“Open it.”
Chapter 6
ELIA’S FINGERS HESITATEDbefore lifting the lid. The hinge moved without sound. Inside lay a slim, elegant phone, its surface dark and flawless, the screen catching the warm light overhead. It looked impossibly modern against the linen and crystal, apromise disguised as technology.
For a moment she simply looked at it. No one had ever handed her access without condition. Communication in the Donati house had been filtered, monitored, rationed. Calls placed through intermediaries. Messages relayed and edited.
“I’ve never had one,” she said, and this time the words didn’t come out sharp. They came out thin, stripped of the armor she usuallywore.
“I guessed as much.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t soften the acknowledgment. But something in him shifted. His shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly beneath the tailored jacket, ameasured inhale expanding his chest before he let it out. His jaw flexed once, the only visible sign that the admission had struck somewhere beneath his composed exterior.
He held her gaze without looking away, as if daring her to see that he understood more than she’d said aloud. He knew what it meant to deny someone connection. He knew what it meant to restore it. And for a fleeting second, she had the unsettling impression that giving her that phone had cost him something. Not money or effort, but control.
Her throat tightened unexpectedly. The phone wasn’t expensive for him. It wasn’t symbolic for the room. But for her, it was the first object that belonged solely to her without ledger, without clause, without interest accumulating in the background.
“My number is programmed,” he added.
The words landed with a different weight than she expected. Not surveillance. Not tracking. Not oversight. Direct access. To him.The implication sent warmth skimming over her skin, unsettling and intimate. Access without supervision. Choice without leash. The freedom to reach for him or not, and to have that decision respected.
“You expect me to call you?” she asked, her voice threaded with something dangerously close to wonder.
“When you choose.”
There it was again. Not command. Not summons. Permission layered over power. He wasn’t pulling her toward him with a hook. He was standing still and letting her decide whether to close the distance.Her pulse quickened, not from fear but from the realization that choice could be more binding than obligation. He wasn’t summoning. He was allowing. And that, somehow, became farmore intimate.
“And what do you want from me?” she pressed, needing clarity before the ground shifted again.
“Don’t lie to me.”
The words were quiet, but they carried far more substance than a quieter request ever could. He wasn’t asking for charm or gratitude. He wasn’t asking for obedience or sex. He was drawing aline.
Lying would mean betrayal. It would mean choosing distance over connection. It would mean attempting to manipulate a man who understood manipulation as a profession. Telling him the truth—especially when it cost her—would require something far more dangerous than politeness. It would require trust.
“Nothing else?”
His gaze lingered on her eyes, steady and unflinching. “Nothing you don’t offer.”
Heat coiled in her abdomen, subtle and persistent. Waiting could be more dangerous than taking. Waiting meant he trusted her to step across the distance herself.
Their knees brushed beneath the table as the waiter returned. The contact was accidental, yet neither of them moved away immediately. The awareness that followed was sharp and intimate, more charged for being unacknowledged.
His knee shifted under the table. Not accidentally this time. The contact was deliberate, firm against her thigh where silk met skin. Not high enough to scandalize. Not low enough to be misread.Just enough.
Her breath caught.
He didn’t look down. Didn’t adjust. Didn’t retreat. His gaze remained on her face as though nothing had changed, as though he wasn’t currently aware of exactly how close he was to theline.
Heat spread from the point of contact, blooming upward and downward at once. The silk of her skirt suddenly seemed thinner. The air, heavier. She became acutely aware of the narrow space between her thighs, of the subtle tension there, of the way her body responded before she could disciplineit.
She should have moved.
She didn’t.
The restraint was mutual. Intentional. Asilent test neither of them acknowledged aloud.
His voice remained steady as he continued the conversation about her coursework, about clauses and leverage and the way language could be turned into a weapon. But beneath the table, his knee pressed just slightly closer, claiming the space without forcingit.
