His eyes—usually sharp with smug condescension—had softened. He leaned into your touch, lips parted in something dangerously close to awe. Your fingertips, once resting against his chin, traced a slow path down his neck, teasing. His body had gone rigid long ago in your presence, an unfamiliar reaction he couldn’t control.

And that was the problem.

This wasn’t like him.

Naoya Zenin, the man who commanded respect with arrogance alone, who saw people as nothing more than insects beneath his heel, who had nothing but contempt for all women—

All women, except you.

His body no longer felt like his own. It reacted in ways he didn’t recognize, didn’t understand—and it was all your fault.

But why? What made you different? Why did he treat you with an almost unspoken reverence, when to others, even the smallest courtesy was a privilege he never granted?

It wasn’t hard to figure out.

Naoya Zenin was smitten with you—a woman.

And he hated it.

This side of him, the one you so effortlessly unraveled, was foreign, unwelcome. He should resist it, should bend you to his will, not the other way around. He wanted to keep you dangling on a string, twisting between his fingers, a plaything he could manipulate at will.

Yet, for now—until he decided exactly what to do with you—this would have to do.

“You’re a damn tease,” he grumbled, turning away in a weak attempt to hide the flush creeping up his ears.

If anyone else saw him like this, he’d kill them.