“You expect me to believe that?” Amber snaps.
I study her for a moment. Really look at her. She’s shaking, but she hasn’t stepped back. Most people do. Instinctively. I can sense she’s fighting it with everything she has.
“Yes,” I say evenly. “I do.”
Her laugh is short and humorless. “Figures. Men like you always think you can say whatever you want and the rest of us will just swallow it.”
Men like you?Oh! I belong in a category.
I tilt my head. “Is that right?”
“I know men like you,” she says, voice tight. “Men who think everything is owed to them. Money. Power. People.”
There it is.
The accusation doesn’t surprise me. It does amuse me, a little. Not because she’s wrong to be angry, but because she’s brave enough to aim it straight at me. Only a few are capable of this, and some sure as hell wouldn’t live to tell the story.
I take a slow step closer, not crowding her, just enough that she knows I’m there.
“And you think that’s me,” I say.
She holds my gaze. “I think you’re dangerous.”
"I am."
But she doesn’t cower. She doesn’t lower her eyes. Whatever fear she feels, she refuses to let it make her small. I respect that more than I should.
“Listen to me,” I say, calm and deliberate. “I haven’t touched your friend. I haven’t ordered anyone to touch her.”
"I don't think it was you," she says. "I think it was your friend."
"I have no friends."
"Then you drink a lot with your enemies."
That draws a smirk out of me. She's closer to the truth than she knows. Me and the other Dons are rivals. Some of us have formed bonds apart from the job, but the job comes before all else. The only reason we meet this often, as friends would do, is because a single spark between any two of us would be enough to make the city fall to its knees. And we don't want that.
But Amber doesn't know. It’s not in her place to know those details. Not if I want to keep her safe.
I back her up against a wall, brick at her shoulders. Her breath catches, just once, but her fiery stare doesn't waver.
I lift a hand and tip up her chin with two fingers.
“If you really knew men like me,” I say quietly, “you’d be careful about being alone with them in a place like this.”
She swallows.
I feel it under my fingers. See it in her eyes. Fear, sharp and sudden, cutting through the anger. For a second, it guts me.
I lean in. Close enough that I could kiss her if I wanted to. Close enough to feel the heat of her skin, the way her breath stutters as she tries to keep it even.
For a heartbeat, I wonder what she’d do.
If she’d struggle.
Or if she’d let herself be claimed.
The thought is dark. Immediate. I picture my hands around her throat, firm but not too tight. My lips at her pulse point. My hand sliding up through the slit of her uniform skirt. I picture how it would be—to make her gasp. First for air, then for something else.
