AI The key scraped against the lowest of the three deadbolts, a heavy, metallic rattle that always sounded too loud in the narrow stairwell. Rory paused, her grocery bag cradled against her hip, the smell of toasted cumin and turmeric rising from the Indian restaurant below. She turned the key, then the middle lock, and finally the top one. Brick Lane was always noisy on a Thursday night, but inside her flat, she expected the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the low, indignant mewl of Ptolemy demanding his dinner.
She pushed the door open with her elbow.
Instead of empty silence, the smell of rain, damp wool, and a sharp, expensive touch of sandalwood greeted her.
Ptolemy, a fat tabby who usually treated strangers with the disdain of a deposed monarch, was curled contentedly on the worn velvet armchair. Settled right beside him, long legs crossed at the knee and a gloved hand lazily scratching the cat behind the ears, was Lucien Moreau.
Rory froze in the doorway. Her fingers tightened around the paper handles of the grocery bag until the cardboard bit into her palm. Her left wrist, where the small crescent-shaped scar sat beneath her sleeve, twitched with a sudden surge of adrenaline.
"You're late, ma chérie," Lucien said. His voice was a low, smooth purr that scraped over her nerve endings like rough silk . He didn't look up immediately, keeping his gaze—one eye an arresting, liquid amber, the other a bottomless, pitiless black—fixed on the purring tabby.
"You're in my flat," Rory said. Her voice was steady, a product of years of burying her panic deep down where no one could find it, but her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. "How did you get past three deadbolts, Lucien?"
He finally looked at her, his slicked-back platinum blond hair catching the weak amber light of the streetlamp outside. He was dressed in one of his signature tailored charcoal suits, looking entirely too pristine for a cramped East London flat where the wallpaper was peeling at the corners. Resting against the arm of the chair was his ivory-handled cane, the polished bone gleaming in the dim room.
"Your deadlocks are respectable for a human," Lucien said, offering a faint, mocking curve of his lips. "But only for a human. You should have let me ward the threshold when I offered last autumn."
"Last autumn, we were barely on speaking terms," Rory said, closing the door behind her and deliberately throwing all three bolts back into place. She needed the physical barrier, even if the real threat was already sitting in her armchair. "And then you vanished for four months."
"I had business in Marseille."
"Right. Business." She walked past him into the tiny kitchenette, refusing to let him see how much his sudden reappearance shook her. She dumped the bag of groceries on the cluttered counter, next to a stack of Eva’s old research scrolls and a half-empty mug of cold tea. "And I suppose that business required you to break into my home without a word of warning?"
"I didn't break in. I let myself in." Lucien stood up, his five-foot-eleven frame immediately making the small room feel suffocatingly tight. He moved with a predatory grace that always reminded Rory of what flowed through his veins—half-human, yes, but the other half belonged to the dark, grasping realm of Avaros. He leaned lightly on his cane as he walked toward the kitchen boundary, the silver tip tapping softly against the linoleum. "And you haven't changed your locks. Or your habits."
"I shouldn't have to change my locks to keep out the city's premier information broker," she retorted, turning to face him. She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms to keep from reaching out, to keep from touching him.
The last time she had seen him, they had been standing in the pouring rain outside Silas’ bar, furious and breathless. He had tried to pull her into his world, to shield her from the shadows creeping out of London’s underbelly, and she had pushed him away, terrified of losing the hard-won independence she had fled Cardiff to find. They had left so much unsaid—words of anger, of desperate, forbidden attraction—hanging in the damp night air. And then he had simply gone.
"You look thin, Rory," he said softly . The mocking edge had drained from his voice, replaced by something heavier, more intimate. His heterochromatic eyes swept over her, taking in her shoulder-length black hair, the slight shadows under her bright blue eyes, the strain in her shoulders.
"I'm working. I'm busy."
"For the woman at the Golden Empress? Delivering cold duck in the sleet?" Lucien took a step closer. The scent of sandalwood and winter air grew stronger, wrapping around her. "You are meant for better things than courier runs, Rory. You have a mind that could untangle the most complex webs in this city, yet you hide here."
"I like my life," she lied, her voice dropping an octave . "It’s safe. It’s quiet. Or it was, until ten minutes ago."
Lucien stopped just inches from her. He was close enough that she could feel the unnatural warmth radiating from him—a trait of his demonic heritage that always defied the damp cold of London. He reached out, his hand gloved in soft black leather, and gently took her left arm. He didn't pull, but the pressure was commanding. He turned her arm slightly , his thumb resting over the sleeve where her crescent scar was hidden .
"You left a mark on me, you know," he murmured, his amber eye burning in the half-light . "In Marseille, in Brussels, in every dark corner I had to negotiate. I kept seeing a girl from Cardiff who thought she could outrun her demons by hiding above a curry house."
Rory’s breath hitched. She looked down at his gloved hand, then up into his striking, mismatched eyes. "I didn't ask you to think about me, Luc."
"You didn't have to ask." He let his hand slide down to her wrist, his fingers wrapping around the narrow bones. His touch was incredibly gentle for someone who made his living through leverage and secrets. "I came back because the whispers in the underworld are getting louder. And because I couldn't bear the thought of someone else finding you first."
"Is that the only reason?" The question escaped her lips before she could stop it, thin and vulnerable in the quiet flat.
Lucien stared at her, the mask of the cool, unbothered fixer slipping just a fraction. Beneath the slicked-back blond hair and the immaculate charcoal suit, she saw the raw, dangerous hunger that he usually kept so carefully locked away.
"No," he whispered.
He leaned in, his breath warm against her cheek. Rory’s heart hammered against her ribs, a wild, trapped bird. She should push him away. He was dangerous, a creature of deals and shadows, and she had promised herself she would never let another man dictate her life. But Lucien didn't want to dictate; he wanted to consume, and God help her, she had missed the fire of him.
She reached up, her fingers wrapping around the lapel of his tailored jacket, pulling him down that last, agonizing inch.
When his lips met hers, it was like the spark hitting the tinder. It wasn't gentle. It was a collision of months of resentment, of sleepless nights, of things left unsaid on rainy streets. Lucien groaned, dropping his cane to the floor—the click of the ivory handle against the linoleum echoing in the small room—as he brought both hands up to frame her face, his leather-clad fingers tangling in her straight black hair.
He kissed her with a desperate, starved intensity , pulling her flush against his chest. Rory clung to him, her fingers digging into the expensive wool of his suit. The taste of him was familiar and intoxicating, a mixture of dark warmth and cold rain. For a moment, the fears that had haunted her since Cardiff, the shadow of her past, the weariness of her long days—all of it burned away in the heat of his touch.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his forehead resting against hers, his breathing ragged. His amber eye gleamed with a fierce, possessive light.
"Tell me to leave, Rory," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "Tell me to walk out that door, and I will. But if I stay..."
Rory looked at him, taking in the sharp lines of his face, the vulnerability he so rarely allowed anyone to see . She reached up, her bare hand replacing his gloved one on her cheek, her thumb tracing his jawline.
"Don't go," she said softly . "Not tonight."