Margot takes his hand but she gives me a sideways glance on the way past—don’t leave these dishes out too long.I nod andlet her go off with Richard without a second thought about the clean-up.
I look at Zero.
The patio doors slide shut behind them. Zero chuckles.
"...Zero," Bane says quietly, eyebrows up. "What did you say to him?"
"Nothing he didn't have coming."
"Zero."
"He'll live, Bane. He's having a romantic walk on the patio. He's being rewarded for hisgoodbehaviour."
Wren is looking back and forth between the two absolutely fascinated at this strange dynamic she sees being weaved in real time. She takes a small sip of her prosecco. "...I have so many questions," she says.
"You're not allowed to have any answers, pretty thing," Zero says, charmingly. "Family secrets. Vow of silence."
"Family secrets that include whatever this is?" She gestures, helpless and small, at the room—at the half-eaten tart, at the two of them, at the entire warm chaotic evening. "All of this. Everything."
"Especially those."
Wren considers him over the rim of her glass.
"Okay. Fine. You don't have to tell me anything about your family. But you're going to tell me something about Max."
Zero's eyes brighten. "Am I?"
"You are. If you're going to be one of the people he's"—a small careful pause as she picks a word for the table—"close to, then I'd like to know what kind of person you actually are. The not-charming version."
"This is the not-charming version, pretty thing."
"I doubt that very much."
"...fair."
She sets her glass down. Folds her hands neatly in front of it. The whole table has gone a little quieter without anyone calling for it.
"Max is important to me, Zero. He is, in fact, one of the only people on this earth who is important to me. So I'm going to tell you, very politely, in this lovely dining room, in front of your brother and your Margot’s good plates—" she meets his eyes flatly "—that if youeverhurt him, I will find out, and I will not be polite about it. I don't have the leverage you do. But I have a long memory, and I am, when I want to be, deeply inconvenient. Are we clear?"
Zero looks delighted.
Genuinely, gleefully delighted, in a way I have not seen on his face all night.
"Oh,baby," he says—and it takes me a second to realize he means me, not her—"she's protecting you. Did you hear that? She's threatening me." He turns back to Wren with the same lit-up grin. "Sweetheart. Pretty thing. Max likes it when I hurt him. He asks for it. He—"
The heat hits the back of my neck before my brain has finished registering the sentence. My face goes red. My pulse jumps. My cock, with absolutely no input from me, twitches under the table in a way I am going to die if Wren sees.
Wren doesn’t see. She points her finger at Zero, completely level.
"Hey! I am not playing with you. You can be cute about it later, on your own time, in a different room. Right now I need to hear that you understand what I just said."
The grin drops off Zero's face.
Not all the way. Zero doesn't go fully serious—that isn't a register he comfortably lives in. But something underneath the grin steadies, and he sets the beer down, and he meets her eyesproperly, and what comes out of his mouth is, for Zero, almost solemn.
"I hear you. I understand you. I have no intention of hurting him in any way he hasn't asked me to. And if I ever do, you have my permission to be as deeply inconvenient as you like." A beat. "I'd help you find me."
Wren studies his face for a long second. Then she nods, once. "Okay. Thank you."
