I became a master of time travel, slipping through the ages like ashadow. I moved with ghostlike precision, leaving only the faintest trace—just enough to keep him chasing. A scent. A letter. A shattered mirror etched with a date. I never stayed long. Never gave him the satisfaction of catching me too easily.
I lived for the thrill, the chase, and the way history became our personal playground of seduction and subversion.
Balthazar was endlessly amused—sometimes enraged, often perplexed, but always addicted. Each reunion was its own unraveling. Every time he managed to decipher my trail and find me again, it was like being caught in a new story—different setting, same tangled passion.
I kept him guessing. I kept him working.
It was my way of balancing our dynamic.
I never forgot how he had pinned me to that whore’s bed, how his hand had tightened on my throat to make a point.
This was my way of making mine.
And every time we collided—time and space be damned—the sex was devastating. Deep. Depraved. Soul-drenching. Our bodies became battlegrounds and sanctuaries alike. We shared things in those hours that could never be spoken aloud. Secrets. Fantasies. Scars.
The world disappeared. We became our own universe.
Once, in 1730 Vienna, Balthazar stormed into the drawing room, his normally regal features forming a scowl.
I was lounging on a plush velvet sofa, my journal open across my lap. The late afternoon sun spilled through the tall bay windows, casting warm gold over my face and my emerald satin dress, which shimmered with every delicate movement.
The moment the door slammed shut, I jumped, instinctively clutching the journal to my chest.
“Put down that blasted book,” Balthazar growled, his voice rumbling like thunder. “You’re always scribbling in that fucking thing.”
Before I could respond, he strode across the room, eyes blazing, and ripped the journal from my hands. With a single vicious motion, he hurled it across the room. Pages fluttered like wounded birds before smacking against the wall and collapsing to the floor.
My mouth parted, stunned—but not speechless.
I rose, cool as glass, sauntered across the room, and retrieved the fallen book. I brushed off the cover and set it gently on the side table beside the settee where I had been lounging.
“Rough day,my lord?” I asked, deliberately lacing the title with venom.
His jaw clenched. “I told you never to call me that.”
“Apologies,my lord,” I said with a mock curtsy.
“Goddamnit, Alina. Stop fucking with me.”
He surged toward me and grabbed my face, squeezing hard. Pain bloomed under his fingers, but I refused to flinch. I blinked, locked eyes with him, and said evenly, “I shall never do it again, my…” I paused, then corrected myself with a sly smile. “My love.”
His grip eased slightly.
“That’s better.”
He yanked me forward, crashing his lips onto mine in a brutal, punishing kiss. My skirts bunched around my thighs as he tugged them up and forced his way beneath my undergarments, fingers finding the heat he knew would be waiting for him.
I gasped as he worked me relentlessly until release rocked through me, leaving me breathless.
Then he shoved me to my knees.
I obeyed without hesitation, delighting in the power and submission braided so tightly between us. His roar filled the drawing room like a war cry when he came. He tucked himself away and stalked off, humming a low, tuneless melody as he vanished—again.
He didn’t return for days.
Each evening, I sat in the drawing room on the striped settee with its elaborately carved back, my journal resting on my lap. Fuck Balthazar and his disdain for my writing. I wrote to keep from losing myself entirely in his absence. He could return whenever he pleased and in whatever mood suited him, but—thiswas mine.
The estate we occupied in 19th-century England was grand but stifled by ghosts. The room was large and airy, yet thick with the echoes of the past. Faded tapestries hung along the walls, depicting ancient hunts with spears and hounds. The colors were dulled by time, but the images retained a certain wild majesty.
