Sin in His Shadow” Book One

Chapter 17 – When Shadows Touch

Zarek didn’t sleep that night. Not really. The scent of Lucien was still on his fingers, in his lungs, crawling beneath his skin like a drug he didn’t want to resist. He leaned back on the armchair in the corner of his darkened room, shirtless, a half-burned cigarette in his mouth, watching the moon crawl through the curtains. He didn’t want morning to come.

Lucien stirred in the bed—his bare back rising and falling gently under the sheet. The fragile quiet between them wasn’t awkward. It was... sacred.

Zarek had never made love to someone before. He’d f*cked, countless times—rough, emotionless, sometimes angry. But Lucien had ruined him. That one night, that one kiss, had unravelled the armor he’d worn since he was seventeen.

He put out the cigarette and climbed back into bed. The mattress dipped slightly, and Lucien shifted, sleepy eyes fluttering open.

“You’re still awake?” Lucien’s voice was hoarse, dreamy.

“Didn’t want to miss any second of this,” Zarek muttered, brushing stray strands from Lucien’s face.

Lucien chuckled. “You’re acting like a lover, not a mafia prince.”

Zarek paused, fingers frozen on Lucien’s cheek.

“What if I want to be both?”

Lucien blinked. There was silence—and then, he leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together.

“You scared me last night,” Lucien whispered. “You looked like you were drowning.”

“I was,” Zarek confessed. “In you.”

The next kiss was slower than the night before. Softer. But just as intense.

And when Zarek rolled over, caging Lucien beneath him, they didn’t rush. They explored. They memorized. They whispered things neither of them had said out loud before.

In that moment, there was no mafia. No blood on their hands. Just two broken boys, trying to feel whole again.

And in the heat of their reunion, tangled in sheets and shadows, Lucien finally whispered, “Zarek... don’t ever leave.”

Zarek kissed his shoulder, then his heart.

“I won’t.”

But fate doesn’t care about promises.

Especially in the city where sin blooms like a rose in the dark.