A freaking Ph.D. and I couldn’t find the words to form a question.
Darkness flickered across his expression, immediately replaced by something colder. Something akin to hatred.
“What are you doing here?” His deep voice unlocked a long-buried trove of awareness.
Goose bumps rose along my skin, a shiver rippling through me as the air between us tightened. I fought the instinct to lean closer, to close the distance and bask in the raw magnetism he emanated. The same pull I had felt the minute I met him—dangerous, intoxicating, impossible to ignore.
Back then, I hadn’t questioned it. I had let it engulf me without hesitation, drawn in like a moth to a flame.
But that was years ago, and I’d since learned my lesson.
Instead of surrendering to the urge, I forced my feet to move the other way. One deliberate step back. Then another. The space between us felt wrong, almost painful, but I held my ground.
I was no longer that fragile twenty-one-year-old girl who mistook intensity for safety, who believed strength meant protection and attraction meant love. I had been naive then, touch-starved and desperate for someone to stand between me and the world.
I wasn’t her anymore.
Not after everything that had happened.
At this age, I knew better. And yet… my pulse still quickened in his presence.
TEN
LYKOS
Violet Freud.
The name tore through my mind like a grenade while I stared at her, and for a moment it felt like time simply stopped. Or maybe my heart stopped beating. Even the breeze that had been moving through the courtyard seemed to die mid-breath. My children standing next to me fell from my awareness as the world narrowed to a distant hum.
All because she was standing right in front of me.
Her.
The only woman I’d broken my wedding vows for. My sin.
I had imagined many times how this moment would go if I were to see her again after she showed up unannounced at my penthouse over nine years ago, worn out and pale. In some versions, she was a blur in a crowd, one I would reach for but never quite get to. In others, she was a ghost who vanished the moment I tried to touch her.
And now, she was here. Within reach.
She was as real as it got, with her flushed cheeks and four-inch heels, and I was completely unprepared for how violently it hit me.
My lungs forgot how to work. My chest locked so tight it felt like someone had driven a fist straight through my ribs.
She was my secret obsession, so much so that I had been keeping tabs on her—it sounded better than stalking—for the better part of a decade. She looked just as beautiful today as she did the last time I saw her. Maybe slightly thinner, with a touch more sadness in her eyes.
Of course, she also looked older. Years had passed, but they hadn’t dulled her the way time dulled most things. If anything, they had sharpened her.
Her hair was tied back in a neat, professional bun, but all I could remember was how soft it’d felt when I tangled my fingers through it. Her eyes—those impossible eyes that had once looked at me, filled with lust—were wide with the stunned recognition burning through me.
And Christ, those plump lips. I had to fight the urge to wrap my hand around her nape and pull her in for a kiss. An angry, punishing kiss that would probably snap my control and lead to me dragging her into my bedroom and fucking her senseless.
Shit, all these years of abstinence would turn against me. Or maybe it was her bewitching, quiet presence to blame. Hers was the quiet kind of beauty that crept under your skin and refused to leave.
My body reacted before my mind could stop it with a violent, traitorous jolt of attraction. It made my jaw tighten.
Ten years… Ten goddamn years and my body still recognized her.
I shook my head and tightened my fists at my sides, hardening my expression.
