Page 3 of Accidental Alliance

Ones I should be paying attention to. Any other night, that is exactly what I would be doing. Instead, my eyes find her and refuse to turn away.

They always do.

Isabella Russo moves through the banquet hall like she is made of light while the rest of us are shadows only lucky enough to be brushed by it before once again being draped in darkness.

Eyes follow her, not because she is trying to be noticed but because no one in this room could stop themselves from doing so even if they tried.

The chandeliers above her catch her long chestnut hair, turning the loose waves down her back into ribbons of warm bronze and amber.

Every time she turns her head, the light shifts with her like it belongs to her more than the ceiling it hangs from.

Her eyes roam over the room with far more awareness than a girl her age should possess.

My hands tighten behind my back before I can stop them.

They are a problem all on their own.

They have never looked at me like everyone else does, nor do they flinch like they’re supposed to.

When those honey-gold irises land on me, it feels less like being admired and more like being known.

There are few things in this life I hate more than the possibility of someone seeing beneath the armor I have spent decades forging, yet from her I crave it.

She is wearing a soft cream dress tonight.

It clings to her slim frame in a way that is almost innocent and makes her seem graceful rather than fragile.

A vision of femininity polished to perfection, all soft curves and elegant restraint.

I know she’s wearing it because I’m here. Not because she has ever told me she wears anything for me. She hasn’t.

Isabella is far too careful for that, and I am much too dangerous to deserve a confession so honest even if she had felt inclined to tell me.

But I know.

I know she wears it only for me.

Maybe that is arrogance, some kind of self-destructive vanity men like me are born with and punished for later.

But I know it all the same with cold certainty because I remember every shade of fabric she has ever worn in my presence, every color, every hemline, every silhouette that has ever draped over her body and made something inside me grow taut and wild.

I remember the deep green silk from the winter fundraiser a year ago, the one that made her look older until she smiled and ruined the illusion completely.

I remember the pale blue dress from a summer dinner at her father’s estate, deceptively modest, that should have been forgettable on anyone else and somehow became unforgettable on her.

I remember black lace peaking out from underneath her cocktail gown once, only a hint of it beneath the tight bodice wrapped around her chest, and how that tiny glimpse of what she had been hiding underneath occupied my mind for three goddamn days like a bullet lodged too close to my brain to remove.

That is the problem with Isabella.

Every image, every single detail about her, embeds itself into my brain stem.

She enters a room and my mind turns into a treacherous minefield, cataloging her with the same ruthless precision I use for my enemies.

Only with her, the instinct is not tactical. It is worse.

It is hunger twisted into need, a private collection of moments I should have discarded and instead have hoarded like a desperate man locking contraband in a safe for his next fix.

She has always had this effect on me, taken every disciplined and carefully sharpened instinct in my body and turned it into something far more reckless.