Kept in Silence

I signed the paperwork before I understood what I was agreeing to. Six months. Total obedience. No questions about who he was before, or why a man like him needed a stranger under his roof instead of a woman who actually wanted to be there.
I didn't want to be there. Not at first.
Callum Reyes doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. Every door in his house locks from the outside, every rule is delivered once, and every glance he gives me feels like it's cataloguing something I haven't figured out about myself yet. He's not supposed to touch me. He's definitely not supposed to want to. But three weeks into my arrangement with a man I was told to fear, I've stopped counting the days until I can leave — and started dreading them.
I came to him running from a life that taught me love has teeth. He was supposed to be a transaction. A means to disappear. Instead he's teaching me that control can feel like safety, that being known isn't the same as being owned — and that the man everyone warned me about might be the only person who's ever actually protected me.
But Callum has rules of his own he's breaking just by wanting me, and a past he's kept locked tighter than any door in this house. When it comes for both of us, I'll have to decide whether what we've built is real enough to survive it — or whether I was only ever meant to be kept in silence.
High-heat, emotionally intense standalone romance with dark themes, power exchange, and a guaranteed HEA. Intended for readers 18+.
Tropes: Dom/Sub Dynamic, Forbidden Arrangement, Innocent Heroine/Experienced Hero, Healing from Past Trauma, Possessive Alpha, Forced Proximity