Page 35 of Torn By Fate

The thing about Adrian Salvatore was that he announced himself in a very particular way. Dangerous and silent.

The air around me changed, growing dense and crackling with tension.

Some people carried their presence like a scent.

He carried it like an approaching storm—inevitable, relentless, and impossible to ignore.

Blood roared between my ears, and my heart thudded again, loud and hard against my rib cage.

I didn’t turn around.

I stopped turning around three weeks ago when I learned that no matter where I looked… my eyes never found him.

Yet…

He was always watching.

I knew it. I felt it—his unwavering gaze.

But I never knew where he stood, where he watched from.

He was always carefully hidden in the shadows, letting the darkness swallow him.

Fine. Let him look. Let him watch. Let him do what he’d been doing across four countries and a dozen cities—hover menacingly at the periphery, close enough to remind me I was being hunted, but far enough to deny me the satisfaction of confrontation.

I was tired of letting him win.

So tonight, I danced.

A woman’s body had its own language, every movement a sentence, every breath a confession. And I had learned to speak it fluently.

My body knew exactly what to say and how to make sure no one ever forgot hearing it.

The music shifted to something slower, darker… the beat pulling like a tide. I closed my eyes and let my hips find the rhythm, allowing my shoulder to drop. I tilted my chin back, arching my neck. My hair came loose from the bun, falling down to my lower back.

The fabric of my black dress clung to my body like a second skin, and I moved with the kind of slow sensuality that I knew. That I had been taught to use to my advantage.

After a minute, I opened my eyes. My lips twitched when a man moved toward me with the particular confidence of someone who had never been told ‘no’ in a way that mattered. He was young, closer to my age. Dark strands of hair fell across his forehead, and his lips curved with a smile that was equal parts invitation and assumption.

Come here, pretty boy.

He was effortlessly handsome, too good-looking for his own good. I almost felt bad for him. Knowing that his pretty face would likely be ruined by the end of the night.

But oh well…

Pretty Boy didn’t ask. He simply moved into my orbit as I continued dancing, his arm sliding around my waist with the easy entitlement of someone who believed the dance floor meant he had access to my body. His hand settled at the small of my back, palm flat and warm through the thin fabric.

He tugged me closer.

I could have stepped away.

I could have turned my shoulder, created distance, and maintained the careful perimeter I usually kept around my body in rooms full of strangers. I had done it a thousand times… the polite extraction, the closed smile, the subtle shift of weight that screamed they were not welcome near me without ever saying it aloud.

Instead… I leaned into him.

I felt his surprise—a slight tightening of his arm, the quickening of his breath against my temple.

So freaking cute.