He felt powerful.
Every dropped jaw, every widened eye, every sharp inhale—they fed something in him. Something that had been starving for seventeen years, locked in a closet and told it didn't deserve to exist.
Look at me now, that something whispered.Look at what I've become.
A group of women in tennis whites had actually stopped their game to watch him run past the courts. One of them had wolf-whistled—bold, desperate, the sound of a woman who'd just realized her standards were negotiable.
Another had dropped her racket. A third had said something in what sounded like Italian that he was pretty sure wasn't PG-rated—probably along the lines of "mamma mia, I'd let him ruin my credit score."
Phei had winked without slowing down.
The sound of someone fainting had reached him thirty seconds later.
Worth it.
