She repeated it silently, pressing her thumbnail into the pad of her index finger until the small pain sharpened her focus.
He's here because someone told him to be.
Her body did not believe her. Her body was, in fact, staging a full rebellion against the premise, because some part of her that had woken up on the stage floor and not shut up since then. That part of her wasincandescentat the idea of him being near her every day. Walking her home. Standing in the wings. Close enough to look at whenever she became brave enough to look.
But the older part that knew what it looked like when a man was paid to be near her went cold. She knew this feeling. She knew what it looked like when a man was paid to be near you. David Sterling had called itpartnershipfor a decade, and she'd believed him, and the believing had cost her everything.
Thorne was not David Sterling. She knew that. But knowing didn't stop the old alarm from going off, didn't stop her from shoving the want back down.
He's doing his job. That's all this is.
She pressed her thumbnail harder into her finger.
He found her fifteen minutes later in the corridor outside her dressing room, already changed out of the wine-dark performance dress and into a cashmere wrap coat and heeled boots, her armor reassembled. He was standing against the far wall with his arms crossed, and the sight of him did something to her breathing she refused to acknowledge.
"Miss Calloway."
There it was.Miss Calloway.Not Phoebe.
"Officer Thorne."
His jaw tightened. Barely.
"I would like to brief you on the security protocol for the duration of the assignment."
"Of course."
He laid it out in flat, measured sentences. She would be escorted to and from the venue. No exceptions. A pre-performance sweep of the stage and backstage areas. His presence during all rehearsals and performances. Non-negotiable proximity for the duration of the safety review.
She tried to listen. She genuinely tried.
But her body kept interrupting.
The print of him was still on her front even an hour later, showered and changed, standing in a corridor lit by blue-white work lamps. She could still feel him. The wall of his chest. His arms locked around her. One hand on her shoulder blades. The other…God, the other… low on the curve of her ass with his fingers spread, and cold even through the fabric. Heat pulsed through her core, and she clenched her jaw against it.
The hardness of him against her hip. Unmistakable.
She'd been on Earth stages for twenty years. She'd been pressed against dancers, lifted by choreographers, held by co-performers in elaborate stage pictures that required full-body contact. None of it had done what three seconds on the stage floor with Thorne had done. The fire that had started in her belly when she felt him hard against her hip had not, in the hours since, fully gone out. It flared every time he moved, every time he saidMiss Callowayin that low register.
"—and I will conduct a final sweep after each performance before escorting you to your residence. Do you have questions?"
She had approximately nine hundred questions, none of which were appropriate.
"No. That all sounds very thorough."
He nodded once. "Then we should begin."
The walk home was silent.
Vanilla-scented snow drifted down around them. The Eternal Pine's bioluminescence pulsed its slow silver-blue rhythm in the distance, the light reaching them in soft waves. It was the most beautiful place she had ever stood and the most beautiful night she could remember. And beside her, half a stride to her left and slightly behind, walked a man whose body she could still feel on her skin, who had not so much as glanced at her since they'd left the venue.
She kept her eyes forward. She kept her hands in her pockets. She kept her posture perfect and her face composed and her breathing steady and her vocal cords humming a low, barely audible warm-up scale that she told herself was habit and was, in reality, the only thing keeping her from screaming into the vanilla snow.
His boots made no sound on the path. She'd never met anyone who moved that quietly at that size. The cold rolled off him in steady waves, and her body leaned toward it the way it had leaned toward him in the backstage corridor.
Neither of them spoke. The silence ached with everything she wasn't saying.Why did you hold me like that? Why did your hand end up there? Why didn't you call me Phoebe?And underneath:Is this real, or am I another assignment?
The humming got louder. She caught herself and stopped it.
