Yearning for her (wlw)

Lingering thoughts

Seraphina’s pov

The sharp echo of my heels cut through the marble hall, each strike deliberate, unwavering, a rhythm that belonged only to me. The air trembled with whispers, nameless voices threading through the corridor, but I did not grant them weight. People always stared— their eyes clung like ivy to every step, every gesture. Their attention was a currency I no longer cared to count.

But hers was different. Her stare burned hotter, lingered longer. I felt it still, like the ghost of a hand pressed against my skin.

My mouth curved, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace, as I slid into the car waiting for me—sleek, black, a beast of silence and steel. Power hummed in its bones. I had always craved machines like this, creatures that roared when commanded, that bent to control without question. Cars, bikes—anything with a pulse hidden beneath iron.

By the time I reached the estate, twilight had spilled across the horizon, golden and viscous, sweet as honey dripping slow from the sky. The house rose up before me like an echo of my villa in Italy, smaller perhaps, but equally immaculate.

I tossed my keys to the waiting guard, a flick of my wrist and a glance carrying more command than any words could. Inside, I stripped the city from my skin, its smoke, its noise, its chaos.

I was someone of order. The scent of clean marble and cedar floors was my language. My habits were ritual: rooms immaculate, silence uninterrupted, a kind of reverence for stillness. Laziness clung to me in strange ways—I would not lift a hand for trivialities—but I could not endure chaos, not even the faintest crack in the rhythm of my space.

Yet even here, in the silence I built brick by brick, my solitude was trespassed. The trio I had foolishly allowed into London clung to me with the persistence of ivy, dragging me into smoke-heavy rooms where bass drowned thought and neon blurred vision. They called it living. I called it erosion. They mistook distraction for freedom, but I had no need for either.

A month had passed since I arrived. A month of nights filled with bodies I never remembered, my lips pressed against bodies that had no weight, voices that asked for nothing and gave even less.

Attachment was clutter. I had cut it out of me years ago. Desire, however—desire was a flame I could summon and snuff at will. Temporary. Clean. Mine.

Or it had been.

And then—her.

The thought pierced before I could bar the door against it. The brunette with honey-brown eyes that had no right to linger in my mind. Her face too soft, her presence too unassuming, her innocence so sharp it left me raw.

She was not meant for me, not meant for this world, yet when my hands caught her that evening, she had fit too easily against me. Her warmth sank into my skin like a sin I had not meant to commit.

I should have forgotten her.

I tried to.

But those eyes would not let me.

Honey lit with amber. Wide, unguarded, painfully unpracticed in the art of defense. They saw too much. They saw me. And I hated them for it. Hated how unforgettable they were. Hated that, for the first time in years, I could not convince myself to let go.

My walls were not meant to bend. They were built to smother storms, to keep even the memory of light from bleeding through. Yet her gaze slipped past them with ridiculous ease. She had no idea what she carried, no idea the kind of blade she pressed to my throat with something as simple as a glance

Later, when the business of the day was done, when contracts bore my name and the world once again bent where I demanded, I slipped into the marble bath. Heat wrapped around me, steam rose like incense, but it could not scour her from my skin. Her eyes lingered even in the water.

By the time I stretched across the poolside chaise, moonlight turning my skin to silver, the night was quiet. The estate held its breath. Yet within me, noise roared.

The world I had built—the one without want, without weakness—fractured beneath the persistence of her eyes.

Brown threaded with gold. Softness I did not deserve. Innocence I should have broken and left behind.

But I hadn't.

And when I closed my eyes, they followed.

The honey gaze, the gentle weight of her presence, the way she looked at me as if I was more than steel and silence.

For the first time in years, I found myself unsettled. Not by power. Not by failure. But by a girl who should have been forgettable—

and who refused to be. I wanted it to stop.

~

Elowen’s pov

The door yielded with its familiar sigh, and the house greeted me as it always did—with my mother's voice, equal parts concern and reprimand, like two notes of the same chord struck too often to surprise me.

I whispered the same half-hearted apologies, already climbing the stairs before she could press further, retreating into the one space where I still believed I had dominion: my room.

The shower scalded, and I let it. The heat was an anchor, something I could command, something that bent to my will when nothing else had today. I watched the steam curl upward, vanishing into nothing, and for a moment I envied it. To simply dissipate, to dissolve, to not carry this weight.

I told myself I was rinsing the day from my body, but I knew the truth—water cannot wash away the kind of thoughts that followed me now.

When I collapsed into bed, sheets cool against overheated skin, silence wrapped around me. Yet silence was not peace. Silence had a way of holding me hostage, and tonight it pressed harder than usual. My mind unfurled in the dark, and there she was.

Those eyes.

God, those eyes.

Too green, too sharp, too much. They were winter's frost and wildfire's bite stitched together in a single look.

I had never felt so utterly seen. Not the version of me I curated so carefully—the diligent daughter, the unshakable student, the controlled friend—but me stripped bare. No armor, no mask. Just me, standing in the raw light of her gaze. It left me both cold and fevered at once.

It terrified me.

And worse—It thrilled me.

I told myself to stop, but memory is disobedient. It betrayed me with scent, with sensation. Lavender, yes, but twisted with something darker, sharper, like midnight air or cut stone. That was her—elegant, but edged. Her grip replayed itself in my nerves: firm enough to claim me, careful enough to feel like I might break. I wanted to forget it. I wanted to remember it forever.

Control. That had always been my compass. I wore it like second skin, convincing the world I was unbothered, unmovable. But she had tilted that axis in the span of a breath. She had caught me off guard, stripped me of composure, and in that slip I saw a version of myself I didn't recognize—unguarded, open, wanting.

My phone buzzed. Hayley. Her timing was always cruel.

"What do you want?" I answered, voice heavy with exhaustion, though amusement curled beneath it.

"And here I thought you missed me," she fired back, sly as ever. "Or... let me guess—you're too busy thinking about impossibly hot women with dangerous eye contact and catastrophic levels of presence."

A groan slipped from me before I could stop it. I should never have told her anything. One careless night, one slip, and every detail had spilled out like a dam breaking. Now she brandished it against me like her favorite weapon.

"You're a menace," I muttered, dragging a hand over my face. "And you're exaggerating the whole thing." But even as I said it, I felt her ghost in my chest—the trace of a scent I couldn't name, curling soft and stubborn around my lungs.

"Oh, shut up," Hayley shot back, merciless, playful. "You're probably buried under your covers, replaying how her accent scrambled your brain." Her tone was teasing, but the certainty beneath it made me want to sink into the mattress and disappear. I hated how right she was.

"You're insufferable," I sighed, my voice fraying. "I was about to sleep before your call came in." The lie coated my tongue bitter, because even now—especially now—the memory of that voice, low and thick and devastatingly attractive, still tugged at my chest until it ached.

"Well..." she drawled, sharp with amusement, "you sound like you're minutes from unraveling quietly under your covers, trying not to think about her."

The words landed too close. My face burned hot enough to give me away, and silence betrayed me. I couldn't refute her. I wasn't used to cracks in my composure, and Hayley knew it.

"I hate you," I scoffed, though there was no weight to it—only exhaustion, only defeat.

"Oh, please. We both know I'm the love of your life." Her voice turned smug, playful, and despite myself, my lips curved.

"I'm done talking to you. Good night." I cut the call before she could throw another tease, releasing a sigh that felt helpless, heavy, too much like surrender.

I let my body sink deeper into the mattress, as though the weight of the bed could pin down my unruly thoughts. But nothing could.

This wasn't supposed to happen to me. With men, things had always been clean, distant, controlled. I knew the steps, the boundaries, the exits. But this? This had no map. It was chaos wrapped in beauty, danger dressed as allure.

And it was her.

Those impossible green eyes. That scent, that voice. That single moment when she ripped the facade from me so easily I forgot how to put it back on.

I had spent years building myself into a fortress.

I knew how to keep everything light, safe, detached. Wanting nothing too much meant losing nothing. That was the rule I lived by.

But now my mind betrayed me, painting visions that weren't real: soft, imagined moments born from a single touch. Scenarios that whispered of vulnerability I wasn't supposed to allow myself.

Hayley would laugh if she knew. Maybe she already did. But beneath her jokes was truth. I didn't fear love—I feared what it demanded. Exposure. Fragility. The possibility that someone might slip past all my defenses and see me.

And that was exactly what she had done.

Tomorrow, I promised myself, I would smile, apologize, pretend. Pretend none of it mattered. Pretend she hadn't undone me in seconds. Because someone like her—someone sharp, untouchable, endlessly desired—couldn't possibly be thinking of me.

But when I closed my eyes, her gaze returned.

Luminous. Relentless. Devastating.

And maybe, if I was honest—if I dared peel back the layers of denial—I didn't want her to leave me. Not in my mind. Not in my chest. Not anywhere.