THEODORE'S POV
My hands are frozen on the second button.
She's lying beneath me, between my legs. Small, curved, gorgeous in every way I don't deserve. The fabric parts just enough to reveal the beginning of her cleavage and my throat goes so dry I forget how swallowing works.
Three seconds ago I was confident. Commanding. A man who growled "you have no idea what you've unleashed" against a woman's ear like he'd done this a thousand times.I have done this zero times.
And now my fingers won't move.
Lucian's voice echoes in my skull — the emergency briefing he gave me weeks ago when he was genuinely concerned that neither experience nor adult cinema would prepare me for this moment:
"Just follow your instincts. Touch her like you've been starving. Make her feel good. Listen to her body. A real man doesn't think about his own needs first. "
Sound advice.
Except my instincts are currently short-circuiting, her body is making sounds that are dismantling my higher brain functions, and the only thing I'm listening to is my own heartbeat screaming in my ears.
But beneath the panic — beneath the want that's turning my blood to kerosene — a quieter thought surfaces. One that stops me cold.
How do I touch someone this precious with hands that have killed to survive?
How do I let desire lead when last night I swore I wouldn't sleep with her until she loves me?
Beatrice looks up at me with those bright brown eyes catching the last warmth of sunset through the window. Her chest rises and falls fast. Her lips are parted. She's waiting. Wanting.
Open in a way I've never seen her — unguarded, vulnerable, trusting me with a softness she's never shown anyone.
If I take her tonight, we'll be having sex. Not making love.
And for thirty-two years of celibacy — thirty-two years of never looking at a woman the way I look at her, never wanting anyone the way I want her, never feeling this violent collision of love and lust and fear and hunger — I refuse to let the first time I'm inside someone be anything less than everything.
She deserves everything.
I close my eyes. Breathe. And button the shirt back up.
"Theodore —" Her voice is soft. Confused. Thick with want that makes my resolve physically ache.
I lean down and press my lips to her forehead. Lingering. Letting my mouth say what my hands just refused to.
"I almost broke my promise."
She stills beneath me. Eyes wide. Lips parted in surprise.
I kiss her mouth. Gently this time — one hand cradling her jaw like she's made of something that would shatter if I pressed too hard. Which she is. Which she always has been. The world just never handled her carefully enough to notice.
" Sorry for almost breaking my promise." I pause looking into her eyes,
"I meant what I said." I whisper against her lips. "I won't touch you like that until you love me. Until you want me — not from heat, not from loneliness, not from the aftermath of someone else's failure." My thumb traces her cheekbone. "From love. Only from love."
Her breath catches. Her fingers tighten on my shirt — not pulling, just holding. Like she's anchoring herself to something she didn't expect to find.
"I'll make you something to eat. The maid will bring it up."
I lift myself off the bed. Adjust my trousers with the casual dignity of a man pretending his entire body isn't staging a mutiny.
She's still lying on the mattress, touching her lips with her fingertips — that delicate grazing motion she does unconsciously that makes me feel like a beast for wanting to replace her fingers with my mouth.
I walk out before I change my mind.
Downstairs, I throw myself into cooking.
Chicken noodle soup. My hands move with the precision of a man who's been cooking for himself since adolescence — not by choice, but because trusting someone else not to poison your food is a luxury Schweitzer patriarchs don't have.
The kitchen fills with warm aroma. Workers pad around the villa — cleaning, reconstructing the entrance Adrien's team destroyed. I stare at the simmering broth like it holds answers to questions I've been carrying since I was seven.
Lucas walks in. Sniffing the air like a bloodhound who's caught something worth investigating.
"Theo's cooking." He peers over the pot with undisguised delight. "Did getting punched earlier finally make you realize how indispensable I am?"
I side-eye him. Set out three bowls. Hers. Mine. And this perpetually hungry bastard's.
"By the way." Lucas settles onto the counter stool, his expression shifting to something genuinely thoughtful. He rubs the bandage on his jaw where Adrien's fist connected. "I think I understand why you're so far gone for Beatrice."
Her name pulls my attention like it always does. Every time. Without fail.
"She's kind, Theo." He says it simply. Like he's still surprised by it. "She watched me threaten Adrien. Heard every word — the manipulation, the implied violence, all of it.
And afterward, she didn't look at me like I was some unhinged lunatic." He pauses. "She treated the cut on my face and asked if I was okay."
A ghost of a smile crosses my face as I portion the soup carefully into bowls.
He's right. Beatrice doesn't look at people like us — men with blood on their reputations and violence coded into their survival instincts — like we're contamination that needs to be removed. She sees what we've become without forgetting that we became it for reasons.
"And she's fearless." Lucas taps his fork against my bowl. "Made Adrien Aurélien Laurent speechless. Sharp tongue, airtight logic, nerves of absolute steel."
I nod slowly. He's not wrong about any of it.
"But that's not why," I murmur, adjusting her bowl with the same tenderness I feel toward the woman it's meant for.
Lucas frowns. "Then why?"
"I can list a hundred reasons why I love her. She's brave. She's brilliant. She's beautiful in ways that make my chest hurt." I stare at the clear broth.
"But none of those reasons actually matter. Because I would have loved her even if she was broken, scared, and falling apart."
I let the maid take the tray upstairs.
"I love her. That's all I know."
Lucas says nothing. A familiar silence settles between us — the kind that only exists between two people who understand that some truths don't need responses.
The maid returns with an empty bowl. "Madam said the noodles were delicious. She also asked me to let you know she'll be leaving tomorrow morning."
A sharp ache presses against my ribs. Yes. She'll leave. She isn't mine — not in the way I want her to be. Not yet.
I nod. Hand the dishes to the maid.
Lucas is sprawled across my living room couch like a cat claiming territory. I narrow my eyes. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
He yawns. Stretches luxuriously. I kick his leg off the armrest and shove him sideways. He hits the floor with a groan.
"That constitutes workplace harassment," he announces, pointing an accusatory finger at me from the ground.
"If I started addressing your complaints, I'd go bankrupt accommodating your demands within a fiscal quarter."
He glares. Scrambles up. Grabs a cushion and winds his arm back to swing.
"Unless you'd prefer to take over Emilia's overseas assignments, feel free."
The cushion freezes two inches from my face.
"You wouldn't," he breathes.
"Emilia will be deploying to Laurent Corporation under cover. The Siren unit would welcome a male addition to their operational roster —"
"NO." Full panic. Both hands up.
"Those women aren't operatives — they're biological weapons. The last time I spent seventy-two hours in their company, I was incapacitated for an entire week. I couldn't look at a curved line without losing consciousness."
"Nobody instructed you to sleep with three of them consecutively."
Lucas opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again like a man reviewing his life choices in real time.
"I didn't anticipate the cumulative effect," he whispers defensively.
A rare smirk tugs at my mouth. But my thoughts are already drifting — pulled back, inevitably, to the memory of Beatrice pressed beneath me.
The way her curves fit against me like a lock finding its key. Her softness against every hard edge I carry. Those small hands gripping my shirt like I was her only anchor in a current that wanted to sweep her under.
I stand abruptly.
Lucas frowns. "Where are you going?"
"Cold shower."
Because a specific part of my anatomy has developed its own agenda, its own ambitions, and its own complete disregard for the promise I made to the woman sleeping upstairs.
Ice water crashes over my skull in the guest bathroom. My chest heaves.
My blood runs so hot that the cold barely registers — like pouring water on a forge and watching it evaporate before it reaches the metal.
I look down. Clench my jaw. My hands are braced against the tile wall, trembling with a need I've never had to manage before.
In thirty-two years, I've never been aroused enough to require intervention. Never found any woman compelling enough for my body to override my mind.
Desire was a concept other men described and I observed with clinical detachment — until Beatrice kissed me on a couch and rewired my entire nervous system.
"Stand down," I mutter at my dick through clenched teeth. "You're not getting anything until she's in love with you."
The water runs. The cold bites. My body doesn't listen.
This is going to be an exceptionally long fucking night.