“Both,” he says, his voice thickening. His gaze travels down my body slowly, deliberately, lingering on the neckline in a way that makes my nipples tighten beneath the silk. I watch him swallow, watch his jaw clench, watch the way his hands flex against his thighs like he’s physically restraining himself from reaching for me. “I thought you were a journalist, but it turns out, you’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
The words come out sharp—and too close to the truth—but he just laughs, low and rough, as Danny climbs into the driver’s seat and lifts us smoothly into the sky.
The sensation is still strange—that moment of weightlessness, the city dropping away beneath us like a dream. I grip the edge of the leather seat as Manhattan sprawls out below. The Empire State Building slides past on our right, close enough that I can see tourists on the observation deck, pointing at us.
“I could’ve flown you myself,” Vanguard says. “Would’ve been faster.”
“And ruined my hair? No thank you.”
“Your hair looks…” He trails off, his eyes catching on my exposed neck, the hollow of my throat. I watch his tongue dart out to wet his lips. “Yeah. Let’s not ruin it.”
The car hums around us, a cocoon of leather and quiet luxury. The seats are warm beneath my thighs, heated to ward off the autumn chill. Through the tinted windows, the city lights paint shifting patterns across Vanguard’s face—gold, then blue, then red.
“You’re quiet,” he says after a moment, though it doesn’t do much to break up the tension, at least not on my end.
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
About the data Bayo’s decrypting. About Kapoor’s restricted file. About whether you know what your creators are really doing, or if you’re just another victim of whatever nightmare they’re running.
I’m thinking about how badly I want to touch you and how badly I want to be touched.
“About how I’m going to explain to my editor why I’m attending a presidential fundraiser as your date instead of covering it objectively.”
He gives me a stiff smile. “Tell them it’s method journalism. Deep cover. Really getting into the story.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know what this is.” His voice is quieter now, stripped of the flirtation. He leans in slightly, his gaze intense, pinning me in place until I feel like I can’t breathe. “Do you?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with everything we aren’t saying. I look at him—this man who makes me feel things I’ve spent fifteen years learning to suppress—and feel my carefully constructed walls tremble.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
Something flickers across his face. Relief, maybe, or recognition. As if he’s just as lost as I am, just as terrified of whatever is building between us.
Because somethingisbuilding between us, isn’t it?
Or is it just in my head?
God, please let it be in my head. It would be so much easier that way.
As if he hears my thoughts, he reaches over and takes my hand.
The contact sends electricity sparking up my arm—his palm warm and rough against mine, his fingers threading through my own with a gentleness that seems impossible for someone so powerful. He doesn’t say anything. He just holds my hand in the dark while the city twinkles and Danny pilots us toward whatever the evening brings.
This isn’t good, Mia, I tell myself.Let go of his hand. He shouldn’t be holding your hand for a whole bunch of reasons, and none of them are good.
Yet, I can’t pull it away.
I don’t want to.
When was the last time someone held my bloody hand?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art rises before us like a temple to wealth and power, its grand façade lit up against the night sky. Red carpet spills down the steps like blood, flanked by photographers and security and the kind of velvet ropes that separate the important from the invisible.
