements.

It was about recognizing when someone had given you their weakness and knowing exactly how to use it.

"Mom..." The word started automatically, years of habit pulling it from his throat before his conscious mind could stop it.

But Linda moved.

Fast enough that he barely registered the motion until her finger was already there... pressed gently but firmly against his lips, silencing him mid-syllable.

The touch was electric.

Her skin was warm, soft, trembling just slightly against his mouth.

She'd closed the distance between them in a single step, bringing with her that faint scent of perfume and something uniquely her... nervousness and hope and desperate courage all wrapped together.

Her eyes met his, inches away now, and in them he saw a fragile determination that made his breath catch.

"Linda," she whispered, her voice barely audible but steady despite the finger that trembled against his lips. "Call me Linda."

The request hung in the air between them, weighted with everything it meant.

Not "Mom." Not the woman who'd welcomed him into her family, who'd made him Sunday dinners and checked his homework and worried when he stayed out too late.

Linda.

Just a woman.

She wasn't just asking him to use her first name.

She was asking him to see her differently. To stop viewing her through the lens of family and propriety and all those careful boundaries they'd maintained for years.

She was asking him to acknowledge what was happening here.

What they were about to become.

Her finger lingered for a heartbeat longer, the pad of it soft against his lower lip, before slowly... almost reluctantly... she drew it away.

But she didn't step back.

Stayed there, in that impossible proximity, her eyes searching his face for understanding, for acceptance, for any sign that he recognized what she was asking.

"Linda," Alex repeated, and the name felt strange on his tongue... foreign and intimate all at once.

How many times had he said it before? Hundreds, probably. Thousands. But always in passing, always casual, always with that invisible wall between them that made it just a name and nothing more.

Now, standing in her doorway with her finger's ghost-touch still burning on his lips and her eyes locked on his with that desperate, hopeful intensity...

Now it meant something else entirely.

Linda's breath hitched slightly at hearing her name from his mouth, her eyes brightening with something that looked dangerously close to tears... not sad ones, but the kind that came from relief so profound it overwhelmed.

He'd said it.

Had accepted what she was offering.

Had crossed that first small line that made all the others easier to cross.

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