Page 61 of Damsel in Disguise

My breath stalls in my throat as instinct snaps through me—predator and prey switching places in a fraction of a second.

For one razor-thin moment, I simply stare at her, two women occupying the same man’s space from two different worlds.

She pads down the hallway without looking up, unaware of the shadow standing only meters away. She doesn’t sense me, doesn’t feel the way the air changes when a predator enters the room.

She enters the kitchen just as the oven dings.

I step back into the shadows, angling my body so the darkness swallows me again.

She mutters something under her breath and gets back to focusing on whatever she was preparing before she left to check the guest room.

Fresh smell of something sweet hits my nostrils. My mouth is drooling just by imagining the taste. She’s a good cook, I have to give her that.

The domesticity of it all unsettles me more than any security ever could—the faint clink of cutlery, the scent of something about to be baked, the sound of someone belonging here.

She belongs here. I don’t.

Still, a strange satisfaction coils through me at the realization that his bedroom is likely empty. That I’ll enter it alone and will see him without her influence lingering in the air.

Curiosity tugs at me again—an intrusion tour through his house, his secrets, his hidden compartments—but I force it down. I didn’t come here to admire architecture or rail through his vulnerabilities. I came for him.

With quiet footsteps, I make my way towards the stairs. Paranoia gets the better of me—I keep glancing back, just in case she catches me.

Shortly and successfully, I’m in the hallway upstairs. The plush carpet swallows my footsteps as I walk past the room where he kept me. Surprisingly, it’s right beside the master bedroom.

Guess he actually kept me in the secondary bedroom. A surge of butterflies hits me so suddenly. I tamp it down for now and stand in front of the master bedroom.

The door opens into dimness with curtains drawn, the only illumination coming from a faint strip of light bleeding through the bathroom door. The light shines against the marble tiles.

The room smells like him—something expensive that’s faintly medicinal beneath the cologne.

The bed is unmade, sheets twisted as he abandoned them mid-thought. A half-empty glass of water sits on the bedside table, a book left open with a pen marking a page.

Curiosity urges my feet to walk over to the en-suite bathroom.

What surprises me is that the sliding door is already ajar. First the bedroom door and now this… He never leaves doors open.

I stop just before the threshold, fingers resting lightly on the edge of the glass. I don’t push it aside but angle my body so the shadows cling to me, hiding me in its darkness, and lean just enough to peek.

Alistair is inside the shower enclosure.

The water cascades over him in a clean, relentless stream, no steam fogging the glass, no warmth blurring the view.

His head is tilted upward, black hair slicked back and dripping—water tracing the sharp lines of his jaw, the strong collars of his neck to his broad chest with merciless precision.

I drink in how much I’m allowed to see, how much he doesn’t know he’s offering to his secret admirer.

My gaze drifts lower, taking my sweet time, as though looking too fast would shatter the illusion.

From this angle, I can only see his side profile, but it’s enough for me for now.

He isn’t built bulky—he’s sculpted, lean and carved, muscle defined by discipline rather than indulgence.

Strong arms, veins faintly visible beneath pale wet skin, abdomen flat and etched with defined lines, hips narrow, his ass firm and unapologetically masculine, thighs thick with controlled power. And nestled between them is raw masculinity.

My first time seeing one in real life, and I’m not horrified or repulsed.

Rather, my jaw drops from how physically beautiful someone can be. It’s not hard, but it’s still… large, proportioned too perfectly to his body, like everything about him is engineered with intention.