The quiet went long. I wondered if he would refuse. “Slowly, I believe.”
I had expected something easier to digest. A date. A cause. A politically polished version of bond strain with footnotes. Not that.
“My father called it tragedy,” Rhain said. “It built his entire political career.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
We walked again after that. For several minutes neither of us spoke.
The corridor was wide enough for the enforcers behind us to stay at their assigned distance, and narrow enough that Rhain’s coat sleeve brushed mine once on a turn. He didn’t move away from it. Neither did I.
The brush was accidental. My body reacted like a schoolgirl with a hallway crush.
I kept my eyes forward. He politely did the same.
Rhain’s manners made a woman want to behave badly just to see what he would do with the evidence.
Heat had built in me across the walk. Slow. Dangerous because it felt almost ordinary. Proximity. Truth. The clean line of his profile when he looked out the window. The care he had taken handing me ugly information without asking me to make him feel noble for it.
For a few steps, I let myself stay there.
Then Rhain’s shoulders settled, and the silence turned back toward the political minefield we were pretending not to walk through.
“My father believes the only way to survive a bond is to control every condition around it. Every person. Every movement.”
I turned my head toward him by an inch.
“And you?” I asked, my voice soft.
He took a moment before answering, his gaze still on mine.
“I think control is how people justify not facing their fear.”
We walked back without filling the silence. The enforcers kept their distance, their footsteps politely behind us while Rhain’s stayed beside mine. His footstep had been finding the same rhythm as mine for some time, and at some point I had stopped correcting for it.
By the time we reached the door of my suite, it was past one. His three hours were over. He should’ve left, and I should’ve opened the door.
Neither of us moved.
The wall sconce caught the line of his shoulder and the edge of his jaw, turning him half gold, half shadow. He was breathing slowly, but not calmly. The diplomat in him had receded. Whatever looked back at me was older, hungrier, and far more careful.
The last six inches between us felt deliberate.
I could feel the heat coming off him in the small space between our bodies. He was tall enough that I had to tilt my chin up to keep his eyes. My pulse was already doing something I didn’t want him to notice. My hands stayed at my sides on principle.
His hand came up slowly. I could’ve stepped back.
I didn’t.
His fingers settled at the side of my jaw, his thumb resting at my cheekbone with no press, no claim, only contact. My skin warmed beneath his hand.
Rhain had spent his life doing what he was supposed to do, and inside those three hours he had decided to do the thing he wasn’t.
“Little Lamb,” he said as he bent his head.
His mouth touched the corner of mine first. The contact went down my spine like a wire pulled tight, ankle to scalp.
