“No,” he replies, voice low. “It’s the right room, Tahlia.”
My breath catches, because I never gave him my name, and the way he says it coats the room in silence, like he’s rolled itacross his tongue a hundred times in private before daring to speak it aloud.
“Who the fuck are you?” I snap, reaching for the door handle behind me.
“You already know.”
“No. I really don’t.”
But I do, not from memory but from whispers, from rumours, from the warning that pulses through every back room I’ve ever stepped into.
Hook.
Not a man, a consequence.
Not a client, a collector.
A myth dressed in money, scars, and quiet ruin, one hand made of polished steel, the other always holding leverage, and they say he doesn’t touch the girls, doesn’t pay, doesn’t ask, he chooses, and what he chooses, he keeps.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I spit, heart pounding so loud it drowns the silence.
He rises, slow, deliberate, every movement unhurried like a man who doesn’t need to chase because he already knows you’re caught, the room shrinking around him as he steps closer, taller than I expected, broader, not young, not old, just timeless, like a bad decision you’ve made again and again in different lives.
“Sit down,” he says, voice silken in something darker.
“I’m not here for this.”
“You are now.”
“I’ll scream.”
“No one’s listening.”
I back towards the door, fingers fumbling for the lock, and it doesn’t turn, it doesn’t fucking turn.
“I didn’t agree to this,” I hiss, panic crawling up my throat.
“You did the moment you kept coming back,” he murmurs, “same booth, same drink, same lipstick. You think I didn’tnotice? You think I didn’t mark the first time your eyes swept the room like you knew someone was watching?”
“I don’t know you?—”
“But I know you,” he cuts in, voice sharpening. “I know you grew up in a house with too many locks on the bedroom doors. I know you still sleep with the light on even when you lie about being afraid of the dark. I know you stopped believing in happy endings the night he pressed his hand against your mouth and whispered that love sounds like silence.”
My blood turns to ice.
“Get out of my fucking head.”
“I’m not in your head.”
He steps so close I can smell ocean and smoke on his skin.
“I’m already in your life.”
I slap him, hard, my hand stinging, and he doesn’t flinch.
He smiles.
And that’s when I realise this was never about a dance or a drink or a fuck, it was a hunt, and he’s already dragged me into the snare.
