Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Today, she wouldn’t meet his eyes....even as her body burned up beneath his hands.
“Mira.”
He said her name deliberately. Low. A command wrapped in silk.
But she still didn’t look up.
“Mira,” he repeated, and this time he let his thumb brush the edge of the fresh bandage, let the touch linger. “Look at me.”
Her breathing stuttered even as she shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She swallowed hard, the movement traveling down her throat.
“I just...can’t.”
Zacharie knew he should let it go. Just finish the bandage and leave her to rest and stop pushing for something she clearly didn’t want to give.
Instead, he found himself leaning closer.
“Why can’t you look at me?”
“I just...can’t.”
“But when we were in the car yesterday, you couldn’t stop—”
“T-That was then!”
She had cut him off in an embarrassed stammer, yet another crack in the walls he so despised.
“Then what changed?”
Her hands twisted tighter in the sheets.
Zacharie waited.
But she offered nothing else, and the silence stretched between them, heavy with everything she wasn’t saying.
Fine.
He withdrew his hands. Slowly. Perhaps more slowly than necessary, his fingertips dragging across her skin in a way that could have been accidental but wasn’t.
Her whole body shuddered.
“A-Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” Still not looking at him. Still that soft, muted tone, like she was speaking from somewhere far away, and he was nothing but a stranger performing a service rather than the man who had carried her through gunfire twelve hours ago.
And yet...
Her pulse was still racing.
He could see it fluttering in the hollow of her throat.
So what had changed?
What had happened between last night and this morning to make her build this wall?
A part of him wanted to shake the truth out of her.
Threaten her even.
But his control held through at the last moment, and Zacharie nodded toward the tray instead. “You should eat.”
“I will.”
He rose from the bed even as his lips tightened at her still-mumbling tone. “I have business to attend to. If you need anything—”
“The button. I remember.”
She was speaking so fast, he could not help but feel that she just wanted him to leave.
Why?
Zacharie paused at the door.
Look at me.
The words burned on his tongue. He wanted to say them again. Wanted to cross back to the bed and tip her chin up and force her to meet his eyes, to see whatever it was she was hiding from him.
But since only madness lied ahead if he were to say and do any of those—
“Rest,” Zacharie bit out. “The doctor will check on you this afternoon.”
He turned away, and his jaw clenched.
Because unlike last night...
Zacharie knew she was not watching him go this time.
And it pissed him off that he even noticed this.
THREE HOURS LATER, Zacharie found himself back outside her door.
This was the fourth time he had passed by. The first time, he had told himself he was simply walking to his study. The second, checking on the security detail he had posted at the end of the hall. The third, he had given up on excuses entirely and simply stood there like a fool, listening for any sound from within.
Four times.
He had faced down cartels, survived interrogations, built an empire from nothing. And here he was, pacing past a guest room like a lovesick schoolboy.
Pathetic.
He knew she was likely asleep at this time, but he still found himself pushing the door open. He wasn’t sure what he thought he would see...but it was certainly not this.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the breakfast tray pushed aside and barely touched, and completely unaware that he had entered, with her attention fixed on the television mounted on the wall opposite. A legal drama played across the screen, some courtroom thriller with a silver-haired prosecutor delivering what was clearly meant to be a devastating closing argument.
“Luc Infernalis would never make that mistake,” she mumbled to herself, so quietly he almost missed it. “Luc would have caught the inconsistency in the witness testimony three scenes ago.”
Zacharie froze in the doorway.
Who the heck was Luc?
“And his suit is all wrong,” she continued, shaking her head, her voice still that soft murmur like she was talking to someone only she could see. “Luc would never wear pinstripes to a jury trial. Too aggressive. He knows juries respond better to approachability. He’d wear charcoal. Maybe navy.”
She hugged a pillow to her chest, chin resting on top of it.
“And the way he’s standing? Too stiff. Luc moves like he owns the courtroom, but he never makes the jury feel small. He makes them feel like they’re the smartest people in the room, like of course they’ll see what he sees, because they’re not idiots...”
Her voice was soft. Almost tender even. And the sound of it made his jaw clench as he slipped out of the room.
Zacharie walked back to his study with measured steps, his face perfectly blank, his mind anything but.