The fashion world was small enough that everyone knew our names. Sienna Voss and Elara Cross. The two models who couldn’t be in the same room without the temperature dropping twenty degrees. We had been rivals since our first casting call — competing for the same shows, the same designers, the same magazine covers. The press loved us. They called it a feud. They had no idea how right they were.
Tonight was supposed to be my night. My collection. My runway. My moment.
And then she walked it.
The designer — a man who had promised me exclusivity — had put her in the finale look. The piece I had helped create. The silhouette I had sketched in my notebook at 3 AM. She walked it like she owned it, her hips swaying, her eyes finding mine in the front row with a smile that was pure victory.
I waited for her backstage. I waited while she changed, while the congratulations faded, while she walked to her hotel alone. And then I followed her.
Her room was on the fifteenth floor. I used a keycard I shouldn’t have had — courtesy of a production assistant who owed me a favor. She was sitting on the edge of the bed when I walked in, her sheer white robe barely covering the stage outfit beneath, her makeup still heavy and dramatic. She looked up, and her eyes flashed with surprise, then anger, then something I couldn’t read.
“How did you get in?” she demanded.
I didn’t answer. I leaned against the door, my arms crossed, my black blazer the only thing covering my torso. I had thrown it on over nothing, my adrenaline still pumping from the show, from the betrayal, from the need to confront her.
“You walked my runway tonight,” I said, my voice low and controlled. “Wore my designs. Stole my spotlight.” I pushed off the door and walked toward her. Slow. Deliberate. Each step echoing in the quiet room. “Now I’m going to take something of yours.”
She didn’t speak. Her jaw clenched, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress. But she didn’t move away. She didn’t tell me to leave. She just looked up at me with those defiant eyes, hatred and desire warring in their depths.
I stopped in front of her. Leaned down. Placed my hand on the mattress beside her thigh, invading her space, her breath, her world. “Tell me to leave,” I whispered. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you don’t want this as much as I do.”
She didn’t speak. But her eyes — her eyes said everything.
I kissed her. Hard. Brutal. The kind of kiss that was more war than romance. She responded with equal ferocity, her hands fisting in my blazer, pulling me closer, her teeth grazing my lip with a violence that made me gasp. We fell back onto the bed, a tangle of silk and anger and years of suppressed wanting.
“You think you can take me?” she snarled against my mouth, the first words she had spoken since I arrived.
“I know I can,” I growled back, my hands finding the tie of her robe and pulling. The fabric fell away, revealing the sheer stage outfit beneath. “I’m going to take you apart. Piece by piece. Until the only name you remember is mine.”
We fought each other on that bed. Not with fists, but with mouths and hands and the desperate need to dominate. She pushed my blazer off my shoulders, her nails scoring my back. I ripped the sheer fabric of her outfit, my fingers finding her with a roughness that made her cry out. We were enemies. We were rivals. And in that moment, we were everything to each other.
She flipped me onto my back, straddling my waist, her eyes dark and wild. “You think you’re in control?” she panted, her hands pinning my wrists above my head.
“I know I am,” I breathed, arching into her. “Because you’re still here. Because you want this as much as I do. Because you’ve been imagining this since the first time we met.”
She froze. Her eyes searched mine, and I saw the truth break through her defenses. She had. She had been imagining this. Just like I had.
“Damn you,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“Too late,” I murmured, pulling her down for another kiss. “You already have.”
We spent the night destroying each other and rebuilding each other, piece by piece. The rivalry didn’t end — it transformed. Into passion. Into obsession. Into a love that was as brutal and beautiful as the industry that had created us.
She still walks my runways. I still design for her. But now, after every show, she comes back to my room. And I take what’s mine. Again and again.
Some rivalries are worth losing. Especially when the prize is everything.
