I step back.
Adrik Korolyov walks into the suite like he already belongs here. Like he belongs everywhere. Like he belongs inside the storm of my life and isn’t remotely intimidated by the mess waiting for him.
I close the door behind him, my fingers trembling. My breath catches when I turn and find him watching me with that same laser focus. Like he’s searching for something only he understands.
In this moment, something shifts between us so subtly I don’t notice it until the warmth curls low in my belly.
I don’t feel hunted. I don’t feel small. I feel safe for the first time in months.
Even though I don’t trust it. Even though it doesn’t make sense. Even if I shouldn’t want it.
As he stands there in the quiet of the suite, the space seems to bend around him, shaping itself to his presence in a way that makes my breath catch.
Matthew never made me feel like this. Not even in the beginning when I thought what we had was real and safe and hopeful. With Matthew, my stomach fluttered because I wanted to please him. Then because I needed him to stay calm. I didn’t know any better.
But this? This is different. This is something older, deeper, buried so far inside me I didn’t know it existed until this moment. Something primal stirs at the base of my spine, warm and terrifying and alive, whispering that this man isn’t danger.
He’s deliverance.
Adrik
Her breath stutters, the tiniest break in the silence, and it pulls me in like gravity. She’s so close now that I can see the fine tremor in her fingers where they rest by her side. She looks up at me with wide eyes that catch the lamplight, and for a moment she doesn’t blink.
She’s trying to understand me. Trying to work out what I am. I can’t read her mind, but I can read her body, and everything about it tells me she’s bracing for impact, but not stepping back from me.
Most people retreat from me the second I get close, but she doesn’t move.
Her throat works as she swallows. Her breath is uneven, almost shallow, like she’s balancing on the edge of something she can’t quite identify. She lifts her gaze and holds it on mine a fraction too long, and the air between us shifts, subtle but unmistakable. Something flickers across her face, quick and unguarded, a soft widening of her eyes as her pupils blow, a flush ghosting across her cheeks, an instinctive parting of her lips.
I might not know what she’s thinking, but I know what I’m seeing.
And what I’m seeing feels like the beginning of something neither of us planned.
I stand there, close enough to touch her but forcing myself not to. I can feel her uncertainty, her nerves, her heat, all radiating off her in a way that makes restraint feel like a taut wire stretched between my ribs. She’s not leaning away. She’s not pulling into herself. She’s watching me with a kind of stunned attention, as if she expected a stranger and found something else.
And maybe that’s what disarms me most. I’ve spent years cultivating a reputation that keeps the weak and foolish at bay, yet this bruised, wary woman looks at me like she’s trying to understand the shape of me rather than flee it.
I don’t know what to do with that.
All I know is that I’ve never wanted to touch someone so badly while simultaneously knowing I can’t. But the urge is there, pounding through me, hot and relentless, to take all this fear she hides under her skin and replace it with something else entirely.
Something that belongs to me.
I hold myself still. Barely. My pulse is a slow, heavy drum against my skin, my control stretched thin enough to shine light through. Her breath catches again, a soft little sound that gets under my guard and lodges somewhere dangerous.
I can’t look away. The silence stretches so long it becomes a living thing between us.
She breaks it first.
"Thank you," she says quietly. "For checking on me. I know you have better things to do." The corner of her mouth lifts in a way that is meant to be self-deprecating, but something fragile flickers behind it.
"I don’t usually visit winners. Your ID check threw out something concerning." I answer before I even think about softening the words.
Her eyes widen a fraction. She wasn’t expecting that. Whatever was coursing through her body before has dissolved into panic and I instantly regret not considering my words more fully.
"You’re not trouble," I say, stepping closer. "You are a guest under my protection. But I have some questions."
She pushes a hand through her damp hair and winces. I’ll bet my entire empire there’s a bruise hidden in her dark hair. I have to press my lips together to stop my fury from showing.
