I touch the window, sliding it open and closed once more, grounding myself in the proof that it works—proof he was here.
My thighs press together before I even think to stop them. Tomorrow I’ll pretend I only needed air. Tonight… I know better.
Chapter Six
Nicole
When the door clicks shut behind him, the silence feels alive—thick with everything he left behind.Then see me.His words sear into me like a brand.
I can’t shake it—the rawness, the certainty. Like he stripped me bare without laying a hand on me. My body hums as if every nerve has been rewired, tuned to the memory of his voice and the scarred steadiness of his hands.
I sit by the open window, gulping the cool night air like it might steady me. It doesn’t. My skin is too hot, my pulse too heavy. He knocked me off my axis in a way I didn’t know was possible.
And that’s the danger. That’s the red flag waving furiously in the back of my mind. Wanting him is one thing. Letting myself be swallowed up by him—by this—could mean losing the competent, independent self I’m building.
I tell myself to focus, to work, to anchor in something safe and ordinary. But the words on my screen come through a haze of him. Quintus. Too solid to be a dream, too impossible to be real, and yet somehow already lodged under my skin.
By the time I finish my school project, I’m no calmer. If anything, the restless, aching energy inside me has sharpened. Longing tangled with fear, excitement laced with the risk of surrender.
Sleep is impossible. So I step outside onto the moonlit paths of the sanctuary, hoping the night air can do what concentration couldn’t—cool the fire he lit in me before it consumes me whole.
The night air is perfect against my skin—cool, but powerless against the restless heat curling inside me. And then, faint at first, drifting on the breeze… a sound that doesn’t belong to night air at all. Music.
The sanctuary grounds are hushed and silver-lit, transformed by moonlight into something almost magical. Gravel crunches softly under my feet as I follow a narrow path skirting the main buildings.
But he’s still here. Quintus lingers on my skin, in my blood—the way his presence crowded my room until I was breathless, the way his words and piercing gaze cracked me open. I thought stepping outside would steady me, but instead, every shadow, every silvered leaf seems to whisper his name. And the music… it pulls my thoughts toward him.
I’m so lost in thought that I almost miss it.
A soft masculine voice accompanied by what sounds like a stringed instrument floats through the night air like something from a dream. The melody is hauntingly beautiful and unexpected. The voice is rich and resonant, honey-dark, with a quality that makes my skin prickle and the hair on my arms lift.
Following the sound feels like being drawn by an invisible thread. The night air carries his voice like smoke, wrapping around me with invisible hands. Even the Missouri earth beneath my feet seems to pulse in rhythm with his melody.
The singing grows clearer as I move toward the woods—Latin words I don’t need my earpiece to understand. The emotion transcends language: pain and longing that speak directly to places in my heart I’d forgotten existed.
That’s when I see him.
Quintus sits alone on a felled log off the path, face tilted toward the star-scattered sky, eyes closed, his fingers coaxing ancient notes from a lyre. He’s completely lost in his song. Moonlight catches the silver in his hair and transforms his weathered features into something almost otherworldly.
The voice—that incredible voice—is coming fromhim.
I freeze behind a thick bush, transfixed. This is private, something I shouldn’t be seeing, but I can’t force myself to leave. Every note feels like eavesdropping on his soul, but I stay anyway, greedy for more.
The man who fixes broken windows with scarred hands is pouring his soul into music so moving it brings hot tears to the back of my eyes. His throat works with every phrase, chest rising and falling with each note, and I can’t stop imagining that same voice murmuring my name in the dark—low, intimate, devastating. The thought leaves me restless and aching, every nerve alive with want and warning.
When the song ends, he sits in perfect stillness. Then he begins a new song—softer this time, more intimate. A lullaby that flows like water, emotion bleeding through every Latin phrase.
This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
Everything I thought I knew about Quintus shifts on its axis. The man I thought was all practical competence has an artist’s soul hidden beneath that capable exterior. And if I’m not careful, I could drown in it—lose myself in the pull of a man who feels too big, too consuming.
As the lullaby fades, something dangerous builds in my chest. Attraction. Real, bone-deep, frightening attraction.
Not the safe little crush I’ve been nursing on Flavius, all surface-level charm and easy smiles. This is something else entirely—the recognition that beneath Quintus’s steady reliability lie depths I never imagined. Flavius makes me laugh. Quintus makes meache.
His careful way of speaking suddenly makes sense—his words are measured because his thoughts are poetry, his soul made of music.
When he finally stands and strides toward the gladiators’ quarters, I wait until he’s gone before emerging from hiding, legs unsteady as though the ground has shifted.
