Darling, I was lost; the three glasses of champagne I had guzzled had not helped much. This house was a labyrinth, obviously built to impress and intimidate, and not so much as a place to feel comfortable and really live in. At least I couldn’t imagine ever feeling comfortable in a place like this, but perhaps Falcone’s almost life-size paintings had something to do with it as well. His haunting eyes seemed to follow me wherever I went. I fumbled in my bag for my cell phone and pulled it out, but hesitated. How embarrassing would it have been if I had called Anastasia or Trish and told them that I had managed to get lost while looking for the ladies’ room? They wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. The atmosphere between us had been tense after my dance with Cosimo, anyway. There was no need to give him any more ammunition against me. It was not the first time I had wished that Thalia was there. We would have laughed about it together and she would have teased me at length , but never out of malice or schadenfreude. She would not use it against me when talking to other people. I paused, realizing with sudden horror that I didn’t even trust my two best friends. I shook my head. This was the world I lived in. “You can’t go around trusting people, even your so-called friends,” was what my father used to say. I had always been reluctant to believe him. I put the phone back in my purse. There was no way I was going to call anyone. Mom was out of the question anyway. And Cosimo. No, I didn’t need another reason why the situation would be awkward between us. And he was as good as a stranger to me. I had a hunch that he would not change until our wedding day and perhaps long after. With a silent sigh, I continued. At some point I should have seen something I recognized and found my way back to the party. I turned another unfamiliar corner-they really all looked the same-when I saw someone in the hallway a few steps away from me.
Finally, someone would be able to point me in the right direction! My elation turned to shock, then fear when I realized who I had encountered. Growl. He did not move. He just stood there still. He seemed to have been in that hallway for a while already. Waiting for a victim, perhaps, suggested my overactive mind helpfully. But as much as I inwardly wanted to scoff at the idea, I had a feeling it was not that far away. Fear and fascination fought inside me, and I reminded myself that it would not touch me. My father was too important to Falcone, and that meant I was too. Maybe Growl was a ruthless killer, little more than a killing machine and a monster, but he was definitely an intelligent monster, otherwise he would not have gotten that far . And yet I hoped that my bodyguards would come looking for me soon. But had they seen me leave the party? They had tried to give me and my friends space. Now I wished they hadn’t. Growl’s eyes showed nothing as he watched me. The suit was too tight on his broad shoulders, and a hint of black peeked out under his too-white shirt. One of his many tattoos. I had never seen them, but you couldn’t be part of society and not hear the stories. Even dressed in a suit, masquerading as one of us, he couldn’t hide who he was. His tattoos could be seen, a little hint of the monster under the ‘expensive clothing. I wondered what he looked like without the suit. A heat hit my cheeks at that ridiculous thought. I had definitely had too much alcohol. A hint of a frown crossed his face before it disappeared and I realized how long I had been staring at him again, judging him. I probably hadn’t managed to hide my thoughts about him very well. A mistake that could have ruined everything in our world. My parents had taught me better. The door behind him, however, looked vaguely familiar. It led to the main lobby. I did not move. Going back to the party meant getting closer to him. It was ridiculous. I was not just anyone. And we were not an ordinary place.
He wasn’t going to do anything. He too had rules to which he was bound, and one of them was that I was off-limits, just like all girls from families like mine. No matter how much nonsense Anastasia said, that statement of hers was true. I straightened my shoulders and took a few determined steps toward Growl. Approaching the party, I remembered as my pulse quickened. For some reason it felt like prey . Growl was the hunter and I was the prey, which didn’t even make sense since he had hardly moved since I had arrived in the hallway. Come to think of it, he had never spoken until I was nearby. “It’s Cara,” I said in a hurried voice.
Maybe if I had been able to get him to talk, he wouldn’t have seemed so dangerous anymore, but he didn’t react, just looked at me with an indecipherable expression , and then the door behind him opened and my mother appeared. Her eyes settled on me, then shifted to Growl, and her expression stiffened. “Darling, your father and I are looking for you. Go back to the party,” she said, completely ignoring the man in the hallway with us. I nodded and hurried past Growl. His eyes, amber and not as dark as they seemed from a distance, followed me, but he remained silent. When I turned my back to him, a chill ran through my body and I had to restrain myself from looking over my shoulder. The moment Mom and I were out of the hall and into the deserted room, he grabbed my arm in a crushing grip. “What did you think you were alone with that-that man,” she spat practically the last word. Her eyes were wide and almost frantic. “I can’t believe they let him in. He should be in a chained cage, away from anyone who was decent.” Her nails dug into my arm. “Mom, you’re hurting me.” She let go of me and I finally recognized the emotion on her face. Not anger, but concern. “I’m fine,” I said firmly. “I got lost and ran into…” I searched my mind for a name other than Growl, which seemed too strong a nickname to use with my mother, but found nothing. “Darling, you can’t walk around like that without thinking about the consequences of your actions.” “I was headed for the ladies’ room. I wasn’t running, ” I said. “Cosimo is a good catch. Don’t go and ruin it now.” I blinked, unable to believe my ears. “That’s what you’re worried about.” Mom took a deep breath and pressed a hand to my cheek. “I’m worried about you. But that includes your reputation. In this world, a woman is nothing without a good reputation. A man, that’s something else. They can do what they want and that will help their reputation too, but we are held to different standards. We have to be everything they are not.
We have to make up for their failures. That is what we are made for. We, you, must be kind, meek and virtuous. Men want everything they see. We should keep our desires firmly locked up, even if men cannot.” It was not the first time he had said something like this to me , but the way he accentuated the word “desire” in his speech made me fear that he knew about my body’s reaction to Growl’s proximity. But he should not have worried about that. My fear of the man , of all that he represented and what he was capable of , outweighed any small thrill of arousal my body might have felt toward him. Growl Growl watched them leave the hallway. The door closed and he was alone again. His vanilla scent still hovered in the air. Sweet. Girls like that always chose sweet scents. He didn’t understand why they tried to look even more harmless by smelling like a delicate flower. She pulled on her collar. Too tight. The fabric against the scar, she hated it. That dress, that shirt, was not him. The look on his mother’s face had reminded him why he hated events like that. People didn’t want him around. They wanted him to do their dirty work and enjoyed badmouthing him, but they didn’t want him around. They didn’t give a shit. They were nothing to him. He knew they were watching him like a circus animal. He was the scandal of the evening. Even the sweet-smelling girl had been watching him. He had seen her and her friends watching him from across the ballroom. But the sweet-smelling girl had surprised him. She knew his name. Of course. Falcone had talked too often about his father and his family in recent weeks. Darling. She had not run away screaming, even though they were alone in the hallway. She didn’t even look very scared.
Of course there had been fear; there always had been, but there had also been curiosity. Because he was a monster they feared and fascinated them. They didn’t care. She was just a girl. A high society girl with a beautiful dress and an even more beautiful face. He didn’t care about beauty. It meant nothing. She was fleeting, could be taken away in the blink of an eye. Yet his eyes had sought her out several times that evening. He had imagined tearing that beautiful dress from her body, imagined running his unworthy hands over her curves. Then he had looked away and left the ballroom before he could do something very stupid. She was someone he was not meant to have. Someone he was not even supposed to imagine having. She was someone to be admired from afar. And it was for the best. Dear That day, shortly after we got home and I lay in bed, my fingers found the right spot between my legs, answering the need that had been calling to me ever since I had seen Growl. The cloak of darkness swept away my resistance and my worry of being discovered. Not even my mother’s words echoing in my head could stop me. “Be righteous, be virtuous. This is sin.” The image of that frightening man had caused a sweet tingle in my depths, and I could not resist. Wrong, screamed my mind, but I chased that thought away until finally my body shuddered with release. But seconds later, a familiar feeling of being dirty overwhelmed me. This was sin.
My mother had not stopped telling me those words since the day she had caught me touching myself two months earlier. Since then, I had not succumbed to my sinful needs, until tonight. I took a deep breath, wishing my heart would stop racing.
Wishing my body would stop reminding me of what I had done. Ever since my mother had discovered me, there had been a tension between us that I could hardly bear. She avoided my eyes as I avoided hers. I was almost glad for my upcoming marriage, so I would finally escape my mother’s judgment. I still felt overwhelmed by a wave of brazen shame when I remembered that day and the look of shock on my mother’s face. It was not the first time I had touched myself, but the first time I really understood how wrong it was. I had vowed to myself then never again to let my body override my brain, and now I had broken that promise. In the protection of the night, I had dared to let my fingers wander again, all because of a man I should not have even thought about, let alone fantasized about . Wrong. I was weak and sinful, but in the brief moments of pleasure I had felt more alive than at any other time in my life.