XAVIER POV
Why couldn't the universe be on my side for once?
I don't mean in the dramatic, poetic way people complain about fate when things don't go exactly how they want. I mean genuinely, statistically, unfairly against me. Every time I get close—really close—to Alexandria, something intervenes. Someone intervenes.
And lately, that someone has a name.
Raven Blackwood.
For one single moment, I had thought this was it. I had thought I finally had her cornered not with tricks or tension or stolen glances, but with truth. With heat. With the kind of connection you couldn't fake or deny or laugh off afterward.
Alexandria doesn't surrender easily, not to people, not to emotions, not even to herself. And yet there she was, wrapped around me, responding like her body had been waiting years to remember mine.
I had it.
I had her.
