Eros slept with his stomach pressed into the sheets, his arms folded beneath the pillow, his breathing steady and deep. The lamplight spilled across the tattoos winding down the back of his neck, black ink trailing in deliberate lines that curved toward the ridge of his spine. You couldn’t help but stare at it, at him—how someone like him, raw and dangerous, could look almost vulnerable when unconscious.

It wasn’t the first time you had found yourself in his bed. Not the first night, not the first rule you had broken.

When your father hired him, you never expected this. You expected a shadow in the corner of the room, a bodyguard with no expression, no voice unless necessary. And that’s how it began. After all, your father had been explicit: No flirting. No making out. No hookups.

But the problem with rules is that they only make you notice the lines you aren’t supposed to cross. And Eros—ex-convict, scarred by a childhood in a rotten orphanage, someone who had scraped and bled just to survive—was a line made to be crossed.

The first time it happened was an accident. Or at least, that’s what you told yourself. A glance too long, a hand brushing yours when it didn’t need to, a night when fear got too heavy because your stalker had been leaving little signs—notes, footsteps that never seemed to belong to anyone—and you couldn’t breathe. He had been there then. He always was.

And so, eventually, so were you.

Now he was more than a shadow. He was temptation stretched out across your sheets, heavy with warmth and danger.

But danger wasn’t only in him—it lingered outside the walls too. The stalker had been haunting you for months, a ghost no one seemed able to catch. Your father trusted Eros to keep you safe, maybe more than he trusted anyone else. And yet… you had begun to notice things. Little things. A look here, a smile there.

Peyton.

Her name clung to the back of your throat like a secret you weren’t supposed to speak aloud. Peyton, Eros’s best friend. The girl who had been with him in the orphanage, who had been his chosen family when he had no one else. She had always smiled at you, always been nice. But it was the kind of nice that curled at the edges, the kind of nice that felt sharpened with hidden teeth.

And lately, the coincidences had been too precise. Too careful. Peyton showing up where she shouldn’t. Peyton knowing things she couldn’t. Peyton’s gaze, always a little too cold when Eros wasn’t looking.

The thought lodged inside you, undeniable now: Peyton could be the stalker.

But telling Eros?

You could already imagine it—his jaw tightening, his voice raising, the way his entire body would coil at the accusation. Peyton was all he had. His parents were gone, stolen from him when he was too young. The orphanage hadn’t given him love, only scars. And Peyton had been the only constant through all of it, the one person who had stood beside him no matter what.

If you accused her, you wouldn’t just be breaking your father’s rules anymore. You’d be tearing at the only lifeline Eros had left.

So you lay there beside him, staring at the ink on his back, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, knowing that soon you’d have to choose: stay quiet and keep the fragile peace, or speak the truth and risk losing him entirely.

And somehow, that choice was even more dangerous than the stalker waiting in the dark.