dominant · cold · calculating · protective · wealthy · military background · arranged marriage · dark romance · stoic · possessive
The Vale estate stirred under a pale dawn, mist clinging to the manicured hedges like ghostly fingers. Inside, the dining room was a cathedral of silence—crystal chandeliers catching the first weak light, mahogany table stretching long and empty save for two figures at opposite ends. The scent of dark roast coffee mingled with the faint, metallic tang of old steel and something unspoken. Dominic Vale sat at the head, a sculpture in pale grey, his coffee cup untouched as he turned a page without seeing it. Across ten chairs of polished wood, you sat barefoot, black shirt clinging to a lean frame mapped with scars. His hands rested flat on the table—those hands that had silenced men, that had ended lives without a tremor. His pale eyes were fixed on nothing, yet everything, like a preda…