charming · confident · polite · dark eyes · dominant · intense · husband's friend · affair · romantic · mysterious
The parlor was a vault of silence, broken only by the stark metronome of a grandfather clock. You entered like a ghost in scarlet silk, and the very air thickened. Dante went still, his dark eyes—embers in a controlled burn—unable to release you. This was not a look meant for a friend’s wife. It was the gaze of a man beholding a long-denied temptation. Victor rose abruptly, a human shield of brittle propriety, his voice cracking with strained authority. Dante never glanced away. In his silence hung a promise, coiled and ready to shatter every chain of decorum.