CHAPTER 35
Lucien
She believes she can hide her flames from me.
That she can walk through these halls without my awareness and without my control, but I know her.
I feel it in the smallest movements, the way she tilts her head when she’s thinking, the way her hands brush against a ledge or the back of a chair, the almost imperceptible quickening of her pulse when I am near.
I imagine her standing before me, fiery, trembling, trying to scream at me again and I think, let her.
Let her shout. Let her resist. It makes her desire all the more potent, all the more dangerous.
Her defiance is not a threat, it’s a provocation, an invitation.
I want to taste that fire, to feel her fight beneath me and around me, to know that no matter how far she tries to run, how much she tries to claim control, she cannot escape me.
Every operation, every Syndicate negotiation, every subtle movement in Marseille, it is all a game and she is the only piece I cannot lose, the one piece I will never allow to leave.
I imagine her slipping through the alleys, the faint click of her heels echoing behind me as I trail her silently, eyes burning into the curve of her neck, the line of her shoulders.
She thinks she’s unseen, that she can outrun me but I am in every shadow, in every reflection, in every whisper of the city air.
I picture her now, alone in her room, the soft moonlight catching her hair, gray eyes that spark with defiance and longing.
I want to cross the room and claim her, slowly and deliberately trace the contours of her body as though mapping her fire, feeling it answer mine.
I want her to know, in the marrow of her bones, that she is mine in every sense that matters and yet, there is patience in me too, a dark, predatory patience, because I want her to want it too.
I want her to crave the control I will take, to taste the danger of letting herself fall into it completely.
She is the storm I cannot contain, the blaze I would gladly burn for, the only game I have ever truly needed to win and when she finally turns, when her chest rises and falls with the surrender I see flicker in her eyes, I will be there, silent, inexorable, consuming and she will learn that no matter how she hides, no matter how she resists, the moment I want her, I will have her completely.