Chapter 3

A long time had passed since that wild, desperate kiss in the desert.

Elise had followed Merrick more than a thousand kilometers to Fourteenth District—a remote stretch along the border, yet the busiest little town anywhere in that region.

There were clean inns here, even private baths.

Water rushed steadily.

Elise finally washed the sandy grime from her face.

At a little over five foot seven, with a strong, striking figure, she looked like a rose that had fought its way through desert thorns—brilliant and unyielding.

On the sink lay the keys to the Jeep.

Merrick gave them to her so she could feel at ease.

Elise stared quietly at her reflection in the mirror.

There was nothing fragile or timid about her.

In those steady, restrained eyes burned a fierce ambition to climb upward.

She knew Merrick was her springboard out of the life she’d been trapped in.

And she knew his heart already belonged to someone else.

But she didn’t care.

Elise wanted to see the world beyond everything she had known.

She wanted to see the blue horizon, the towering skyline she had only read about, and all the things she had never even imagined.

Gazing at her clean reflection, Elise’s eyes filled with unshakable resolve.

That kiss in the desert felt like a mirage, something that shimmered once and never appeared again.

Because of a sandstorm, the inn was full, and there had been only one room left when she and Merrick arrived.

They had stayed in this border town longer than planned.

The unexpected happened that day…

After her shower, Merrick lounged against the headboard and switched on the black phone he’d taken from his pack.

From the moment it powered on, the vibration of messages didn’t stop.

No one knew what he saw on that phone, but his face suddenly drained of color, turning sharp and pale, his whole body radiating a tightly held fury.

Elise didn’t make a sound.

She lay quietly beneath the blanket, watching the man on the other bed as he fought to contain whatever storm was breaking inside him.

Suddenly, the lights went out.

Merrick sat up, his back to her, a heavy silence settling into the already small room.

After a long moment, the door opened and shut again.

Merrick had left and he didn’t come back for a long time.

When Elise finally found him downstairs in the tavern, drunk out of his mind, her eyes dimmed.

Alcohol in Fourteenth District didn’t burn on the way down, but its force hit with brutal strength.

He’d been drinking the notorious “restorative brew,” a rustic concoction locals made with whatever wild herbs and roots they could gather.

A woman who had been eyeing him for some time reached for his shoulder, only for Elise to intercept her halfway.

“He’s mine.”

Her voice was as cold as the night wind, her whole presence sharp and dangerous, so different from how she usually appeared.

Hauling Merrick back to the inn and dropping him onto the bed, Elise listened as his drunken words slipped out.

“Why… do you always choose my brother…”

The room was dim; she hadn’t turned on the lights.

Elise used a towel to wipe his increasingly fevered skin.

The temperature in Fourteenth District dropped sharply at night.

The liquor he drank looked harmless, but it was known to ignite the blood.

Most men here never drank more than half a jug.

Merrick had drunk four or five. No wonder his whole body burned.

Drunk and overheated, his mouth was dry, his pulse restless.

Heat surged through Merrick’s veins, as if someone had thrown him onto an open flame, the burn gathering in one place.

It was so intense he couldn’t sleep.

Elise kept her back to him, dabbing a cold towel over his skin again and again, unaware that he was already awake, eyes half-lidded in a drunken fog as he listened to her quiet murmurs.

“Don’t be afraid. Even if the whole world turns its back on you, I won’t. I’ll stay with you. Always.”

It was such a tempting promise.

Ordinary liquor knocked a man out cold.

But this kind of fortified liquor only sharpened his senses, leaving him alert and unyielding.

In Merrick’s mind, a single thought pulsed.

A sudden grip at her waist jolted Elise, knocking the towel from her hand. The room spun, and when her vision settled, she found herself staring into bloodshot eyes.

“You…” Heat pressed against her lips, and her heart skipped hard.

Elise’s eyes widened.

She froze, staring up at the sharp, shadow-carved lines of his face, the rest of her words dying instantly on her tongue.

Instinct pushed her to fight back, danger flaring in her chest, yet the memory of those final twenty hours she spent saving herself made her freeze.

She lifted her gaze to the man whose eyes had already slid shut.

He seemed to mistake her for the only spring that could quench him.

Elise slowly let go of her resistance.

She finally understood why the old women in town always warned that the liquor in Fourteenth District wasn’t meant to be drunk in more than a gulp or two.

It was simply too strong.

Elise bit down hard on her lip, refusing to let a sound escape.

But soon, even that stubborn silence was gently pried open.

In the dim double room of the rundown inn, she clung to his shoulders, listening to the creaking above her as her brow tightened and eased again.

What she didn’t expect was that Merrick, beneath that devastatingly handsome face, moved with a clear inexperience, unable to find his way.

She didn’t make a single sound from beginning to end until the world went still and only their breathing remained.

She heard the man’s hoarse, low voice.

“Are you alright?” Merrick asked.

He was sober now, and the look in his eyes was dark and unreadable.

He had once studied all kinds of professional guides so the woman he loved could have a perfect first time.

Yet he ended up using all of it on Elise, someone he had barely known.

He even gave her his virginity.

In the muggy heat of the tiny inn room, the old, decaying window rattled under the force of the sandstorm winds outside.

Elise shut her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck, too embarrassed to answer.

She didn’t know that this made her feel that strange sensation again.

Elise blinked in disbelief. “Why… again…?”

It felt as if she’d been pulled straight back to the day she made her final escape.

From night until dawn, she crossed dune after dune in the desert, her throat burning from going so long without water, her legs already drained of all strength.

Whether it was the alcohol fogging his mind or the hurt of being cast aside by the woman he loved simmering in his chest, only Merrick knew the truth.

That night, Elise was like a lone boat lost at sea, unable to find a lighthouse, pushed again and again into the darkness by waves as black as the abyss.

When she woke again, it was already late the next afternoon.

Merrick was a wolf—worse than the starving one she met that night.

That was Elise’s first thought when she opened her eyes.

After that night, Merrick seemed like a different person.

He told her he would take responsibility for her.

They rented a modest little house in Fourteenth District.

Elise showed him the long river at sunset, taught him how to recognize hidden dangers in the desert, while Merrick taught her ways to defend herself.

As days and nights passed, they rarely thought about those unhappy memories.

The deep brown backpack lay tossed in the corner.

Merrick never opened that black phone again.

But he also never took Elise away.

They simply settled quietly in Fourteenth District.

Merrick couldn’t get enough of her.

The deeper he sank, the heavier Elise’s heart grew.

One week later, deep into the night.

The creaking floorboards, the woman’s uneven breaths, the man’s low, ragged growls—every sound bled through the thin wall in the dead of night, pushing the already-irritated neighbor next door to his limit as he shot to his feet, ready to pound on their door.

But the moment he opened his own, he saw a whole line of black-clad bodyguards in the courtyard next door and slammed it shut in terror.

During their time in Fourteenth District, Elise and Merrick had developed a wordless rhythm in the dark.

His strength only grew.

The world spun, a fierce suffocation tightening around her throat.

Elise swallowed again and again, clinging to him like a fish desperate for air before a storm breaks, her fingers locked tight against his back.

“I’m about to…” Her voice was smothered before she could finish.

In an instant, every sound around her vanished.

Elise felt as if she had slipped into a silent, empty world.

Only her own racing heartbeat remained, matched by Merrick’s pounding against her.

Just as both of them drifted in that dazed warmth, holding each other close as their breaths steadied, three precise knocks sounded from outside the door.

“Sir, Madam sent us to bring you home.”