Page 35 of The Devils in the Details

More silence.

Then Ari’s hand appeared under the desk. Large. Rough. The knuckles scarred in a way that suggested they’d seen more disagreement than agreement over the years. The silver ring caught what little light made it under the desk, black onyx dark against his skin.

I looked at the hand. The hand did not move. It waited, palm up, fingers slightly curled.

I took it.

His fingers closed around mine, and then he lifted. One motion. Smooth. The kind of smooth that came from abnormal strength applied with abnormal control, and my entire body registered how easy it was—the weightlessness of being moved by someone for whom my hundred and fifteen pounds represented a arithmetic problem he had already solved.

I landed in his lap.

Not perched. Not arranged. Landed, like something that had been retrieved and deposited. His thighs were warm under mine. Solid. The denim of his jeans rough against the bare skin of my legs where the capri pants had ridden up.

One of his arms settled around my waist—not gripping, resting, the weight of a limb that had decided where it belonged and was now implementing that decision without commentary.

His other hand went to work.

Fast. Thorough. The same scan he used on everything that mattered—eyes moving over my face, my throat, down to my arms where Theo’s fingers had left red marks that were already darkening into something that would bruise by morning.

His fingertips traced the edge of the torn collar, the fabric ripped at the neck where Theo had grabbed it, and something in his expression went very cold.

Not the controlled cool I was used to. Something colder. Something that lived in the neighborhood of rage without quite arriving there, the kind of cold that preceded action rather than replacing it.

His jaw was tight. The scar on his cheekbone stood pale against skin that had gone a shade darker with whatever was happening behind those eyes. His thumb brushed the edge of the bruise forming on my forearm—once, lightly, the touch of a man cataloguing damage with the precision of someone who would remember every mark.

“Theo will never touch you again,” he said.

Quiet. Flat. Not a promise. A statement of fact from someone who arranged facts for a living, who looked at the world and saw a series of problems that could be solved with the correct application of force, and who had just decided that a problem had reached the end of its allowable lifespan.

I believed him.

This is worth noting because I don’t believe most people. I have a professionally calibrated distrust of human statements, especially the ones that sound like promises, and yet when Aristoteles Romano looked at the bruises on my arms and said those five words in that rough tone, my brain registered them as infrastructure rather than sentiment.

Solid. Load-bearing. The kind of thing you could build on.

His hand was still on my waist. His thumb moved in small, absent circles against the thin cotton of my T-shirt.

Under the desk, my bare feet dangled. Turquoise sparkles catching what little light made it into the shadow beneath Ari’s chair. The torn collar hung open at my throat, exposing more skin than it was designed to, and the red marks on my arms were doing their thing—throbbing gently, reminding me that they existed, that Theo’s fingers had been there, that the marble bust had been an appropriate response by any civilized standard.

Ari’s chest was warm against my side. I could feel his heartbeat through the thin cotton of his shirt—steady, slower than mine. Apparently, his cardiovascular system had not received the memo that we were currently sitting in his lap with my bruises and his rage and the lighter clicking quietly on the desk beside us.

Open. Shut. Open.

The sound was different now. Slower. More deliberate.

I stayed where I was. His lap was warm. His arm around my waist was heavy in the way that things that belong there are heavy, and I did not examine that comparison too closely because examination would require vocabulary I did not currently possess.

Also because my adrenal system was in the process of crashing and the warmth was considerably more appealing than the alternative.

The lighter clicked one more time. Held. Snapped shut. Then his hand found the back of my head, and everything got simpler.

“He offered me a life,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected, which was either professional composure or delayed shock and I was too tired to decide which. “His exact phrase. ‘I’m offering you a life.’ Capital L, implied. Very dramatic. I think he’s been work-shopping it.”

Ari’s hand was still on the back of my head. His thumb moved in small, absent circles against my scalp.

“Kept man proposition. Full package. Resources, protection, his protection, the whole portfolio.” I kept my tone dry. Clinical. “I declined. Politely. With references to door mechanisms and the general concept of knocking, which he found... unpersuasive.”

The lighter clicked. Once. Open, held, shut. Ari’s other arm was still around my waist, his hand resting on my hip.