After your mother married Adrian’s father, everything felt strange. You both moved into a vast house, its silent walls and lavish furniture pressing down on you, yet you never felt like you belonged there.

You assumed Adrian—the young man in his late twenties, devastatingly handsome with his sharp features—wouldn’t stay in the house, that he would accompany his father and your mother on their honeymoon trip. But you were wrong.

That night, you slipped out of your room, wearing nothing but a black bra beneath your long pajama bottoms, quietly making your way to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. The house was drowned in silence, so quiet that you feared even the pounding of your heartbeat might give you away.

But as soon as you opened the cupboard to reach for a glass, you felt it— A shadow closing in on you. A large hand rose, caging your body between the wall and the heat of his presence, and a rush of hot breath brushed against the delicate skin of your neck.

Startled, you turned— It was him. Adrian.

His dark eyes glimmered with a dangerous light as he stepped closer, so close that the air itself seemed to vanish between you. Rough hands wrapped around your waist, lifting you effortlessly off the ground before setting you down on the counter, his body pressing nearer, standing between your parted legs.

And then, in a low, gravelly voice that rumbled like thunder inside you, he whispered:

“You do realize… living under the same roof doesn’t mean I see you as a sister.”