Alessandro had always believed desire was a weakness other men indulged in.
He had ruled cities, dismantled bloodlines, bent loyalty with a glance. Flesh was negotiable. Bodies were replaceable. Want was something he observed in others, cataloged, exploited.
Until Mila.
She had become a presence he could not excise.
That night, alone in his study, the house quiet beneath him, Alessandro poured a drink he did not need and did not touch. The fire burned low, throwing restless shadows across the walls. His mind refused stillness. Every thought curved back to her, as if she were a gravity well he could not escape.
He saw her as she moved through the corridors—head bowed, hands careful, eyes deceptively soft. Obedient on the surface. But beneath it, something coiled. Something restrained.
That was what haunted him.
Not her fear.
Her control.
He imagined the contrast: the way her stillness would break, how composure would fracture under pressure. How silence would turn into breath caught too shallow, too fast. He did not picture crude acts. He pictured responses—the language of surrender written in muscle and pulse.
He wanted to be the only one who could read it.
Alessandro leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, and the image sharpened against his will. Mila standing before him, the space between them charged, unbearable. Her chin lifted just enough to show defiance. Her mouth parted as if to speak and failing.
He imagined the heat of proximity. The awareness. The way power tasted when it was intimate.
Possession, he realized, was not enough anymore.
He already owned her movements. Her time. Her world.
What unsettled him was the hunger to own her attention—to feel her thoughts bend toward him, not out of fear, but inevitability. To be the thing she measured herself against. The thing she resisted and wanted in the same breath.
The realization tightened something dark and pleased in his chest.
He stood abruptly, crossing the room, stopping before the window that overlooked the estate. Somewhere below, Mila slept—or pretended to. The idea that she might be awake, thinking, plotting, existing without his permission scraped against his control.
He wanted her awareness on him.
Wanted her to feel watched even when she was alone. Wanted her body to remember his presence the way the house remembered her footsteps.
"This is dangerous," he murmured to the empty room.
Not because of morality.
Because desire, once acknowledged, demanded escalation.
Alessandro turned from the window, decision settling like a blade sliding into place. He would not touch her yet. Touch was crude. Touch ended things.
Instead, he would close the distance slowly. Invisibly. Let anticipation do what force never could.
Let her feel the tension before the contact.
Let her wonder.
And when he finally stood close enough for her to feel the heat of him, to question her own breath, to hate that her body reacted before her mind—
He smiled faintly.
Mila believed she was fighting a quiet war.
She did not yet understand that Alessandro DeLuca had begun a far more intimate one.
And he intended to win it without ever asking her consent.