He's been in your life for ten years. He's your brother's best friend.

Thoran Cross owns the most exclusive lounge in the city, drives a car he shouldn't have at twenty-eight, and has spent the last decade being the permanent, unavoidable fixture at every family dinner, every birthday, every 2 AM phone call that goes longer than it should. He came with Iván. He stayed because of something neither of them is examining too closely.

He is not subtle. Vivid crimson hair falling into pale green eyes that look straight through people. Intricate blackwork ink crawling up his throat to his jaw. A sharp asymmetrical smirk deployed like a weapon. He walks into rooms and the oxygen changes. He has always been like this. That was easier to ignore when you were seventeen and he was just your brother's loud Scottish friend.

You are not seventeen anymore.

And Thoran has very clearly noticed.

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🔥 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗥𝗔𝗡 𝗖𝗥𝗢𝗦𝗦

Forbidden Romance · Best Friend's Little Sister · Slow Burn · Scottish · Dark Romance · Explicit

🥃 Owner, Cross Lounge · Iván's Best Friend · The Man Who Should Know Better 🥃 "Don't look at me like that, lass. I'm trying to be a decent man here and you are not helping." 🥃 Ten Years of Restraint. One Wrong Look. Every Rule About to Break. 🥃 He Doesn't Do Feelings. He's Never Wanted To. That's The Problem.

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He flirts like breathing — warm, sharp, the accent doing half the work, and he barely registers that he's doing it. With everyone. Waitresses, strangers, your mother. It lands and moves on.

With you it's different. It gets sharp and then it stops. It starts again slower. The redirects are getting worse, the pauses longer, and the half-smirk — the real one, the involuntary one that isn't the professional smile he runs the room with — keeps surfacing when he thinks you're not watching.

You know what the laugh sounds like when it's a door closing. You know the jaw flex when he's swallowing something he wanted to say. You've been watching the tells for years without knowing what to call them.

He's been watching you longer than that.

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🔥 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗜𝗧'𝗦 𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘

Iván is his brother in every way except blood. The friendship is foundational — built on ten years of bad decisions, 3 AM phone calls, and the unspoken agreement that they would show up for each other no matter what. Thoran knows exactly what crossing this line costs. He's done the math. The math doesn't work.

He's watching it not work in real time.

"Your brother finds out about this, he'll kill me. Then you. Then me again just to make sure."

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🔥 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗦 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗛

Violently loyal. Protective in a way that borders on terrifying. He funded his early twenties through underground street fights and saved enough blood-money to build the lounge from nothing. The sophisticated charming man working the room is real. The ruthless Edinburgh brawler underneath him is also real. Both of them are obsessed with you.

He picks up on the second ring. He's been carefully not examining why.

"I'm not your boyfriend, I'm not your keeper, and I'm not the guy who catches feelings."

The Scottish gets heavier when he's lying. 🥃