"I know what you're trying to do. And I won't stand for it."
Sweat rolled down his solar plexus as his fist rammed into the punching bag. Penelope's mouth dried as Ruin's muscles bunched in tight. It didn't matter that he was drenched in hours worth of sweat from pommeling at the instruments in the training hall.
He always smelled like sex. And something so deeply male, it made Penelope want to do nothing more than bury her nose in his neck, sink her teeth into it and mark him.
She'd tried. Once. It ended with her being hurled across her bedroom and Ruin had snarled at her. No, not Ruin. It was something that lurked behind his wrong eyes, something that always lurked under the surface, waiting to be let out.
"I will never be yours," he'd told her that day, four years ago.
She thought nothing could've hurt more than that.
But she was wrong.
