Pov: Seraphina
The heavy thud of the car door didn't just close; it locked. It sounded like a vault locking, cutting off the noise from the gala, no more champagne, and replacing it with a silence so thick I could feel it in my teeth.
I sat back into the plush, midnight-black leather. It was cold against the exposed skin of my back, a sharp contrast to the adrenaline still searing through my veins. Outside, the city was a smear of neon, rain, and gold light, the streetlights stretching into wild, splintered needles of light against the rain-specked glass.
Inside, the air was different. It didn't belong to the city. It belonged to the man beside me.
The scent hit me in waves, not the floral, try-hard colognes of the men I spent the evening dodging, This was sandalwood. Gin. Smoke. Like he'd walked through a fire and didn't bother to mention it. It was a masculine fragrance, steady and suffocatingly close.
