BOUND BY SECRETS

PROLOGUE

I should have forgotten him.

But I didn’t.

One night. One mistake. One stranger whose name I didn’t even know.

I told myself it was nothing. A fleeting blur. A moment I could erase. But I was lying. Because his touch… it stayed. Burned into me. Whispered to me. Haunted me.

I thought I was safe. Thought I’d never see him again.

I was wrong.

The first lecture of the semester should have been normal. Routine. Predictable. But the moment I walked in…

He was there.

Dr. Ethan Cole.

The man whose name I had barely learned the night we’d collided in the dark. The same man whose hands had traced my skin like fire. The same man I had left sleeping, thinking I’d never have to face him again.

I froze.

He froze.

The world didn’t. Students shuffled, chairs squeaked, papers rustled. Time moved forward, oblivious to the storm between us.

Recognition flashed in his eyes. Sharp. Startled. Dangerous. He swallowed, straightened his notes, forced the calm, professional mask I knew well. Pretended nothing had happened.

But nothing about that morning was normal.

The air between us was alive. Thick with secrets. Heavy with desire. Dangerous.

One night had become a secret. A secret had become a trap. And traps… were something I was unprepared for.

I tried to look away. Tried to lose myself in the lecture. Tried to act like he wasn’t the one who had claimed my body and my thoughts hours before dawn. But it was impossible. Every word he spoke vibrated through me. Every glance, even fleeting, lit fire across my skin.

I hated myself for remembering. Hated the way my pulse betrayed me. Hated the heat that flared whenever our eyes met. And yet… I didn’t hate him. Not really.

I wanted him.

God, I wanted him.

And I knew he wanted me too.

It was in the way his jaw tensed when I shifted in my seat. In the brief, almost imperceptible flicker of his eyes across the room. In the silent acknowledgment that we both knew. Knew exactly what had happened. Knew exactly what could happen again.

I should have run. I should have disappeared from that lecture hall, from his life, from the memory of him. But I couldn’t.

Because some mistakes don’t stay buried. Some secrets don’t stay hidden. Some men… follow you. Hunt you. Wrap themselves around your life until you’re suffocating under their presence.

And Ethan Cole… he wasn’t going anywhere.

I could feel it in the tension coiling between us. In the unspoken words that hovered, dangerous and sharp. In the way the room seemed to shrink around us, the hum of voices fading until it was just him. Just me. Just the memory of one reckless night that refused to stay dead.

I scribbled notes I didn’t read. I nodded at things I didn’t understand. My mind was a storm, a battleground of longing and fear, craving and self-preservation.

Every instinct screamed at me to flee. Every heartbeat screamed at me to stay.

And even now, I know this:

That night wasn’t the end.

It was only the beginning.

The spark had been lit. The fire was unstoppable. And whether I wanted it or not… whether I could survive it or not… it would consume me.

Because some secrets don’t stay in the dark.

Some flames follow you into the light.