Chapter 26
ZATANNA
What has he changed his mind about?
He does not clarify. Because of course he doesn’t. We drive for twenty minutes before I realize he has no intention of explaining himself.
Not properly, anyway.
He sits beside me in the backseat like this is all perfectly normal. Rain on the windows. City lights smearing past in long gold streaks. His phone silent in his hand, his expression unreadable, his whole body all composed stillness while mine keeps ricocheting between irritation and nerves.
I fold my arms. “So.”
He glances at me. “So.”
“That’s not a conversation.”
“No.”
I wait. He does not elaborate.
By the time we pass Midtown and keep going, my suspicion has gone from a simmer to a full boil.
I look out the window, then back at him. “If you’re kidnapping me, this is a weirdly luxurious approach.”
That gets the tiniest flicker at the corner of his mouth. “Not kidnapping.”
“Good. Because I’m pretty sure I’d have paperwork concerns.”
He still doesn’t explain. I hate him. I hate him even more when the car turns toward the private aviation terminal and my stomach drops straight through the floor.
No. No, no, no.
I whip back toward him. “Why are we at the airport?”
He finally looks at me properly. “We’re leaving.”
I stare at him. “We’re what?”
He nods toward the terminal ahead, all glass and security and discreet wealth. “For a few days.”
My brain stops working for a full second. “A few days?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Warm. Private. Safe.”
“Aleksei.” The warning in my voice does absolutely nothing to him.
He just watches me with that same impossible calm. “You needed time away. So did I.”
My mouth falls open. “You decided this by yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You did not ask me.”
“No.”
“You are out of your mind.”
“That’s possible.”
I turn toward the window, then immediately back to him because there is nowhere for all this disbelief to go. “You cannot just announce we’re leaving for a vacation when we are already at the airport.”
“It’s not a vacation.”
I blink. “That is worse.”
He almost smiles.
I can feel myself spiraling. The office. My apartment. The women I was texting. The dates. My side job. My mother. My entire life.
“I can’t go away for a few days,” I say. “I have work.”
“You work for me.”
“That is not the point.”
“I disagree.”
I throw up both hands. “I also have another job.”
His jaw tightens a fraction. “You can miss a few recordings.”
That makes me pause. Because he should not know enough to say recordings like that.
I narrow my eyes. “How much do you know about that job?”
“Enough.”
“I hate that answer.”
“I know.”
The driver is already unloading bags from the trunk and walking them toward the terminal. Bags.
He packed bags. For me?
I stare out the window at the luggage and then back at Aleksei in horror. “You packed for me?”
“No.”
The relief lasts less than a second.
“I had someone from the building send up a garment bag and essentials.”
I actually gasp. “That is somehow more unhinged.”
He leans back, looking entirely too comfortable for a man dropping that kind of statement.
“You’re overreacting.”
“I am reacting exactly the right amount.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
I glare at him. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like your opinion is law.”
“It usually is.” The worst part is, he says it without arrogance. Just simple fact.
I make a frustrated noise and look toward the door, seriously considering getting out and going back inside the city and whatever fragile grip I had left on reality.
“You cannot make this choice for me,” I say, lower now. More dangerous.
That gets his full attention. For one second the car feels smaller.
Then he moves.
Not suddenly. Not enough to startle. Just enough that the heat of him enters my space, his body angling toward mine. One hand lands beside me on the seat. The other goes to my knee.
“Aleksei—”
His fingers slide higher. Just over the fabric of my skirt, slow and deliberate, and every coherent thought in my head scatters like frightened birds.
“You can argue with me,” he says quietly. His hand moves another inch. My breath catches. “You can tell me this is a bad idea.” Higher still.
His touch is up the inside of my thigh now, the pressure of his palm warm and deliberate and so distractingly confident I almost hate him for it.
“You can keep saying no.”
My pulse is pounding so hard I can hear it.
His mouth is close now. Not touching. Just there, the threat of a kiss hanging in the air between us.
“But don’t pretend,” he murmurs, thumb brushing once along the inner line of my thigh, “that you don’t want to get out of that office and away from all of this for a few days.”
I drag in a breath that does nothing to steady me. This is cheating. Absolute, unfair cheating. “Your methods are disgusting,” I whisper.
“I know.” His hand stays where it is, not moving now, just resting high enough that my whole body is aware of it.
Every nerve in me is lit.
He watches me fall apart with infuriating patience.
“You have complete control of me,” I say before I can stop myself. The words slip out, helpless and true and humiliating all at once.
His eyes darken instantly. “No,” he says, voice rougher now. “You just make it very hard for me to act like I don’t.”
That should not help. It does.
God, it does.
I close my eyes for one second, trying to recover some fragment of dignity, but the warmth of his hand and the weight of his gaze make it impossible.
When I open them again, he is still right there. Waiting.
He’s not forcing. Not pushing harder. Just letting the truth of the moment settle between us.
I swallow. “How many days?”
“Three.”
I laugh once, shaky and disbelieving. “You negotiated that like I already said yes.”
His thumb strokes once, lazily, impossibly. “I was optimistic.”
I hate the way my body reacts to that. I look past him, through the rain-streaked glass, at the private terminal glowing under the tarmac lights. Then back at him. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Yes.”
“You are impossible.”
“Yes.”
“I should absolutely refuse on principle.”
He tilts his head. “And yet?”
And yet.
And yet my other life suddenly feels very far away. The office. The women. The deadlines. The two black cars outside my apartment. The feeling of being watched. My mother asking for money. Jake asking for recordings. My tiny kitchen. My smaller bed.
And this man, who should be the biggest reason to run, is somehow also the one thing making the idea of leaving feel like relief.
I hate that. I hate more that I know what I’m about to say.
I exhale slowly. “If I go with you, this does not mean you get to order me around the whole time.”
Aleksei’s mouth curves, slow and devastating. “Of course not.”
Liar.
But before I can call him on it, his hand leaves my thigh and he reaches for the door.
“Come on,” he says. “Before you regain your common sense.”
I sit there another second, watching him step out into the rain.
The private jet is obscene.
That’s my first thought as I step up the narrow stairs behind Aleksei and into a cabin that looks less like transportation and more like a billionaire’s fantasy of comfort.
Cream leather seats. Glossy dark wood. Low amber lighting.
A cashmere throw folded over one armrest like someone here regularly gets chilly at thirty thousand feet.
There’s even a little dining table set with crystal glasses that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
I stop just inside the doorway and stare. “This is ridiculous,” I say.
Aleksei glances back at me. “You’ve said that a lot in the last forty-eight hours.”
“Because you keep doing ridiculous things.”
He takes his seat like this is all completely ordinary, one long leg stretching out, jacket unbuttoned now, tie gone. “Sit down, Zatanna.”
I should object on principle.
Instead, I sit across from him because the reality of a private jet is already making everything feel too surreal to fight properly. The engine hum deepens beneath us. Outside the window, the runway lights blur through the mist.
A flight attendant appears, elegant and discreet, asks whether we want anything before takeoff. Aleksei asks for water. I ask for water too because asking for champagne would imply I’ve accepted whatever this is, and I absolutely have not.
The plane starts to move.
I grip the armrest without meaning to.
Aleksei notices. “Still claustrophobic?”
I glare at him. “Still deeply unhelpful?”
The corner of his mouth moves. “You’ll survive this one. There’s more legroom.”
That gets a reluctant laugh out of me, and some of the tension eases.
By the time the jet lifts into the air, the city below us is just a field of lights, distant and beautiful and suddenly very far away. The seat belt sign stays on for a few minutes, and I focus on breathing, on the engine, on the weird unreality of the whole thing.
When it finally clicks off, the cabin settles into a quieter rhythm.
Just us. No office.
Aleksei stands first and crosses the space between us with that same unhurried confidence that always makes me feel like prey and willing participant all at once.
My pulse jumps. “What are you doing?”
He comes to a stop beside my seat and braces one hand on the armrest, leaning just enough to tilt the world in his direction. “You’re tense.”
“That tends to happen when I get dragged onto a jet with no notice.”
He studies my face, then lowers his voice. “And when you’re pretending not to think about me.”
I open my mouth.
He leans closer. “I can see it,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to keep fighting me every second.”
My stomach flips. “You are so arrogant.”
“And you’re blushing.”
That does not help.
He glances toward the front of the cabin, where the attendant has disappeared behind the partition, then back at me. “It’s private.”
The words settle over me like heat.