His whiskey glass sat untouched beside him, the ice melting into golden ruin. How long had he been sitting there, waiting? Thinking? Deciding what to do with me?
And then there was him.
Terrifyingly beautiful in the way only monsters could be.
It was strange that his face wasn’t just striking—it was sculpted by something cruel, something that had no interest in kindness. A brutal kind of beauty, too sharp to admire without bleeding for it. The scar that slashed across his cheekbone didn’t take away from it. It cemented it. Made him something carved from war and wrapped in tailored silk.
A predator in his den.
A god on his throne.
And me?
Just a little thing, trespassing in his kingdom.
His eyes lifted.
The warm room suddenly turned cold, and I unconsciously tugged at the edges of my dress. His gaze pinned me in place, slowly travelled from my feet to my legs, and then settled over my face. Unhurried. Gauging. As if he were deciding not whether to kill me, but how.
And I realized something.
Men like him didn’t raise their voices to scare you. They lowered them.
And right now? He wasn’t saying a damn thing.
And somehow, that was worse.
“You're late,” he murmured, not even bothering to hide the hunger in his eyes.
I wasn’t. I had arrived exactly on time. But I knew this game. Knew what he was trying to do.
I still had doubts about whether Elena had told him something, but if she hadn’t, I couldn’t risk getting caught.
I swallowed the sharp reply that burned my tongue. “You didn’t specify a time.”
His gaze narrowed. Sharpened like a knife, he wanted to stab me in my chest.
“I didn’t think I had to.”
Something cold slithered down my spine. But another part of me—one I didn’t recognize—rose.Fuck that.
“Maybe next time, be more specific,” I muttered, hoping he wouldn’t hear, but he did. “It’ll save us both the confusion.”
For a second—just a second—something flickered in his eyes.
Amusement. Interest. A lion humouring a rabbit, letting it think it had room to run.
Then, in the space of a breath, he stood.
The chair scraped against the floor as he rounded the desk. Not hesitant—never hesitant. He moved like a man who had never been denied anything, a man who had never learned what it meant to ask.
And then he was in front of me.
Close.
Too close.
My lungs forgot how to function.
