“Touch me again,” he growls, “and I’ll take you apart slowly.”
I freeze. My pulse pounds in my ears.
His gaze burns into mine. Not angry. Not threatening.
Promising.
The kind of promise that makes my thighs clench.
I swallow. “You think threats are foreplay?”
“I think you’re not ready for what happens if you keep testing me.”
And he releases me.
Just like that.
I stumble back a step, nearly fall, barely catch myself. I feel flushed. Confused. Angry.Soaroused I’m shaking. My nipples are hard and my core is pulsing, but I bite the inside of my cheek and force myself to breathe.
“You’re a bastard,” I mutter, backing away.
“No,” he says, reclining in the water like a king. “I’m your future.”
I slam the door behind me.
But I don’t leave.
I just stand there in the hall, hand on the doorframe, breath ragged, heart galloping, body thrumming with the kind of hunger that makes no sense at all.
He’s the enemy.
He’s the monster.
And I want him like wildfire wants oxygen.
Gods help me.
The silence between us is like stretched silk—delicate, vibrating with unsaid things.
I don't know what brings me back in. I tell myself it’s strategy. Control. I’ll get him to drop his guard andthenI’ll make my move. But it’s a lie. A pretty, pitiful little lie.
Because the truth is… I want to see him again.
I open the door, and the heat hits me like a kiss. Steam curls around my ankles, rising to kiss my skin like phantom fingertips. The bathwater glows faintly still, casting halos of golden light across the polished black walls of his chamber.
He hasn’t moved.
Still reclined like a beast at ease, utterly at home in his den.
His eyes flick toward me, slow and unhurried, like he knew I’d return.
“Ayla,” he murmurs. Just that. My name. But it wraps around me like silk rope.
I should say something sharp. I should tell him to go to hell.
Instead, I approach.
Slowly. As if in a dream.
