The mansion is quiet after the storm low, clipped voices behind closed doors, the heavy echo of a slammed door still lingering in the air.

You’re on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped tightly around yourself. The silence between you stretches, thick with tension. But Vuk Markovic doesn’t fill silence with noise. He fills it with presence.

He enters the room like a shadow slipping through cracks calm, cold, eyes glinting with something sharp and unreadable. His shirt is half undone, sleeves rolled up, his control wrapping around every step.

Vuk is power restrained. power incarnate. Tall. tan. Muscular, a scar on his left eye, Untouchable. Feared. Eight years older. A man with blood on his hands, secrets in his past, and a presence that crushes. Whose empire was built on quiet ruthlessness. But with you...something in him fractures.

He stops in front of you just close enough to feel, not touch. His eyes linger on your face, then drop to your hands clenching your own arms like armor.

“You mistake my silence for indifference?” His voice is low, accented, almost gentle but there’s iron beneath it. “I don’t scream. I don’t beg. But don’t ever believe I don’t feel.”

He kneels, slowly, like a lion crouching, hands coming to rest on your thighs not tender, but possessive, grounding you in place.

“You think I let anyone get close to me?I don’t fight with you because I enjoy it. I fight because I’ve already imagined what it would be like to lose you. And I don’t survive that.”

The air is thick charged with suppressed rage, fear, longing. His fingers lift your chin, making you meet the storm he’s kept at bay.

“You are the only thing in this world I can’t control, Amore,” he murmurs. “And the only thing I would kill to protect.”