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A twisted amusement curled the corner of his mouth as his gaze dropped to the pulse jumping in my throat.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wear the suit. But don’t think for a second that you’re holding the chain.”
He grabbed his towel and snapped it at my leg.
“Let’s go, Princess. If I have to look pretty, I want the most expensive suit they have.”
CHAPTER 17
LEANDER
The tailoring suite sat on the seventh floor of the spire, a world away from the sweat and bleach of the locker rooms. The mirrors ran floor to ceiling, reflecting my discomfort back at me from a dozen angles. I stood on a plush podium while a small, nervous man with a mouthful of pins assaulted my inseam.
Standing still turned out to be the hardest drill anyone had assigned me all week. The ankle kept up a low pulse under the tape, the gel still doing its slow repair work, and the podium gave me nowhere to shift my weight without getting stabbed, so I stood there and took it.
“Please stand still, sir,” the tailor murmured, sweating. “The fabric is delicate.”
“What is this?” I snapped. “It’s going to rip the second I flex.”
“It’s Italian weave silk,” Felix said from the corner.
He sat in a leather armchair, flipping through a datapad. He looked perfectly at home here, surrounded by luxury. It annoyed me to no end that he fitted in everywhere while I always felt like a bull in a china shop.
The tailor sighed, pulling the measuring tape tight around my chest. He clicked his tongue.
“Problem?” I asked.
“The proportions are... difficult,” the tailor said, wrinkling his nose. “Your shoulders are too broad for the standard cut. And the scarring on the ribcage creates an uneven silhouette. It ruins the line of the shirt.”
He touched the scar tissue under my arm with distasteful fingers.
“It is difficult to drape elegance over this much... bulk.”
My hand twitched, wanting to grab the little man by his perfectly starched collar.
“Leave us.”
The command came from the corner. Felix dropped the datapad on the chair and walked toward the podium.
“Sir, I haven’t finished the—“
“I said leave,” Felix said, projecting the kind of quiet authority that made people shrink. “I will finish the fitting. Send the alterations droid in ten minutes.”
The tailor swallowed, nodded, and scurried out of the room, closing the heavy double doors behind him.
The silence rushed back in. Felix hadn’t looked up once while the little man picked me apart, and he had still moved one sentence ahead of my hand.
He stepped up onto the podium, close enough that the mirrors ran out of angles that didn’t have him in them.
“You didn’t have to save me,” I said. “I was about to break his nose.”
“That’s why I saved him,” Felix muttered. He grabbed the measuring tape hanging around my neck. “Turn around.”
In the reflection we made no sense as a set. I was dark, scarred, and overflowing with rough muscle. He was pale, lean, and contained.
He reached around me. His arms brushed my ribs as he pulled the vest tight, checking the fit. I watched him in the mirror, his face focused, eyes narrowed in concentration, treating my body like a problem he had to solve, adjusting the fabric with efficient movements, and I let him. I knew this kind of touch now. I had met it the night he knelt on a dorm floor and cleaned sub-basement grease off my shin with a white towel, touch that wanted nothing back, and I was developing an appetite for it faster than I wanted to admit.
But then his hand lingered.
