She protested, of course—half teasing, half serious—but I wanted her out where people could see her on my arm, wanted her where I could watch the way she glows when the night belongs to us.
Now, seated across from her in a dimly lit restaurant, I should be studying the menu, the wine list, anything else.
But I can’t.
All of my attention is on Lily.
She sits across from me, framed in soft candlelight, her fingers absently tracing the rim of her glass. She’s wearingmydress—the one I picked out myself before the wedding and packed for myself after Gwen said she shouldn’t need any clothes, because I wanted to see her in this and only this.
Royal blue, rich as midnight.
The color turns her golden skin incandescent. The neckline plunges in a deep V, dipping low enough that every breath she takes pulls my gaze down, and the back… the back is bare. Smooth. Perfect. A single thin strap ties behind her neck while the rest of the silk skims her waist and hips like liquid.
It leaves almost nothing to the imagination.
And her hair—God. She’s slicked it back into a high puff, regal and effortless, with soft curls left loose to frame her face. It’s elegant and wild at the same time, like her.
Every man in this restaurant looks at her. Every second of it feels like a blade sliding between my ribs.
But she’s mine.
Her lips curve into a soft, shy smile as she lifts her glass to sip, but I know that look—her lashes low, her shoulders just a fraction higher. She’s nervous. She knows what this dress is doing to me.
Excited about my naughty girl, I let her squirm across the table from me, her wine glass trembling just slightly in her fingers. She has no idea how much I enjoy watching her try to hold herself together.
She doesn’t know that I was built for this.
My father made me a tracker. Patient. Relentless. Methodical. From the time I could walk, he carved it into me—how to watch, how to listen, how to read the world until it became a map of patterns and movement, until there was nowhere left for prey to hide.
It was all I could offer the Bratva. When I was younger, he said I felt too much. So he beat the feelings out of me. Happiness. Sadness. Anything he called weakness. He cut it out of me, burned it out of me. I carry the proof on my skin—thin white scars from his blade, his touch, his will. He built a soldier out of a boy.
There is no love left in me. No emotions—only rage or the cold, empty silence that comes when I am away from her. Away from Lily. My heart. The only person alive who has ever made me bleed.
And she wants all of it.
She wants the rage. The numbness. The predator I became when I learned to hunt. With her, that part of me gets to be alive, gets to feel. She wants the beast.
Perfect Lily, who doesn’t even realize she was made for this—for me. She wants me as if the heavens hadn’t carved her in my image, as if she ever had a choice not to love me, the way I had no choice but to love her.
She craves the beast. She craves the chase, the slow unraveling, the tension between knowing and not knowing. She likes to be a little scared, to feel the heat of me closing in until there is nowhere left to run.
And I like watching the moment she realizes there’s no escape. I like feeding her to the depraved monster inside of me.
Even here, at this table, in this dim, quiet restaurant, I can see it written all over her: the anticipation, the flush that crawls down her neck, the way her thighs press together under the table as if that will save her.
It won’t. Because she can’t hide from me. Not here. Not anywhere.
She belongs to me, and every inch of her knows it.
Across the table, Lily tilts her head, that mischievous spark in her golden eyes. She’s been flirting all evening—soft smiles, the tip of her shoe brushing my leg under the table—but now she pushes it further.
“Lily,” I warn, leaning forward slightly, my voice low enough to make her still for half a beat.
“Yes, Aleksandr?” she says sweetly, tilting her head like an angel while every line of her body screams trouble.
“Behave,” I murmur.
In response, she sticks her tongue out at me.
