"I wouldn't be running the session," she clarified, reaching for a towel. "I'd just be doing the intake follow-ups. Scheduling. Basic stuff."
"It's not appropriate."
"Why not?"
Because he leaned against your desk. Because he made you laugh. Because his body was angled toward you like a man who wanted something, and you didn't notice, because you never notice, because you give your warmth to everyone and it will be the death of me.
"Because you've been there one day, Mia."
She held his gaze. And he could see it, the moment she decided not to push. The moment the fight drained from her shoulders and something softer took its place, and she nodded. "Okay."
Just that. Okay.
No argument. No challenge. No wrist-grabbing or truth-telling or backing him against the ropes until his composure cracked. She put the towel down and came back to the table and sat across from him, and her eyes were gentle, and her voice was gentle, and the gentleness was a weapon more lethal than anything in his arsenal.
"Alexei."
He didn't answer. His chest was tight. The evening light was fading. The kitchen was dim and warm and smelled like burnt risotto and the lemon soap she'd used on the dishes, and she was sitting three feet away from him with her hair falling out of its knot and her shoulder bare and her eyes on his, and she wasn't pushing.
She wasn't pushing, and it was destroying him.
"You had a long day." Her voice was low. Not a whisper. Something between a whisper and a statement. "I can see it."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. Your hands have been fists since you sat down."
He unclenched them. She noticed. She always noticed.
"I'm not going to bring up this morning," she told him. "I know you think I'm going to, but I'm not."
He didn't speak.
"I just want to sit here with you." Her voice was so soft it hurt. "Can I do that? Can we just sit here?"
He should have refused. He should have stood up and gone to his room and closed the door, because the door was his weapon,the retreat was his strategy, and every minute he spent in this warm kitchen with this girl who saw through every wall he'd ever built was another brick removed.
"Yes," he heard himself say.
She didn't move. Didn't close the distance. Didn't reach for him. She sat across the table with her bare shoulder and her messy hair and her gentle eyes, and she let the silence hold them.
And Alexei Almazov, who had built an empire on control and spent twenty-two years turning himself into something unbreakable, felt the cracks spread.
Because this was worse than the kiss. Worse than the morning. Worse than her grabbing his wrist and telling him not to walk away. This was a girl making him dinner and asking nothing. This was domesticity. This was what his life could be, every night, if he let it.
He could see it. The map of it. Her at his table, her music on his speakers, her burnt risotto, her laughter. Biscuit on the floor. Her bare feet on the marble in the morning. Her voice in every room, filling the spaces that had been empty so long he'd forgotten they were there.
A life. Not an empire. A life.
"Mia."
She met his eyes. Patient. Waiting. Not pushing.
"Come here."
Two words. The first time he'd ever spoken them to her without a reason attached. Not come here, you need to sign this. Not come here, your flight leaves in an hour. Just: come here.
Her lips parted. Her eyes went bright. And she stood, slow, like she was afraid any sudden movement would spook him, and came around the table, and stood in front of him.
