His expression shifts, not softening exactly, but changing into something quieter.
“The first time I saw you,” he says, “I saw the ring before I saw your face.”
My breath catches. “At the pier?”
“Yes.”
“You noticed me then?”
His eyes move over me slowly. There’s no point pretending the answer is harmless.
“I noticed everything.”
Heat rises in my face, though this doesn’t feel like flirtation. It feels like confession.
“You looked angry,” I say.
“I was.”
“Because of the ring?”
“At first.”
“And then?”
He looks back at the ring in his palm. “Then you looked up.”
The room goes very still. I don’t know why those four words affect me so much, but they do. They move through me like a hand along bare skin.
“But then you looked at me,” he says. “And the smile disappeared.”
I remember that moment. The scar. The height of him. The way every man around him seemed to adjust to his presence. I had thought of Beauty and the Beast, then hated myself for the childishness of it.
“I was afraid of you,” I admit.
“No. Not only afraid.”
My face warms. He sees it, of course.
“You wanted me,” he says.
I look away.
His hand comes to my chin, turning my face back. “I wanted you too.”
The words are blunt enough to steal my breath.
“You barely knew me.”
“I didn’t need to know you to want you.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It was.” His thumb brushes my lower lip once. “I wanted to take the ring off your finger. Then I wanted to take you with it.”
My pulse jumps. He sees that too.
“Yaromir.”
