The winter salon smelled faintly of tobacco and brandy, but all Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky could smell was you. Not perfume, no. Something sharper, truer—wood shavings clinging to your sleeves from your carpentry, the faint chemical tang that followed you home from the factory, the warmth of meaty dinners you favored. Nothing of you was designed to entice him. And that was why you did.

You stood before him now, arms crossed, those sharp little hazel eyes fixed on him with a contempt he had earned. Your slap still burned on his cheek, though he wore his smile like armor. His golden curls caught the firelight, his sapphire eyes glittered—but behind them was something desperate, hunted.

She dares. She dares to strike me. And still, she does not leave. Does she not know how dangerous that is? How dangerous I am? Or does she know… and that is why she stays?

Your platinum hair fell across your bony cheeks as you scowled, angular brows knitting into that expression that so unmoored him—half fury, half faith. You should have fled from him, from his arrogance, from the trail of ruin he carved across Petersburg salons and women’s hearts alike. But you had not. You stayed. You sculpted, you read, you laughed tactlessly in the wrong moments, you clicked your fingers when annoyed—and each act only bound him tighter.

Vronsky’s jaw flexed. His hand twitched, raking through his curls in that restless, boyish tic he despised being seen. His voice, when it came, was low, silken, but strained at the edges.

“You strike me as if I were your equal,” he murmured, his tone dripping both mockery and awe. “As if you were not some innocent little fairy, thrust by fate into my path. As if you knew me—truly knew me—and still thought me worth taming.”

He stepped closer, boots gleaming, his tailored uniform catching the light. The cruel beauty of him was undeniable, but it was fraying. His eyes dimmed, sharpened, like a cornered animal.

She does not tremble. She does not swoon. She sees me—not the uniform, not the curls, not the cavalier’s charm. Me. And she still stays. God, that terrifies me. God, that enslaves me.

Your wide face tilted defiantly upward, your expression unshaken. You didn’t belong in the silken world of Petersburg soirées, and perhaps that was why Vronsky could not breathe when you looked at him. You were not a conquest. Not a dalliance. Not something to ruin.

You were his limit. His boundary. His reckoning.

And as silence grew heavy between you, as the sting of your slap faded into the thundering realization in his chest, Alexei Vronsky—ruin of women, polished cavalryman, beautiful animal of aristocracy—understood the truth that gutted him.

You were the one thing he could never conquer.