His Forbidden Scarlett

My devil and I

Scarlett's POV

I didn't remember getting into the car; I only knew that Christian had vanished into another one. One moment I was kneeling in my father's blood, and the next, the world outside the window was a blur. Streetlights smeared past like a dream I couldn't wake from.

Bang.

I heard it over and over, still trembling from the echo. I couldn't erase any of it—the way my father had collapsed, the sudden stillness of his body as if an internal switch had been flipped off. He was gone, right in front of me. I looked down at my hands, waiting for tears, but there was only a strange silence, as though my whole body had been unplugged.

This isn't real. It couldn't be. But it was. Christian had come back and he had ruined me again.

The car slowed, gravel crunching. We weren't in the city anymore. Trees lined the long private road, blocking out what little moon there was. Far off, something howled—probably just the wind. Then an enormous house of stone, glass, and iron rose out of the dark. A black gate groaned open on its own. Above the entrance was a snarling wolf's head carved in stone, its eyes picked out in gold. When did people start carving things like that over their doors? Too numb to wonder, I shrugged the thought away. Guards stood along the driveway, moving with eerie, unnerving speed—too still, and then suddenly too fast.

The car stopped. My door opened, and a hand closed gently around my elbow. I looked up at an older woman with kind, tired eyes, her gray hair pulled back tight. Her breath caught. She went pale, tightening her arm to steady herself, looking at me as if at a ghost. She held on too long, too tight, before catching herself.

"Come, bambina." The word came out softly. "Let's get you inside."

I let her lead me. I didn't have the strength to argue, or to ask why a stranger looked at me so fondly. Where was Christian and what had he told them?

The house was overwhelming. Marble floors swallowed the sound of my bare feet, and the art on the walls likely cost more than the apartment where I had raised my son. Everything screamed wealth. Underneath it all was an unrecognizable smell—something wild that didn't seem to belong in a space this clean.

The woman brought me upstairs to a massive bathroom. Two young maids assisted me with a quiet efficiency. I didn't fight or help. I simply watched my reflection across the room—hollow eyes, a smudge of dirt at my hairline, a stranger wearing my face—while they prepared a bath for me. They worked in silence, seemingly afraid to speak.

"There you go, tesoro," the older woman murmured once, so softly I almost thought I imagined it. By the time they dressed me in a white silk nightgown, I still hadn't uttered a word.

I sat on the edge of the bed in an unfamiliar room, inside a house I didn't understand. Finally, something cracked open. It wasn't tears; it was rage.

"Get out." My voice was low at first, then louder, until I was shouting. I hurled a crystal bottle of perfume at the wall. A maid flinched with a cry. "Get OUT, don't touch me—"

I shoved past them, sweeping a lamp off the nightstand so it shattered. I was shaking and sobbing at the same time. My father, four years of silence, my son growing up without a father, the auction, the chains—a broken sound tore out of my throat.

I was just about to yank the maids hair when the door slammed open, and Christian filled the doorway. The maids scattered. Even the older woman straightened at once, her face smoothing into something blank. She slipped past him, meeting his eyes briefly before pulling the door shut.

Then it was just me and Christian. Me and my Devil. He looked at my tear-streaked face, my shaking hands, and the broken glass at my feet.

"Break everything in this room if it helps," he said, his voice flat. "I'll just replace it." A small, sharp smile touched his lips.

I threw a hairbrush, and it bounced off his shoulder. He didn't blink, only moving closer.

"You're the reason he's gone," I cried. "You cold, heartless bastard! I —"

"Cry all you want." His voice cut through mine, calm and steady. "It changes nothing. You are mine now, you always have been."

Something snapped in me. I lunged, hitting his chest with both fists, trying to push him away.

“Let me go!” I shouted, twisting my hands. He remained unmoved by my struggle, eventually catching my wrists and guiding me backward until I had nowhere left to move. My back hit the dressing table, and I gasped.

He turned me until we were facing the mirror, side by side in the glass, his hands braced on the table, keeping me in place. I stared at our reflection because it felt safer than looking at him directly.

"Look at you," he said quietly, his eyes locked on mine in the glass. "Falling apart in my house, in my nightgown, fighting me like it matters." His nose dragged slowly up the side of my neck, breathing me in like he was starving and I was the only thing that could feed him. I felt it everywhere — my knees, my stomach, the traitorous heat pooling low in my belly and even my eyelids became heavy. His mouth grazed the sensitive skin just beneath my ear, not quite a kiss, just breath and heat and the ghost of his lips, and a small, humiliating sound slipped out of me before I could stop it.

God I wanted this.

"There she is," he murmured against my skin, and I could feel him smile against me. "You have no idea how long I have imagined this."

"Christian—" His name came out broken, half warning, half plea.

"Shh." His hand slid from my arm to my throat, not squeezing, feeling my pulse slam against his palm like it was answering to him instead of me. "I can feel your heart from here, Scarlett. It's not saying no."

I hated that he was right. I hated the way my body arched back into him on its own, chasing the heat of him even as my mind screamed at me to run.

His nose trailed higher, along my jaw, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped into something rougher, something that didn't sound entirely like a man anymore.

"Four years," he breathed against my ear, "and you still smell like mine."

I froze.

"What did you just—"

His mouth pressed against the curve where my neck met my shoulder, and I felt it there — sharp and wrong, gone in half a second, like he'd caught himself right before he meant to. A low sound rumbled out of his chest against my back and it raised every hair on my arms.

In the mirror, his eyes weren't gray anymore.

They were gold, bright and burning, fixed on my reflection.

"Christian, your eyes—" My voice shook. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

He went rigid behind me, his mouth still against my throat, his gaze still glowing in the glass, terror gripping me.

"Scarlett." His voice was low, controlled, but I heard the strain underneath it, like he was holding something back with both hands. "Don't move."