Peter
Ishouldn’t be here. Not in this booth, not in this club, not with her looking at me like I just lit a match over her whole life and smiled as it caught.
But then again, I’ve never cared much about where I should be.
Wendy Darling. My sister’s best friend. The girl who was supposed to be the “good” one, the untouchable one. The one who kept walking into my fire and daring me not to burn with her.
She’s sitting there, and for a second, the rest of the club just… fades. It’s a sensory blackout. I’ve seen women who were technically perfect, symmetrical dolls with blank eyes, but Wendy?
Wendy is a jagged masterpiece. She has this face that haunts my goddamn dreams—heart-shaped and pale as bone, with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that look like a map of the stars I want to extinguish.
Her eyes are too big for her face, a deep, stormy grey that looks like the Atlantic right before a shipwreck.
They’re framed by lashes so thick and dark they cast shadows on her cheekbones every time she blinks, making her look perpetually caught between a prayer and a sin.
And her mouth. Fuck. It’s a tragedy. Her lips are naturally plush, a bruised-petal pink, with a sharp Cupid’s bow that looks like it was designed to be bitten.
She’s wearing that lipstick again—a shade of deep, crushed-berry red that makes her teeth look blindingly white and her skin look like cream.
Her hair is a riot of dark curls, the colour of midnight and expensive ink. It’s wild, messy, spilling over her shoulders in a way that makes my fingers itch to fist into it and pull her head back. It’s the kind of hair that looks like she just rolled out of a bed—specifically, my bed.
She’s wearing a slip dress that’s more of a dare than an outfit.
It’s silk, the colour of a fresh bruise, clinging to every curve of a body that’s been driving me insane for years.
She isn’t skinny; she has these soft, dangerous curves—the swell of her hips, the slope of her breasts, the long, elegant line of her throat that I know would taste like salt and desperation.
She doesn’t see what I see from across the room—the men who hover too close, the way their eyes slide over that silk like they’re already peeling it off. She doesn’t hear the way they talk. But I hear it. I hear every filthy thought they have, and it makes my blood boil into something lethal.
And when one of them tries it tonight—some suit with a hand on her wrist and a smile like rot—I’m done watching.
I don’t give him a chance to breathe. I’m out of the shadows and on him before he can blink.
I rip him off her, the force of it nearly dislocating his shoulder, and shove him into the wall hard enough that the glass of the nearby booths rattles in their frames.
My forearm presses across his throat, pinning his windpipe.
His teeth click together. His eyes bulge, turning a frantic, watery red.
Good. He should be terrified. He should feel the reaper’s breath.
“You see her again, you even think about touching her again—” my voice is a low, tectonic rumble, vibrating with the urge to just snap his neck and be done with it, “—and you won’t walk out of here. You’ll crawl out with your teeth in your pocket. Do you understand?”
He chokes out a noise halfway between a sob and a prayer. I let him go, and he stumbles away, gasping for air, fleeing like the rat he is.
When I turn back, Wendy is standing there.
Her glass is still in her hand, her knuckles white.
Her mouth is parted in shock, those bruised-berry lips trembling just a fraction.
Her pulse is going wild in the hollow of her throat, a frantic, visible thrum under that porcelain skin I want to mark until she’s covered in me.
And for the first time tonight, she isn’t hiding it. The fear is there, but so is the heat.
“Why—” she starts, but the word breaks, lost in the thrum of the bass.
“Because he touched what’s mine,” I say simply. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. The truth is heavy enough to crush the air between us.
She shakes her head, her grey eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp fury. “I’m not yours. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to play the hero.”
“Don’t I?” I step into her personal space, forcing her to breathe in the scent of the violence still radiating off me. “You think my sister doesn’t know where you go every Saturday night? You think she doesn’t tell me exactly where to find you?”
The way her face pales—fuck, it’s perfect. She looks like a ghost. She hadn’t thought of that. She thought she was being clever, hiding in the dark.
“Liar,” she whispers. But her voice is thin, a thread ready to snap.
I smirk, my gaze dropping to her throat, then back to her eyes. “Call her. Ask. See how fast she folds when you put my name in your mouth. See if she doesn’t tell you that I’m the only thing keeping you from ending up in a ditch.”
She looks like she wants to throw the glass at my face.
Instead, she drains the pink liquid in one swallow, the movement of her throat so smooth it makes my stomach flip.
She sets it down with a sharp clink and glares at me with enough hate to kill a lesser man.
But I see the crack. I see the way the betrayal—the idea that her best friend sold her out to the monster—is cutting deeper than my hands ever could.
“You don’t get to play saviour,” she snaps, her voice raw.
“I’m not saving you, Wendy,” I murmur, leaning down until my mouth is hovering inches from her ear, close enough that I can smell the cherry on her breath and the lilies on her skin. “I’m keeping you. There’s a massive fucking difference.”
She’s shaking now—anger, adrenaline, the sheer, terrifying chemistry that happens whenever we’re in the same zip code. She hates that I can tell the difference. She hates that I’m the only one who knows she’s not a saint.
“You think this is some kind of game?” she spits, her voice low and dangerous. “Dragging me in, twisting my head until I don’t know what’s real anymore?”
I lean my weight into the booth, my hands braced on either side of her, caging her in. She stiffens, her silk dress rustling against the vinyl, but she doesn’t move. Brave little Wendy—always playing the martyr when she’s already halfway to the altar.
“This isn’t a game,” I murmur, my eyes locked on hers, boring into that grey storm. “I don’t waste my time on things I don’t plan to win. And I’ve already won, Darling. You’re just waiting for the final move.”
Her chest heaves, the silk of her dress straining against her breasts. She looks like she wants to slap me, to claw my eyes out—but then her gaze flicks down to my mouth, just for a millisecond, and I see it. The traitorous, hungry flash of want.
I grin slow, sharp. “You want to hit me? Go on. I’ll still be here when you’re done pretending you don’t want to be underneath me.”
Her nails bite into her palms, her shoulders squared. “You don’t get to decide what I want.”
“I already have.” My voice is silk over a bed of nails. “You wouldn’t be in this club, in this booth, in this dress, if you didn’t want exactly what’s about to happen.”
The crack in her mask is a canyon now. Her throat works as she tries to find words that won’t betray her further. I step in closer, so close our bodies are almost humming against each other. My shadow swallows her whole.
“Don’t,” she whispers, a final, pathetic plea.
“Don’t what?” I’m so close I could taste the salt on her skin. I could lick the denial right off her lips.
Her breath stutters, hot and ragged against my jaw. She tries to look away, but I tilt her chin up with two fingers—gentle, but with the threat of a vice. She flinches, but stays.
“Don’t make this something it isn’t,” she says, her voice barely audible over the music.
I smirk, dragging my thumb along the razor-sharp edge of her jaw, feeling the heat of her skin. “It already is, Wendy. It’s been this since the day you were old enough to know better.”
Her pulse slams against my hand, a frantic, dying bird. She hates me for knowing. Hates me for being the only person who sees the darkness she tries so hard to hide.
“You’ll ruin everything,” she hisses.
“I’ll ruin you,” I correct softly, my voice dripping with the promise of it. “And you’ll thank me for every second of the wreckage.”
For a second, she freezes—and then she shoves me. It’s a hard, desperate hit against my chest, but it doesn’t move me an inch. I just laugh, a rough, dark sound that scrapes up from my lungs. There she is. The fury. The fuel.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” she snaps, standing up so fast the table rocks, her curls flying around her face like a dark halo.
I catch her wrist before she can take two steps. My grip is firm, undeniable. I want her to feel the strength of the trap. Her eyes flash down to where my hand is circling her bone, then up to my face. Her voice shakes with a mix of fear and something much, much filthier. “Let. Me. Go.”
I hold her for one heartbeat longer than necessary. Just so she knows I could keep her forever. Then I release her.
She jerks free, her skin red where I held her, and stalks toward the door.
I don’t follow. I just watch the way the silk of her dress clings to her hips as she walks away, marking the path she’s taking.
But when she throws one last look over her shoulder—that look of pure, agonising longing disguised as hate—I know.
She was mine before she ever walked through that door. And she’ll be back before the night is through.
I don’t chase. I just sit back in the red light, pick up her glass, and taste the smear of her lipstick on the rim.
“See you soon, Darling,” I whisper into the pink gin.