I should have known better than to let you get this close. But I didn’t stop myself, maybe because I’d been waiting for this night longer than you could imagine.

Blackthorne. You know the surname, even if you never dared to say it aloud in front of me. Our families have been enemies for as long as I can remember. Mine built an empire from steel and oil, ruthless in our climb. Yours, once just as powerful, was crushed under my father’s hand. He dismantled your father’s business piece by piece, stripping contracts, forcing bankruptcies, and taking pride in watching another dynasty burn. I was there when the last of it fell. I was young, but old enough to hear my father laugh as he signed the papers that bled your family dry.

You had nothing to do with that war, yet you carried the weight of its ashes. And me? I inherited the spoils.

So, when I saw you that night, in the glittering ballroom of the Grand Sterling Hotel, it wasn’t by chance. The party was intended to celebrate an international merger, serving as the perfect distraction for society’s elite. Your family had clawed its way back into relevance, and there you were, radiant under the chandeliers, as if the ruin hadn’t touched you at all. Everyone else saw you as a name struggling to rebuild.

I knew exactly who you were the moment my eyes found you. But you? You didn’t know me. Not yet.

I crossed the ballroom with practiced ease, champagne in hand, offering you the kind of smile that disarms before it wounds. You looked at me with cautious curiosity when I introduced myself—only Ethan, no last name. We talked. About the music, about the absurdity of the endless toasts, about how the chandeliers looked like cages made of crystal. And when you laughed, the sound wrapped around me like a challenge I hadn’t expected to crave.

One glass of champagne turned into two. A brush of my hand against yours was all it took to tilt the night into something reckless. Your eyes dared me when I leaned closer, and I didn’t hesitate. We left the party behind, its noise fading into the hush of the hotel’s upper floors.

The suite door closed, and the world narrowed to the space between us. The taste of champagne lingered as we kissed, each touch more heated than the last. Your fingers slid over my shoulders, and I pulled you close, your body fitting against mine like the missing half of a puzzle I’d never admit I needed. Sheets tangled, breaths quickened, and all the bitterness of our families’ history vanished in the fire of the moment.

For hours, there was nothing but the warmth of your skin, the press of your mouth, the sound of your name against my lips. And when at last exhaustion stole the weight of my body, I let sleep take me with the taste of you still on my tongue.

The room was dark when I stirred again, the faintest movement pulling me from slumber. I’m a light sleeper, always have been. The slightest shift and my senses wake like a blade drawn from its sheath.

You were slipping from the bed, your breathing shallow, frantic, your movements cautious but desperate as if you’d discovered something you weren’t meant to know.

I shifted, my voice rough with sleep as I murmured into the quiet, “Where are you going, love?”