“You… set up a table.”
“Observation skills on point.”
“With cutlery.”
“I heard people use it on dates. Figured I’d try not to embarrass you.”
My heart did something very stupid.
He hadn’t just ordered dinner. He’d tried. The little details gave it away—the slightly crooked placement of one setting, the way one candle was taller than the others like he’d grabbed whatever was in the cupboard, the fact that he’d clearly moved the usual stack of datapads off the table himself because they now sat in a crooked tower on the floor.
“You did this for me.”
“For us. Two weeks is a long time.”
Warmth spread down my spine, chased by something sharp. Guilt, maybe. Or the ache I never quite shook when I thought about what we couldn’t do. This was his attempt at a date, and it was inside four walls with our security system and nobody knowing I was here.
He stepped back, giving me space to walk in. The elevator doors slid closed behind me.
“Come on. Before the food hits room temperature and we end up ordering noodles again.”
I slipped off my heels just inside the door and walked after him. He watched me like he always did—possessive, hungry, soft underneath it. Only tonight there was that extra flicker in it. Nerves.
Vincent Crow. Nervous.
End of days.
He pulled my chair out like we were in an old movie, waiting until I sat before pushing it in. When he took his own seat opposite, his fingers tapped once on the table before he frowned at them and made them stop.
“I feel like I should make a speech.”
“You really don’t.”
A huff slipped out of him, tension cracking a little. “Good. Because I don’t know how.”
Liar. He gave speeches in boardrooms and war rooms and at the kind of syndicate tables that made grown men sweat. But this wasn’t that. This was date night with his sub, and perfectionist Vince clearly didn’t have a file for it.
He lifted the lids from the dishes. The smell hit me first, herbs, something rich and tomato-based. My stomach growled.
His eyes snapped up. A tiny smile tugged. “Good.”
“That’s rude.”
“That’s Daddy. I like hearing you’re hungry.”
Just like that, a little of my own tension smoothed out. Whatever else was weird tonight, the dynamic was still there, humming between us.
He scooped food onto my plate first, watching how much I took, then mirrored it on his. The normality of it broke something tight in my chest. No staff pretending not to judge how much I did or didn’t eat. Just my dom putting dinner in front of me and waiting until I’d taken the first bite.
“So. How was Harlan.”
“Loud. Exhausting. Full of men who think they’re the main character.”
“So, Harlan.”
I nodded. He let me talk. Let me ramble about negotiations and flights and the never-ending wave of “one more meeting” until I realised something.
He hadn’t interrupted once to ask about numbers or names. He was listening for one thing: how I’d felt.
