I realize I’m staring at her again. The black dress looks a little loose on her petite frame, and she’s young. She’s so fucking young someone probably should have carded her at the door. Too young to have the weight of the world written in her gaze.
The urge to find out what color her eyes are overtakes me, and I slowly shift around the ballroom, smoothly avoiding people trying to capture my attention. When I finally make it to the right angle, the lighting is too dark for me to tell, but staring at her straight on, with Sal’s hand inching toward her ass, I can clearly see how much she hates him.
A puzzle then. Why would one of the society’s pampered princesses marry her daddy’s business partner if she didn’t like him? She, like me, should have her choice of suitors. Her hair is a thing of beauty, piled up on her head in a mass of natural curls. A flash of what all that black silk would look like spread over my white sheets starts a craving I won’t be able to quench.
No. She doesn’t belong to me. I try to shake off the longing, the stark desire that shoves its way between my ribs and nestles in deep. It doesn’t budge, especially when she delicately lifts her champagne glass, and I watch her pretty pink lips cup the rim.
Instantly, I see her on her knees, that dress pooled around her slim waist, her curls tangled between my fingers as she takes my dick down her throat. It’s an obscene fantasy. Especially because she looks like she’s never even been kissed properly. A likely scenario given her fiancé.
Fuck. I can’t stay here staring at her all night. Someone is bound to notice, and it will paint a target on her back.
I tear my eyes away and duck through the crowd, intent on putting some distance between us. If she came closer to me and I caught her delicate scent, I’d lose my fucking mind and start a war I’m not prepared to win yet. Because when I go into battle, nothing will be left standing but me and my five. She’d be collateral damage. Damage her father likely would consider insignificant if he cares so little of her to give her away to that asshole.
The balcony calls my name. It’s empty, and I spot Ivan, my second lieutenant, taking up position on the other side of the doors. The privacy after being stuck in a crowded ballroom for an hour is a welcome relief. The traffic sounds from below barely reach this high, so it’s nothing but the cold cut of the wind, which I appreciate after the stifling heat inside.
I allow myself a moment to wonder who might have followed me out here and attempted to toss me over the edge if Ivan hadn’t been tailing me. My father had many enemies, and now, I seem to have inherited them. People I barely know hate me for my father’s actions. If they only knew what having me for a real enemy would be like.
But this party opens the season, and for the next three months, every single person here must watch their back. The season-opening signals movement in society. Movement bought with blood, criminal activity, and good old-fashioned murder. Then anything goes until the final party of the season. Afterward, a mandatory nine months of peace allows the new fault lines to be drawn. Anyone who violates it meets justice at the hand of every ruling family. No one has ever survived the gauntlet.
My own father certainly didn’t. Thankfully, once they took his life, his sins washed down the drain with his blood. It didn’t matter that he’d become too old to even understand his actions in the end—they showed him no mercy. And soon, they will learn what my mercy looks like.
Almost involuntarily, I turn back to the doors and peer around Ivan’s shoulder through the glass. She’s still standing beside Sal, who is getting drunker by the minute. The other girl with her has the hard cut of fear in her eyes as she watches Sal and his fiancée. I don’t know why that fear eats at something inside me, but it blooms my own batch of fear for the innocent on Sal’s arm.
I open the doors and step back in, letting the last of the night air cool my back before closing the door again.
Ivan melts back into the crowd, and I watch her. I want to know what her voice sounds like. What color her eyes are. I want to know what kind of words she uses when she begs.
Most of all, I want Sal’s blood pooling across the concrete so he won’t ever touch her again.
I shove past a few society members, intent on reaching their table to introduce myself, but someone catches my arm. I spin with a curse and glare down into the eyes of Madeline Cerny, heiress to the biggest blow empire in the country. And by the way she wobbles in her two-thousand-dollar shoes, she’s been sampling her product.