Rara's sobs had reverberated for hours before fading, leaving a silence so loud it swallowed everything.
The Romanovskis were gone now, off to Moscow and then Italy, leaving their son and his chaos behind. I wondered if they'd ever truly come back-or if Judas would let them.
I stood in the middle of the hollow living room, staring at nothing and hearing everything: the faint creak of wood, the distant shuffle of the guards, and the relentless pounding of my own heartbeat. It felt wrong. Judas wasn't here, but his scent refused to fade.
I told myself to let it go.
To shove the hollowness of his pale eyes into some dark corner of my mind and lock the door. He wasn't my responsibility. I had my own scars to nurse, my own pieces to gather. And yet, every time I blinked, his face was there. The bitterness in his smile, the brokenness in his voice.
You can't save him, I whispered to myself. He doesn't want to be saved.
But the treacherous ache in my chest didn't care.
My feet moved before my mind caught up, carrying me back to the place I dreaded most. The room. The last time I was here, he'd stolen pieces of me I didn't know I had. I told myself I was going to forget him. But when I opened the door, there he was.
Judas Romanovski. My predator.
He stood by the window. Against the moon light. The tension in his broad shoulders was intense, rippling through the muscles that framed him like armour. He looked untouchable-every inch the ruthless beast the world feared. The pale light caught on his sharp cheekbones, the faint redness still staining one of them. His bloodshot eyes stared out into the night, distant but dangerous, like a storm waiting for the right moment to strike. Or was it the aftermath of the storm. I couldn't tell.
I didn't dare breathe.
He didn't move.
My hand clutched the doorframe, my chest tightened with hesitation.
I wasn't ready to face him. Not now. Not like this.
Just leave, I told myself. Walk away.
But the moment I reached for the door knob, rough voice stopped me.
"Stay."
(Stay.)
One word. Unknown and completely out of my head.
Yet, I recognised the tone.
It wasn't a request-it was an order. One that wrapped around my throat like a noose, daring me to defy him.
I froze, my fingers trembled against the cold metal.
A thread pulled taut, daring me to disobey.
My chest tightened and every muscle in my body screamed for me to leave. But my feet stayed rooted, caught between instinct and something darker, something I felt but couldn't describe.
Minutes passed. Maybe seconds. Time blurred as the silence stretched. I couldn't bring myself to move closer, but I couldn't walk away either.
Judas stayed quiet for a long time, so long that I almost wondered if he'd forgotten I was there.
Then he sighed, the sound heavy with something I couldn't decipher. Frustration? Resignation? His hand raked through his hair, and the unkempt locks tumbled forward, shadowing his face. He turned around slowly with same fluid yet commanding aura.
Even in the faint moonlight, he looked larger than life, menacing and formidable. Yet... there was something else. Something fractured beneath the surface, a jagged edge to the danger. Why didn't I ever see it? Or he had kept it hidden so well I could not see.
His bloodshot eyes found mine making me hard to breathe. His gaze didn't waver instead pierced straight through me, stripping me of every defence I thought I had.
"Do you think I'm a monster?"
The words hit like a punch, stealing the breath from my lungs. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because wasn't that exactly what I thought? What I feared?
Finally, I managed, "Monsters… don't always know they're monsters."
His lips curled into a dark, bitter smile, the sound of his chuckle cutting through me like a blade. It wasn't humor-it was something else. Resentment? Hatred? For me?
But I couldn't tell if it was directed at me-or at himself.
He stepped closer, and instinctively, I stepped back until my spine hit the closed door. My heart slammed against my ribcage, my breathing shallow and uneven. My hands scrambled for the door knob, fingers slipping in my panic, unable to twist it.
He didn't stop.
Towering over me, he was everywhere-the heat of his body, the intensity of his gaze, the quiet power in the way he moved. My hands flew up defensively, but he didn't even flinch.
Instead, his hand lifted, rough fingertips brushing against my cheek. The touch was impossibly gentle, almost reverent. My skin burned where he touched, a flush creeping up my neck as his thumb grazed over my cheekbone as I craned my neck staring up at him.
His eyes were endless, turbulent pools of something I didn't understand. Pain? Regret? Lust? I didn't know, but it was enough to trap me, to keep me frozen as his hand moved, trailing the back of his fingers down my arms, leaving goose bumps in their wake.
When his fingers reached my hand on the door knob, he didn't stop. Slowly, deliberately, his hand covered mine, dwarfing it completely. He didn't twist the knob-didn't pull me away. He just held it there, trapping me with his body, his presence, his everything.
"Why do you always look at me like that?" he murmured tracing his eyes on every part of me as if he couldn't stop looking at me.
And that terrified me.
"Like what?" I hated how timid my voice sounded.
"Like I'm both the hell you fear." His gaze roamed over me, lingering on every detail as if committing me to memory, as if I were something precious and damning all at once. "And the salvation you crave."
My heart slammed in my chest.
I wanted to scream at him, deny him, tell him he was wrong. But the ache in my chest betrayed me.
Wasn't that exactly how I felt?
He tilted his head, his thumb brushing over the curve of my jaw now, sending shivers down my spine. His touch was a contradiction-tender and commanding, gentle and demanding. It made me hate myself for the way my body reacted, leaning into him when I should be shoving him away.
I hated the truth in his words.
Because he wasn't just my hell. He was the temptation I couldn't resist, the storm I couldn't outrun.
I closed my eyes, as if that would shield me from him, from myself. But it only made his presence more vivid-the heat of his body pressing closer, the scent of him filling my senses.
"You're wrong," I whispered.
"Am I?" His chuckle was low.
"I don't crave anything about you."
The lie felt weak even as I said it.
"Liar." His hand tightened slightly over mine, his fingers brushing against my knuckles. The movement was small, yet it felt like the earth shifting beneath me.
He was touching me but at the same time, eh was not. What was this dilemma? How do I end it?
I fought the pull he had over me. I needed to get away, but my body refused to obey.
What was it about him that made me so weak?
"Don't you get it, ptichka?" he said softly, almost as if to himself. "I don't know how to let you go, even if I wanted to. And hell knows I've tried."
Before I could respond, his arms wrapped around me, pulling me into his chest. It wasn't a gentle embrace; it was desperate, consuming. His breath hitched against my neck, the sound raw, like he was fighting something too big to contain.
I felt his body tense against mine, the storm in him crashing against my own. Every nerve in my body ignited, a wildfire consuming every thought that dared whisper reason.
"Judas…" I whispered, though it came out more like a plea than a warning.
He didn't answer. Instead, his hand roamed my back with a shameless intensity, pressing me tighter against him. His head dipped, his lips grazing the sensitive skin of my neck as he buried himself in the crook, inhaling deeply like I was the air he needed to breathe.
I felt small in his grasp, fragile in the hands of this man who seemed to hold the weight of the world in his. Yet his hold wasn't gentle-it was consuming, squeezing me so tightly it felt like he wanted to absorb me, to claim every inch of me as his own.
The ground beneath us may as well have shattered, the world fading into nothing but the overwhelming press of him.
My toes barely touched the floor, his strength lifting me effortlessly, leaving me suspended in the air. It wasn't enough for him; he wanted me closer. I could feel it in the way his arms tightened, his fingers gripping me as though I might disappear.
His hand slipped lower, shamelessly tracing over the curve of my back, and then-
I gasped when his hand came to rest on my ass, fingers pressing into the flesh there before tugging insistently at the waistband of my leggings. The fabric slid down effortlessly, pooling around my thighs, and my breath caught as realization crashed into me.
Shit.
Panic surged, but before I could form the words to stop him, his hand slid lower, cupping me.
I froze.
Judas stiffened against me.
The air shifted and the storm in his eyes was now dangerously still.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
His fingers grazed where the plug should've been, and I knew he realized it was gone. His body went rigid, his breath uneven against my neck.
"Ptichka…"
I opened my mouth, words tumbling over themselves in my mind, but none made it past my lips.
I had no idea how to answer him. Or how to explain.
And when he pulled away, I wished I had obeyed him. Because there was no way I'd survive the hurricane surfing in his eyes.