I took it.
The first sip burned pleasantly. My body was still hyper-aware—of the fire crackling nearby, of the solid weight of himacross the table, of the fact that I was hundreds of miles from Charleston and no one here knew me as Lia Quinn, the woman who made violence palatable in grant proposals.
Here, I was just a woman who had asked to be hunted.
“I heard about Alpha Mail the same way everyone did,” I said quietly. “Whispers. Stories. Women laughing like they didn’t believe it—but listening, anyway.”
“Harper,” he said.
The name landed like a dropped glass.
I stiffened. “What about her?”
“She’s careful,” he said. “She hears things without touching them.”
My fingers tightened around the stem of my glass. “You know her?”
“I know of her.”
That distinction mattered. It meant he hadn’t crossed that line.
Yet.
“She would hate this,” I said. “She married the safest man I know.”
He leaned back slightly, studying me. “And you envy her?”
The question was a blade.
“No,” I said automatically. Then—more honestly—“Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to want what she has.”
“But you don’t,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
He didn’t push.
That, I was beginning to understand, was his control. Not pressure. Certainty.
“You didn’t come here for one night,” he said. “You came because your life in Charleston is built on restraint.”
The words slid under my skin.
“You came because you’re tired of being the adult in every room.”
My throat tightened.
“You came because you wanted to know what it feels like when someone else decides.”
Silence stretched between us. Not awkward. Loaded.
“I arranged the summit,” he continued. “Not as bait. As cover. You don’t leave your life lightly. You needed a reason that made sense.”
“And you just—what—pulled strings?” I asked.
His gaze didn’t waver. “I own the building it’s being held in.”
Billionaire. Of course. I’d heard whispers.
