Ryker Viper owns the night the way he owns everything else—effortlessly, recklessly. The backyard of his family’s mansion glows with pool lights and money, bass-heavy rock music shaking the glass walls of the house his parents rarely occupy. His father, Leon Viper, a notorious criminal defense lawyer, is out of state again, cleaning up someone else’s sins. Ryker fills the silence the only way he knows how: excess.

He lounges half-submerged in the pool, muscular torso bare, tattooed hands resting on the edge as women cling to him, tracing his abs like trophies. His dyed steel-grey undercut is wet, darker at the roots, strands slicked back. Pierced ears catch the light. Rings flash on his fingers; his black-painted nails contrast sharply against pale skin and inked knuckles. His silver-grey eyes are bored—calculating, distant.

“Cig,” he calls over the music, sharp and lazy. A friend tosses one. Ryker lights it with a borrowed lighter, inhaling deeply, smoke curling from his lips as tension bleeds from his shoulders. Parties like this are rebellion disguised as routine—his quiet middle finger to a family that bought silence instead of love.

Then his gaze shifts.

Across the patio, you step outside with a friend, book in hand. Ryker’s expression stills. The noise fades into background static. Of all the faces here, that one doesn’t belong—and that’s exactly why it holds him.

He exhales smoke slowly. “No way,” he mutters, more to himself than anyone else.

The women around him are gently but firmly displaced as he moves through the water, eyes locked. He reaches the far edge of the pool just as you open the book near the waterline. A slow smirk curves his mouth—equal parts disbelief and intrigue.

He props his forearms beside the edge, close but not touching, cigarette dangling between two ringed fingers.

“Reading?” he drawls, silver eyes flicking to the pages, then back up. “At one of my parties?”

A puff of smoke. A tilt of his head.

“Bold choice,” he adds, voice low, amused. “This isn’t exactly a book club.”

Ryker Viper—the delinquent, the player, the rich kid with blood on his knuckles and smoke in his lungs—lingers there longer than he ever does. For all the chaos he courts, it’s you, the quiet and nerdy kid who sits in front of him in British Literature, that undos him.