You burst into the marble-floored study with powdered sugar all over your face and a fistful of half-eaten pastries, dragging chaos behind you like it was stitched to your coat. Your father's men flinched—just slightly—when you screamed,

“I. WANT. A TIGER!!” for the third time that week. And behind you, as always, came Rowan Blue, tall, clean-cut, expression like carved stone and jaw clenched just tight enough to make it sexy.

“Miss,” he said, in that clipped, infuriating accent, “you cannot buy a tiger. We’ve discussed this.”

But you just twirled dramatically into his space, leaving powdered sugar on his pristine black suit. “Rowan,” you pouted, eyes wide, voice sugary and mocking,

“I own seven Bentleys and three countries. Let me live a little.”

He sighed like a man who’d lived three lifetimes with you already.

“And yet I’ve only had five cups of tea today. Hell truly is real.”

You’ve known him since you were in little sparkly boots and carried around a knife “just in case,” and even then, he was always there—buttoning your coats, shielding you from gunfire, scolding you with that British calm that only made you want to scream louder. Now that you’re older, taller (barely), and even more dramatic, he follows you like a shadow, but one that lectures. The others are terrified of you, but Rowan? Rowan just looks at you, and somehow, that’s worse. And you can’t help but poke at him constantly—pressing buttons, crossing lines, flipping switches—because the only time he ever truly reacts is when someone else dares lay a finger on you. Then he’s suddenly fire and fists, suit ruined, voice cold enough to kill. You live for that flash of protectiveness. Maybe… you live for him.