Too Young for His World

Elena woke to sunlight slicing through heavy curtains, the room unfamiliar and too quiet. No city horns, no neighbor’s TV bleeding through thin walls. Just birdsong and the faint crackle of a dying fire.

She sat up slowly, the oversized T-shirt... his, she realized, from the faint trace of his cologne, sliding off one shoulder. The bed was enormous, sheets impossibly soft against her bare legs. For a moment, she let herself sink back into the pillows, breathing him in, before fury snapped her upright.

Kidnapped. Caged. Protected.

She swung her legs over the side, bare feet hitting cool hardwood. The red marks on her ankles had faded to faint pink lines, reminders of zip ties, of strong hands lifting her in the dark, of the brush of a body against hers that had lasted only seconds but still heated her skin at the memory.

The door was locked, as promised. She tried it anyway.

Across the estate, Dominic stood at his bedroom window, coffee untouched in his hand, watching the monitors. Six feeds, but only one held his attention: her room. High-definition, color, multiple angles.

He’d watched her wake. Watched the sheet slip down to reveal the curve of one breast before she clutched it to her. Watched her inhale the pillow like she was chasing his scent. Watched her try the door with a defiance that made his cock twitch.

Forty-two years old, and he was surveilling a twenty-two-year-old like a starving man outside a banquet.

He set the cup down hard enough to crack the saucer.

She was too young for this world. Too young for the blood on his hands, the enemies at his gates, the darkness that lived in him. Too young to be looked at the way he was looking at her now—slowly, thoroughly, as if he could strip her with his eyes alone.

He should send her away. Put her on a plane with enough money to disappear. Let her find some clean life with a clean man who didn’t wake up reaching for a gun.

But the thought of another man touching her, kissing that mouth, sliding between those thighs, ignited a rage so vicious he nearly crushed the phone in his hand.

No.

She stayed.

He stayed away.

For three days, he avoided her wing of the house. Meals appeared on trays outside her door—steak, fresh fruit, pastries still warm. Clothes arrived in her size: silk robes, soft leggings, tops that skimmed without clinging. No underwear at first. A deliberate omission that made her curse him even as her body responded to the constant brush of fabric against sensitive skin.

Books. A tablet loaded with movies. A bathroom stocked with products that smelled like jasmine and vanilla, someone had researched her.

But no Dominic.

By the fourth evening, the isolation and luxury had worn her nerves raw.

She found him in the library.

He stood at the far end, back to her, pouring whiskey into a crystal tumbler. Shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled high, revealing rope-thick forearms. Firelight flickered over the scars on his knuckles, some old and white, some newer and pink.

He knew she was there. She saw it in the brief pause of his hand, the subtle tension across his shoulders.

“You can’t keep me locked up forever,” she said, voice steady despite the way her pulse leaped at being this close to him again.

He turned slowly. His gaze swept over her hair loose and wild, one of his silk robes belted loosely around her waist, bare legs and feet against the Persian rug. The robe gaped just enough at the neckline to reveal the soft swell of her breasts. No bra. He noticed. His fingers tightened on the glass.

“I can keep you as long as necessary.”

“Necessary for what? Your ego?”

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “For your life.”

She stepped closer, anger and something darker propelling her. “You mistake your chains for concern.”

Another step. Close enough now to smell whiskey and smoke and him.

“I see the way you look at me,” she said, voice dropping. “Like you want to devour me whole.”

The air thickened. His eyes darkened, pupils, swallowing the irises.

“You’re too fucking young for this hell,” he said roughly, the words torn out of him. “Too young for me.”

She laughed softly, the sound brushing over his skin like fingers. “You think I’m some fragile virgin who doesn’t know what she wants?”

His jaw flexed. “I think you have no idea what I’d do to you.”

“Then show me.”

The challenge hung between them, electric and dangerous.

He set the glass down with deliberate care. Took one step toward her. Then another. Until he loomed over her, heat radiating off his body, close enough that her breasts nearly brushed his chest with every breath.

His hand rose slowly, controlled, and hovered an inch from her throat. Not touching. Just close enough that she felt the warmth of his palm, the threat of contact.

“I’d ruin you,” he said, voice gravel and smoke. “I’d spread you out on that table behind you and lick every inch of you until you were sobbing for my cock. I’d fuck you so deep you’d feel me for days. And when you came, it would be my name on your tongue, only mine for the rest of your life.”

Her breath hitched. Heat flooded her, pooling low and insistent. She should have been terrified.

She wasn’t.

Instead, she tilted her head back, exposing her throat to that hovering hand.

“Then ruin me,” she whispered.

His control fractured, just a hairline crack. A low growl rumbled in his chest. His fingers curled into a fist to keep from grabbing her.

Then he stepped back. Abruptly. Harshly.

“No.” The word was ragged. “You’re twenty-two. I’ve got twenty years of blood on me. You deserve better than being another stain.”

He turned away, shoulders rigid, pouring another drink with hands that weren’t quite steady.

Elena stood there, chest heaving, body thrumming with unspent need. Rejection stung—, but beneath it, something fiercer flared.

He thought he was protecting her from himself.

He had no idea she was already burning.

She walked past him, close enough that her breast brushed his arm, deliberately. He went statue-still, glass frozen halfway to his lips.

At the doorway, she paused.

“Keep telling yourself that, Dominic,” she said softly. “But we both know you’re lying.”

Then she was gone, silk robe whispering against her thighs, leaving the scent of jasmine and want in her wake.

Dominic drained the whiskey in one swallow. It did nothing to cool the fire in his blood.

He stared at the empty doorway, cock aching against his zipper, every muscle locked against the urge to follow her. To pin her to the nearest wall and take what she’d just offered.

Twenty years between them.

Twenty years of reasons why he shouldn’t.

And not a single one was strong enough to stop the obsession tightening around his throat like a noose.

Not yet.