The gala swirls around us like nothing has changed, but everything has.
I watch Damien walk away, his broad shoulders cutting through the crowd like he owns every soul in the room. My skin still burns where his fingers brushed my cheek. Damn him. Five years of building walls, and one touch threatens to crumble them all.
I force myself to move, weaving through designer gowns and tailored tuxedos, grabbing a fresh champagne flute just to have something cold in my hands. My editor wants a quote. Fine. I’ll get one and get the hell out. In and out. No deeper.
But Damien Voss doesn’t do “in and out.” He does annihilation.
Ten minutes later, he finds me again.
I feel the shift in the air before I see him— that heavy, suffocating presence that used to make me feel safe. Now it just makes me feel hunted. He appears at my side like a shadow given form, one hand sliding into his pocket while the other claims the space between us.
“Running already?” His voice is low, intimate, meant only for me. “That’s new. Usually you wait until after the damage is done.”
I turn to face him fully, lifting my chin. “I learned from the best.”
His eyes—those stormy gray eyes that Noah inherited—darken with something dangerous. Amusement. Anger. Hunger. “You think you can walk into my world, take what you want, and leave again?”
“I’m here for a story, Damien. Not you.”
He steps closer, backing me against a marble pillar draped in black silk. The music fades into background noise. All I can hear is the thunder of my own pulse and the faint echo of that night five years ago.
“You left,” he says, voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “No note. No explanation. You vanished like a frigging ghost. And now you show up looking like sin in that dress, pretending you’re not here for me.”
His scent wraps around me again—dark sandalwood, black pepper, smoked vanilla. Eclipse. It drags memories to the surface I’ve buried under years of survival. His hands on my body. His mouth claiming every inch of me. The way he used to whisper my name like a prayer and a curse at the same time.
“I left because I saw exactly who you are,” I snap, keeping my voice steady even as heat pools low in my belly. Traitor. “You were fudging her, Damien. In the same b3d where you told me I was yours.”
Something flickers across his face—too fast to read. Then the mask slams back down. “And you ran instead of staying to fight. Typical.”
“Fight for what? A man who couldn’t keep his dihh in his p4nts for one night?”
He braces one hand on the pillar beside my head, caging me without touching. His breath ghosts across my lips. “You have no idea what that night cost me. What I lost because you were too cowardly to listen.”
My heart stutters. For a second, doubt creeps in. Then I remember the sounds. The sight of her l3gs wrapped around him. The cold way he looked at me.
“I don’t care,” I lie. “I built a life without you. A good one.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, tracing the curve of my neck, the dip of my dress. “You’re still mine, Elena. Your body knows it. Your eyes know it. Even your anger knows it.”
“F## you.”
He smiles then—slow, dark, and devastating. “Careful. You used to beg me for that.”
Heat floods my cheeks. I hate how my body responds, chest tightening under the thin fabric, thighs pressing together against the ache. He notices, of course. Damien always notices everything.
Before I can retort, his hand catches my wrist, thumb pressing against my racing pulse. Not hard. Just enough to remind me he could crush me if he wanted.
“Thirty minutes,” he says. “Give me thirty minutes in private and say whatever the hell you need to say. Then you can run back to your safe little life.”
I should say no. Every survival instinct screams it.
Instead, I hear myself whisper, “Why should I?”
“Because if you don’t,” he leans in until his lips brush my ear, voice pure velvet sin, “I’ll make sure every media outlet in this city knows exactly who you really are. The woman who tried to trap me once and is back for round two.”
My blood runs cold. Then hot.
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. “Clock’s ticking, little ghost.”
I stare at him, chest heaving, caught between the urge to slap him and the darker urge to drag him somewhere and punish him the way only he knows how to take.
Finally, I nod once. Sharp. Defiant.
“Thirty minutes. That’s it.”
His smile is pure predator. “Good girl.”
As he leads me through a side door toward the private elevators, I realize the terrifying truth:
I’m not just walking back into his world.
I’m walking straight into the lion’s den.
And part of me—the broken, addicted part I’ve never been able to kill—has been waiting for this moment for five long years.
—
To be continued….