Serena couldn't remember the last time she felt so exposed without ever taking off a piece of clothing.
She sat at the edge of the long velvet chaise inside Damon Cross's penthouse library, her back straight, legs crossed, and fingers nervously entwined in her lap. The room smelled like warm cedarwood and old ambition. Books lined every wall—tomes of leather-bound knowledge, power bound in paper. The man across from her, however, made even those dusty titles seem irrelevant.
Damon didn't sit. He leaned against the far table, arms crossed, his gaze slow and observant—not like a man assessing a conquest, but as if trying to read a language he'd once known and long since forgotten.
"Why did you bring me here?" Serena asked finally, her voice softer than she intended. She hated how uncertain she sounded in his presence, hated even more that part of her didn't mind it.
He looked at her for a moment longer before answering. "Because I wanted to see if you were real."
Her breath caught.
"After all this time," he continued, stepping forward, each stride measured, deliberate, "you came into my world without asking for permission. You made it impossible for me to ignore you."
"I wasn't trying to get your attention," she whispered.
"That," Damon said, pausing mere feet from her now, "is exactly what made you dangerous."
The silence that settled between them wasn't awkward. It was weighty, simmering, like heat trapped beneath the skin.
Serena stood slowly, refusing to feel small. The hem of her satin dress shifted with the movement, drawing his eyes down momentarily before flicking back up. Her heart thundered.
"You think I'm playing a game," she said.
"I know you are," Damon replied. "But so am I."
She blinked at him. Her mouth opened slightly but no sound came.
Then his voice dropped. "And I don't play to lose."
Their breath tangled.
She could see it then—the steel beneath his tailored perfection, the man who didn't need to raise his voice to command a room. It terrified her how much she wanted to be undone by it.
His fingers brushed her jaw, barely there, like the echo of a thought he hadn't yet decided to finish.
"You wear confidence like armor," he said. "But your eyes tell me there's a war inside."
She didn't deny it.
Instead, she stepped forward, reducing the inches between them to breath. Her voice, when it came, wasn't timid anymore.
"Then maybe you should stop watching and start choosing a side."
He smiled then. Slight. Dangerous. A promise made in silence.
—
The evening turned to night, and the conversation became something neither of them could name. They sat with a bottle of dark wine between them, no music, no guards, no rules. Just them.
Damon rarely spoke of his past, but tonight, he let pieces slip. Mentions of boarding schools built more like fortresses, of a father who loved only power and a mother whose love was conditional.
"And you?" he asked.
Serena hesitated. "I wanted to be someone different. Better. But I learned early that being good doesn't get you chosen. It just makes you easy to forget."
Damon stared at her like he could rewrite that truth if he tried hard enough.
"I see you now," he said.
And something in her chest cracked.
—
By the time she stood to leave, the city lights painted golden stripes across her bare shoulders.
He walked her to the elevator, but before the doors opened, she turned.
"Why me?" she asked.
Damon didn't hesitate.
"Because every time I see you, I forget how to be cold."
The doors opened. She stepped in, heart thundering, soul alight. As the elevator descended, Serena realized something terrifying:
She was falling.
And Damon Cross wasn't the kind of man you survived falling for.