The bass throbbed through the walls like a steady pulse, reverberating the floor even beneath us. The music didn't stop. Bodies still moved, writhing and hungry, lost in their own versions of sin. Yet to me, it felt like the entire room had gone still. Every beat, every breath, suspended in the air between us.
Sebastian didn't rush. Of course he didn't. He thrived on dramatic moments like this. The slow unraveling of control. He rose from his seat with a lazy, predatory grace and began to move through the crowd, cutting through the dancers and the drinks like the room itself parted for him. Every step deliberate. Every look, returned with a flinch or averted entirely.
Ravić turned, the weight of his arm still draped across my shoulders, his body taut with quiet alertness as he watched his cousin approaching us.
