Watching this absurd scene unfold before her eyes, a smirk of genuine amusement touched Elliana’s lips. She never could have imagined that one casual comment would land Myles in such ridiculous hot water.
Myles calmly brushed the dusty footprint from his pant leg, clearly having zero intention of engaging any further with this unreasonable woman. He turned toward Elliana. “I’m getting out of here.”
Elliana gave him a slight nod, and Myles began walking toward where his car was parked.
But Vivien had no plans to let him escape that easily. She launched herself forward, grabbing desperately at his collar and beginning to pound her fists against his chest. Fresh tears streamed down her face as she screamed at the top of her lungs, “You bastard! You honestly think you can just walk away from this? You’ve completely destroyed my innocence! You made me break the most important promise I have ever made to Merlin—and now you have to make this right somehow!”
Never in his entire existence had Myles been subjected to this kind of treatment from a woman. The sheer unexpectedness of her assault caught him completely off guard.
He was completely unprepared, and in that moment of hesitation, her fingernails carved two shallow scratches across his exposed neck, leaving behind thin trails of blood.
That was the instant his patience reached its absolute limit. His hand moved with lightning speed, his fingers wrapping firmly around her wrist to stop her frenzied attack mid-swing. “Let me make something perfectly clear to you, Miss Hudson,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. “If Elliana hadn’t specifically ordered me to get you off that ship, I wouldn’t have touched you even if it meant watching you go down with it.” With those final words, he released her wrist with enough force to send her stumbling backward.
He yanked at his now-wrinkled shirt in frustration, trying to restore some semblance of order to his appearance. The entire situation was completely absurd. He had simply been following instructions, carrying out a rescue mission. How in the world had that somehow transformed into “destroying a girl’s innocence”? The logic made absolutely no sense.
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Vivien staggered back several steps, her eyes burning with barely contained fury. She looked as though she might launch herself at him again, but something in his lethal expression made her reconsider.
While she didn’t dare physically attack him a second time, her sense of being wronged only intensified. She broke down into even more dramatic sobs that echoed across the courtyard. “You absolute monster! You destroy everything I held sacred, and then you have the audacity to treat me with such cruelty! If Merlin ends up disliking me because of what you did, I swear I’ll make you pay for it!”
“Oh, you can put your mind at ease about that particular concern,” Myles shot back, his voice absolutely dripping with scathing sarcasm. “This incident won’t change his opinion of you even slightly. The man already despised you long before this happened. Here’s some completely free advice that might save you years of wasted effort—you don’t have even the faintest chance with him, not in this lifetime or any other. You’d be doing yourself a massive favor by letting that fantasy go right now.”
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