close. Damian ordered two glasses of something dark and expensive without asking what she wanted, and for once Elena didn't call him on it - she was too busy noticing

t looking at her, a faint smile p

"Occupational habit. I like t

are you de

l dec

racticed charm from the balcony hours earlier. It did something to her chest, he

tempt at running a hotel kitchen at nineteen (a grease fire, a lawsuit narrowly avoided, a lifetime ban from ever touching a stove in one of his own properties again). It was easy in a way Elena hadn't

she was the only interesting thing that had happened to him in longer than he wanted to admit, and Elena fo

offer laid flat on the table between them. "Not - I'm not assuming anything. It's raining, it's late, and you look like you haven't

ry polite wa

oliteness. Rarely

r all his talk of fixing things before people asked, was very carefully not fixing this, not decidi

," sh

wasn't sure he knew either. But when the elevator doors closed and he looked down at her in the mirrored gold l

atious art, no skyline-facing wall of glass showing off the city he half-owned, just clean lines and low la

Elena said, picking one

one. It would r

billionaire or emotio

gh that she had to tip her head back slightly to hold his gaze, and the eas

ea

f I've mis

hing, kept the moment light enough to walk away from if she needed to. Instead she set the p

t misread i

knew how everything would end. It was slower than that, more careful - his hands unsteady in a way that surprised her, like he was relearning something he'd conv

Elena wh

most like a laugh, disbelieving. "I don't u

her d

both makin

said, and pulled h

y below - they lay tangled together in the quiet, and Elena felt something she hadn't expected to feel: not just satisfacti

g her spine, neither of them speaking, and in the

hen I was eleven.

there and nobody in my family so much as said her name out loud." His voice was low, even, the practiced calm of a man who'd told himself this story so many times it had worn smooth like a stone. "I spent years thinking if I'd just been better -

mia

y. "I've never told anyone that. Not my ex-wife. Not in fourteen months

n longer than that - she saw something in him that had nothing to do with control, with empires, with a man who fixed problems before a

she said, "fo

, until his breathing evened out into something slow and unguarded, and Elena realized, with a small, unwelcome lurch in her chest,

d have ter

terri

herself feel the f

it had settled hours ago, his face - Elena allowed herself one long moment to look at it - completely unguarded in sleep in a way she suspected almost no one alive had ever been permitted to see. No