CAITLIN CREWS - The Guardian's Virgin Ward

Still, she stood rooted to the spot outside her own bedroom, that odd hum deep in her belly shivering through her, as if her body knew things she didn’t.

Liliana didn’t like that feeling at all.

But she kept going because she’d promised she would. And because she was tired of being the odd one out. The ugly, awkward duckling. The strange creature her friends were forever apologizing for when she would do yet another thing that marked her as different. Unworldly. Naive. Set apart, always.

Liliana wasn’t convinced she’d ever transform into a swan in any real sense. She was the daughter of one of the most beautiful and fashionable women who had ever lived, so she knew what a swan looked like and how far from the mark she was in comparison. Try miles upon miles, and then some. But that was okay. She’d settle for becoming a sparrow. Something with wings and no fear of heights, so she could finally put her family history and her tragic past behind her.

That was the thought that had her throwing open her door and stepping into her own bedroom at last.

Her room was exactly as she’d left it, save the tall figure that stood still and dark at her windows, looking out toward the chaotic street below. With his clothes on, thankfully, and no sign of a telltale boom box like all the movies. Her heart tripped over itself and she glanced around quickly to make sure there was nothing in her private space that would make her seem as much of a weirdo as she knew she was, as everyone always told her she was. Everything seemed in order. Her neatly made bed was on one wall and her desk on the other, with nothing but her laptop and the latest novel she was reading on the surface and more books stacked neatly on the shelves above it. She’d left her closet door half-open earlier, but there was nothing inside but her meticulously hung and carefully folded clothes. No mess, inside the closet or the bedroom itself. No pictures. No art. Just the brick wall on one side and the weathered windows on the other.

It had never occurred to Liliana before that instant that it might as well be one of the dorm rooms she’d lived in over the years. Or a nun’s little cell in a convent, for that matter. Or a prison, a small voice interjected inside of her. It was that stark and without particular character, unlike her roommates’ rooms, which exploded with their dispositions and possessions spilling across every available surface, from their bright comforters to their trinkets and clothes to the posters that decorated their walls.

But she didn’t have time to process that, much less think about what it said about her. Because the man who stood with his back to her, staring out at the Bronx and the mad glitter of Manhattan off in the distance through the half-fogged windows, turned.

And nothing made sense.

Her heart stopped. Then began again, with a kick that made the room spin around and then center somewhere deep in her belly, where she felt raw and hollow at once.

Because it was Izar.

The cruel and terrible Izar that Liliana had only seen in photographs for years. The guardian she’d always found equal parts maddening and horrible no matter how little she heard from him. She’d spent hours upon hours studying the man from afar, looking for proof that he was as terrible as she thought he was. And in all that time she’d never thought of him as anything but the remote and inaccessible bane of her existence. The shadow hanging over her, that was it.

But Kay had called him beautiful.

Izar could not be beautiful. Izar was... Izar. Nothing more.

But the damage was already done.

Suddenly, Liliana found herself completely unable to see the same dark, fairy-tale monster she’d always imagined when she’d thought of this man. She’d told herself she hated him and had imagined herself the wronged innocent in a tale that could only end with the big, bad wolf finally getting his comeuppance. She’d imagined him getting his in a great variety of ways, in fact. And it wasn’t that the real, live Izar was any less a devil than she’d imagined as he stood there, making no attempt to hide his disapproval from her as he frowned at her.

But suddenly—impossibly, irrevocably—all she could see was the fact he was also a man.

Because whatever else Izar was, whatever she’d told herself all this time because she’d needed to believe it as she’d scowled at all those pictures of him, he was indisputably a man.

Something red and furious swept through Liliana then, making her much too hot and suddenly desperately worried that her skin might crack wide open with the force of it. Her head felt light. Her knees seemed weak. And deep in her core, she melted.

Izar was formed like the bronze statue of himself that she knew very well stood in the impoverished Spanish neighborhood where he’d grown up. He was all hard male sinew and restless, brooding grace that shouted out his ingrained athleticism without him having to say a single word or move a muscle. He was dressed in the sort of sleek, impossibly chic and yet relentlessly masculine way he favored, broadcasting the fact he ran an empire that included some of the world’s best-loved couture houses while failing, somehow, to mute that elemental power of his that came off of him in waves.

Most of that was obvious in the pictures she’d seen of him.

In person, he was like a blast of winter wind. Intense. Ruthless. Undeniable.

He was muscled and perfect, and then there was that fallen angel’s face of his—all dark brows and his close-cropped dark hair, the scrape of the day’s beard on his belligerent jaw, and those acrobatic cheekbones that made his arrogant mouth, hard and yet full, nothing short of breathtaking.

Literally, it stole her breath.

He did.

That hum deep inside of her started again, making her skin prickle all over and a giddy sort of shiver wind through her belly, tight and sharp.

Izar didn’t make sense in her bedroom. He’d been bad enough in her head. He was lean for such a big, strong man, reminding her of the clips she’d seen of him on the fútbol pitch, all that hungry and focused grace mixed with impossible speed—

What was happening to her?

His dark gaze fastened on hers and seemed to burn through her. Her cheeks flushed redder and her stomach kept up its maddening shiver and hum, and she was suddenly panicked at the thought of what might happen. What he might do if he ever suspected what was happening to her. What she felt—careening around inside of her, bright and impossible—

“You are no longer twelve,” he bit out, and his voice in person was...better. Richer. Darker. Delicious, somehow.

God help her. She was definitely no longer twelve.

And she refused to act as if she still was, no matter that the fairy-tale shadows in her head had come to life before her eyes...and in a way that was far more raw and real than she ever could have imagined.

“My friends said my birthday present was waiting for me in here,” Liliana said, with an ease that had to be all about the wine she’d been drinking, because it certainly wasn’t her usual way of speaking. To anyone, and especially not to him—not that she’d had much practice with the latter. “If they meant you, it’s official. This is the worst birthday of my life.”

Izar took a step toward her, then stopped abruptly. As if he didn’t quite trust himself to come closer—but that was ridiculous. Still, the odd little notion made her throat go dry and her heart beat at her all the harder.

His black eyes glittered in the buttery light from her desk lamp and the chaotic gleam of the city outside her windows. He held himself still, so still she was entirely too aware of his solid shoulders, which took up the whole of her bedroom, and how he seemed to vibrate with a certain rich, masculine darkness that kicked its way along her limbs and pooled deep in her belly. Then pulsed.