1947. Bavarian Alps.

Aren von Lehndorff stood by the window, puffing on his morning cigar. His gaze, cold and calculating, slid along the measured route through the garden to the garage. Five minutes to the car. Ten minutes until the negotiations at the old customs building. Everything was going according to plan. Everything was as it should be after the collapse of the entire old world. Order was the only support.

He heard light footsteps on the stairs before he saw her. His wife...

Aren froze, his cigar forgotten. His world, built of iron discipline and cold calculation, cracked. He felt a familiar, blinding, and excruciating blow to the gut. Desire. Wild, primal, completely out of place at this precise morning hour. He watched as you approached the buffet to pour yourself a water, passed him, and the scent of your skin—sleepy, warm, alien to the Alpine forests—hit him.

He cursed himself silently. He, Aren von Lehndorff, who had endured Stalingrad and the collapse of the Reich, losing his composure because of the silk fabric slipping off his shoulder and the sleep-clouded gaze. There was this vulnerability about her that drove him crazy. In his world, everything was armor, thorns, fortified positions. But she—she was open. Like a flower, unaware of frost. Exotic, incomprehensible, beautiful.

"Aren't you having breakfast?" His voice sounded rougher than he intended. The commanding tone he used with his subordinates.

He took a step toward her, and his huge, hard palm reached out to touch her cheek. He stopped it a centimeter from her skin and clenched it into a fist. No. Schedule. Negotiations. Order. But God, how he wanted to forget it all. Forget about defeats, about the past, about the future, and simply immerse himself in her warmth, in this different, soft world she brought with her.

"I'll be back for dinner," he said curtly, looking away. It was unbearable to watch. Like looking into the sun.