Tangled in the Devil's Arms

The rain didn’t just fall—it crashed against the city like a war cry, loud and unrelenting, pounding on the roof of my father’s penthouse as if the heavens themselves were warning me to run. But I didn’t run. I stood barefoot in the center of the marble floor, wrapped in a silk robe the color of sin, staring at the man whose very presence rewrote the temperature of the room—cold where I was, fire where he stood. He leaned against the glass wall like it didn’t bother him that we were sixty floors above the ground, like gravity was something that only applied to other men. He was all shadow and muscle and danger, with a jaw that could’ve been carved from stone and eyes that saw too much. Eyes that hadn’t left me since the moment he stepped into my father’s world—and into mine. “You’re not supposed to be here,” I said, my voice soft but shaking, not from fear—but something worse. Desire. He didn’t move. He didn’t smile. He just tilted his head the way predators do when they’re deciding if it’s worth it to bite. “I go where the threat goes,” he answered finally, voice dark and low like a storm held beneath his skin. “And you, Princess, are glowing with it.” I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the belt of my robe. “There’s no threat. Not here. Not tonight.” “That’s what your father thought. Before the brake line snapped on his Bentley. Before the second death threat showed up this morning. Hand-delivered.” His voice cut through the dim room like a blade. But he wasn’t trying to scare me. That was the terrifying part—he was simply stating facts. Like a man who’s seen too much and stopped pretending the world was ever fair. I turned away from him, even though I could feel the heat of his stare trace the curve of my spine, stopping where the silk parted just slightly at my back. I hated that I liked it. Hated that I had goosebumps. Hated that his name tasted like forbidden fruit when I whispered it in my head. Ronan. I had heard stories about him. Hushed whispers in elite security circles. A former soldier who vanished after a mission in Prague went sideways. Rumor was he resurfaced two years later in Morocco, dragging a kidnapped oil heiress from a terrorist compound with one bullet left in his gun and none in his chest. Cold. Deadly. Unstoppable. And now… hired by my father to protect me. From what? From whom? No one knew. The threats came from shadows. Faceless. Voiceless. Merciless. And Ronan was the shadow we hired in return. “You think someone’s trying to kill me,” I said, my voice low, brushing the silence like a feather. “I don’t think,” he replied. “I know.” I turned to face him again, anger stirring in my chest like a dragon. “So what then? You move in? Sleep outside my door like some kind of watch dog?” His lips curled. Just a little. Enough to show the devil knew how to smile. “I don’t do doorways, sweetheart. If I’m guarding you, I’m in the room. Watching everything. And everyone.” My heart skipped a beat. And then another. “I’m not afraid of you,” I lied. He walked toward me then—slow, deliberate, the way wolves do when the wind is still—and every step he took stole the air from my lungs. “You should be,” he said softly, stopping a breath away. “Because I’m not afraid of what I’d do to protect you. Even if it meant breaking you in the process.” And just like that, the storm outside became background noise to the one raging inside me. His hand lifted—slow, rough, warm—and tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers grazing the curve of my jaw like he had every right to touch me. I should’ve slapped him. Should’ve screamed. Should’ve backed away. But instead… I leaned in. Because the truth was, I wanted to be broken by him.