Rita's Point Of View
I stood there, paralyzed, the door handle still biting into the palm of my hand. The hallway light caught the silver at his temples, and for a second, I wasn't in a modern house in Texas; I was twenty years younger, standing in a dusty piazza in Italy, feeling that same terrifying, magnetic pull. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and throat. Time seemed to collapse in on itself, erasing decades in a single heartbeat.
"Charles," I breathed, his name sounding like a prayer and a curse all at once.
He smiled, and it wasn't just a movement of his lips; it was a slow, deliberate conquest of my senses. The years had etched fine lines around his eyes, but they only made him more devastating. Those same eyes… impossibly green, the color of the field in summer-, held mine with an intensity that made my knees weak.
"Yes, my queen," he said, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that seemed to vibrate in the very center of my chest.
