THIRD PERSON POINT OF VIEW
The water hissed down in a steady stream, curling steam around the tiled room. Kiel leaned his palms on the marble counter, head bowed, eyes fixed on his reflection in the fogged mirror. His hair was damp, the droplets tracing slow paths down his temples before vanishing at his jawline.
He had told himself a hundred times to focus. Today wasn't about stray thoughts or temptation. Today was Odette's day. Their day. But when he closed his eyes, the wrong image kept finding him—uninvited, unwanted, yet impossible to shake.
Zirelle.
The memory wasn't clean or polite. It was heat. It was the way her eyes had raked over him during that last encounter, the sly upward curve of her mouth when she'd leaned in just close enough that he could feel her breath skim his neck. It was the soft scrape of her nails against his forearm, deliberate and slow, a gesture that had burned through the layers of his composure.
