The rain had started just as Elena Hart stepped out of the gallery. A soft drizzle at first, but enough to slick the cobblestones and paint the city in muted silvers. She didn't mind. In fact, she welcomed it—the cool contrast to the heat simmering under her skin since he walked in.
Julian Blackthorne.
Even his name felt like a seduction. Deep, dangerous vowels. That British accent—velvety, crisp, all control and quiet command. He'd appeared in the gallery like a whisper in the dark, tall and precise, suited in tailored charcoal that clung too perfectly to be unintentional. Elena had thought she could handle him—another collector with a taste for the abstract and a wallet to match.
She had been wrong.
He hadn't looked at the art. Not really. His gaze, blue as a storm tide, had swept the canvases, then landed on her—and stayed. She felt it even now, hours later, like a shadow over her bare shoulder. It wasn't just attraction. It was... awareness. Intimate. Unspoken. Like they shared a secret neither had confessed aloud.
She ducked under the awning of the café across the street and shook the rain from her curls. The heat of the room kissed her cheeks, and the rich scent of espresso curled around her like a lover's breath. She needed to breathe, to think. But her body hummed with betrayal—want coiling low in her belly, a pulse beating between her thighs.
"Elena."
His voice again. She froze, heart a fist in her chest. Slow, deliberate, she turned—and found him there, impossibly close.
Julian.
"I thought you might be here," he said, that smile barely touching his lips, more suggestion than expression. "You mentioned you like the chai here."
She hadn't remembered telling him that. She wasn't sure she had.
"You followed me?" she asked, voice cooler than she felt.
"I noticed the direction you walked," he replied simply. "Curiosity guided the rest."
"You don't strike me as a man who lets curiosity guide him."
His smile deepened, faint lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes. "Not usually. But tonight seems an exception."
He reached out—not to touch, but to brush a droplet from the edge of her jaw, his fingers stopping just short. Her breath caught anyway.
"I shouldn't be here," she whispered.
"Do you want me to go?"
She didn't answer.
Because the truth was no. God, no.
He stepped back, as if granting her a choice she wasn't ready to make. "Let me buy you that chai, Elena."
It was a line. She knew that. But it didn't feel like one. It felt like something else—a beginning. Or the edge of something deeper.
"Okay," she said softly. "Just the chai."
He didn't push. He simply ordered. Sat across from her. Spoke to her like they had all the time in the world, though the air between them felt strung tight, electric with things unsaid.
It wasn't about coffee. It never had been.
It was about that night. About the rain and the way she was already imagining what he'd taste like. How his hands might feel on her skin. About how dangerous it was to want a man like him—and how utterly impossible it would be to walk away.
Outside, the rain fell harder.
Inside, Elena let the first whisper of desire curl like smoke in her chest.
And she did not put it out.