The moment Eloise turned her head and saw Luciano sitting inches beside her, the carefully constructed shell of her composure shattered. She couldn't breathe; her lungs seized, starved of air. He sat there not like a predator who had hunted its prey, but like a man merely waiting for a delayed connection—calm, impossibly relaxed, utterly in control.
He was dressed in a dark, charcoal suit, tailored to lethal perfection, making him look less like a vengeful tycoon and more like an angel cast from shadow.
His presence swallowed all oxygen from the small space.
His gaze slid to her, slow and devastating, pinning her in place with the kind of intensity that stripped the world down to only him.
Eloise's throat tightened. Her fingers trembled around the cold cup he had forced into her palm. The condensation dripped onto her shaking knee.
