Chapter 1
Aurelia’s POV
Heat came first—a living blanket of it—followed by the slow, steady beat of a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
I lay still, my cheek against a chest warm as sunlit stone, my legs tangled with another’s beneath sheets scented with cedar and something darker. Pale moonlight slipped through unfamiliar curtains.
For a moment, I thought I was still falling—the endless plunge from the forest hill where they had thrown me.
But I wasn’t.
The air was warm. The body beneath me was solid.
Alive.
I shifted, and a large hand tightened around my bare hip. A low, sleepy hum vibrated through his chest.
My breath caught.
Then I noticed my nakedness, the ache in my body, and the faint sting at my collarbone.
The memories returned like a blade.
Ryan’s message.
The four thugs.
The car.
The shove.
The endless fall.
And then nothing.
Until now.
I’m reborn.
The realization struck with crushing certainty.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and memories of this day from my first life surfaced.
I knew this hotel. I knew this room.
And I knew the man beside me.
A stranger I had slept with after catching Ryan kissing Vespera Nightbane at a restaurant. I had fled the party, drowned my heartbreak in whiskey, and ended up in this bed with a man whose name I never bothered to learn.
The next morning, I had panicked.
I had slipped away, returned to Ryan, and apologized for my own heartbreak when he begged for forgiveness.
That mistake had cost me everything.
For the next year, Ryan slowly destroyed me.
Not this time.
I opened my eyes.
I was twenty-one again.
My body was whole. My future was unwritten.
And the man beside me was no longer a nameless stranger.
Ethan Black.
His name surfaced from memories of the years I had lived before—the ruthless billionaire who built an empire from nothing and crushed anyone who stood in his way.
In my first life, our paths never crossed again.
I had walked away from him without knowing what I had lost.
Not anymore.
I carefully lifted my head and studied him.
Black hair fell messily across his forehead. His sharp jaw was shadowed with stubble, and his lips curved faintly even in sleep. His broad shoulders and powerful frame spoke of discipline and danger.
He looked nothing like the man I remembered from the headlines.
He looked like a secret.
As if sensing my gaze, he stirred.
His dark eyes opened, fixing on mine with unsettling awareness.
“You’re awake.”
His voice was low and rough.
My heart stumbled.
He brushed a strand of hair from my face, his touch unexpectedly gentle.
“Good,” he murmured. “Because I have no intention of letting you go.”
The words sent a strange ache through me.
In my first life, I had spent years chasing love from someone who never deserved me.
Now I had a second chance.
But trust would have to wait.
I pulled back slightly.
“I don’t even know your name.” I lied.
His gaze lingered on mine.
“Ethan Black.”
“Aurelia Rose.”
His lips curved.
“You’re beautiful.”
His thumb traced my jaw.
“I like your eyes.”
He leaned closer, his breath warm against my lips.
I should have pulled away.
Instead, I closed the distance.
I kissed him.
For once, I wasn’t running from my past.
I was choosing my future.
When we finally parted, Ethan rested his forehead against mine.
“Stay.”
I smiled.
“I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.”
His expression changed, curiosity replacing the softness in his eyes.
“Aurelia,” he said, “do you know how old I am?”
I knew.
Forty-one.
But there was no way I could tell him that without revealing the impossible truth.
So I smiled teasingly.
“Early thirties?”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
“I’m forty-one.”
His eyes searched mine.
“Does that change anything? Do you regret choosing me for your one-night stand?”
“No.”
The answer came easily.
“Not at all.”
His gaze darkened with amusement.
“What about you, human sweetheart? How old are you?”
Human?
The word caught my attention.
As though he wasn’t human himself.
I studied him, suspicion flickering beneath my curiosity.
But instead of answering, I caught his mouth in another searing kiss.
His question could wait. Am twenty one and our age gap doesn’t matter to me. Since we have already crossed every line.
His groan was low and guttural, and then he was moving—flipping me onto my back, covering my body with his, his mouth crashing down on mine with a hunger that bordered on violence.
I gasped against his lips, and he swallowed the sound, his hands roaming over my skin with a possessive urgency that made my head spin.
He groped my breast, his thumb circling my n****e until it pebbled beneath his touch, and then his mouth was there, hot and wet, sucking and teasing until I was writhing beneath him.
“You are the sexiest, most busty woman I have ever f****d,” he growled against my skin, and the words sent a flush of heat through my entire body.
I blushed, even as I screamed when his fingers found the slick heat between my thighs, squeezing and stroking with a roughness that made me see stars.
*God, he’s a Greek god,* I thought, the words a dizzy chant in my mind.
I ran my hands over his body, exploring the hard planes of his chest, the solid wall of his back, the powerful flex of his arms. He moaned at my touch, a sound of raw, unguarded pleasure, and then he pulled back just enough to look at me, his dark eyes blazing.
“You’re the first one I’ve ever allowed to touch me like that,” he said, and the words were a confession, a crack in the armor of the untouchable billionaire.
The night stretched on around us, full of secrets and shadows and the promise of a dawn that would bring new battles, new enemies, new truths I was only beginning to understand.
For now, I wanted to understand the man who had been a stranger in my first life—and might become everything in my second.
