Chapter Eleven
ZACHARIE HAD EXPECTEDresistance.
He had prepared for it, in fact. The speech was already forming in his mind as he drove them back to his estate—the careful, logical argument for why she needed to stay with him, why bodyguards would shadow her every move, why her university had already been notified that she would be taking a leave of absence for personal safety reasons connected to her cousin’s murder.
He had anticipated tears. Protests. Perhaps even that stubborn tilt of her chin that made him want to kiss her senseless and lock her away from the world in equal measure.
What he hadnotanticipated was this.
“Okay.”
Zacharie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Okay?”
“Yes.” Mira shifted in the passenger seat, her body angled toward him, her expression open and trusting in a way that made something twist behind his ribs. “If you think that’s what’s safest, then okay.”
He waited for the catch. The condition. The soft-spoken objection wrapped in a question.
None came, and it was this that had his composure slipping.
The way she never did what he expected. And the way she was looking at him now, like he was her haven while the whole world saw him as their end.
“Am I disturbing you again?”
Zacharie grunted in response to her teasing, but this only had her smiling.
“I am, aren’t—”
He stopped her words with a kiss, but it was not to shut her up. He kissed her because it was the only way he could tell her what he hadn’t the ability to say any other way. He kissed her because he was relieved that she wasn’t fighting him. Kissed her because he was also frustrated with how easily she trusted him.
But lastly, he kissed her because he simply wanted to kiss her, his hunger for her building since the moment he first saw her face. She made a soft sound against his lips as he deepened the kiss, surprise melting into surrender, and when he finally forced himself to pull back, she was flushed and breathless, her eyes slightly dazed.
Zacharie’s own body was tight with need, every nerve ending demanding that he close the distance again.
Instead, he turned back to the road.
“We’ll stop by your dorm first,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Pack whatever you need.”
