Chapter 9
MARIAH’S NERVES hummed, not from fear but from the burn of his nearness, the memory of his thumb dragging across her skin as if he owned it.
They had worked all day, shoulder to shoulder, sparring and circling, tension winding tighter with every lead followed and every breath shared.
Now the day was over. The city outside was lit with gold, shadows long across the skyline.
Leif pushed away from the desk and rolled his sleeves up again. “We’re finished.” His voice carried that finality that brooked no argument. He studied her for a long beat, his eyes taking in her flushed cheeks, her mussed hair. Then his mouth curved faintly, dark and sure. “You’re starving.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but her stomach betrayed her with a sharp twist. She gave a small shrug. “So are you.”
He nodded once and walked past her, into the sleek expanse of his penthouse kitchen. She hesitated before following, watching the controlled power of his stride, the way he seemed to command the silence. “I’ll call something in—” she began.
He turned his head, cutting her off. “No. I’ll cook.”
That surprised her enough that she stopped in her tracks. “You cook?”
He arched a brow as he began opening the refrigerator, pulling out fresh vegetables, herbs, meat that had been portioned with military precision. “Better than most chefs. It’s the only hobby I allow myself.”
The admission caught her off guard. Not because she didn’t believe him.
He moved like a man who knew exactly what he was doing, stacking ingredients in neat rows on the counter.
But because she hadn’t expected him to have anything so…
human. So ordinary. He belonged to boardrooms, shadows, war councils. Not to cutting boards and knives.
“I don’t just watch,” she said finally, walking to the counter and brushing past him, her hip grazing his thigh. The contact was electric. “I cook, too.”
His eyes cut to her, blue and sharp, then softened with something darker. “Then prove it.”
The kitchen filled with the rhythm of them.
He washed herbs, the scent of basil and rosemary rising into the air.
She peeled garlic, the sharp bite clinging to her fingers.
Their shoulders bumped, their hands brushed when they reached for the same knife, the same bowl.
Every touch lingered a fraction too long. Every glance carried something unsaid.
“Not like that,” she murmured when she caught him slicing tomatoes into neat soldier-straight wedges.
“They’ll break down better if you dice them.
” She slid the knife from his hand, her fingers grazing his, and the heat that shot up her arm made her breath falter.
She diced quickly, efficiently, aware of his eyes on her mouth the whole time.
“Bossy,” he said, low, as though testing the word on his tongue.
“Efficient,” she countered.
He stepped in closer, taking the diced tomatoes from her board and dropping them into the pan where onions and garlic were already sizzling.
The scent bloomed, rich and intoxicating.
He leaned nearer to reach for the salt, his chest brushing her back, his breath stirring the hair at her temple. “You’re distracting,” he murmured.
Her pulse leapt. “Maybe you’re the one distracted.”
He gave a rumbling sound in his chest, something between amusement and hunger, and moved away just enough to reach for the meat.
She exhaled shakily, but when he laid the steaks into the pan and the sizzle roared, she stepped in beside him again, brushing him intentionally. Testing herself. Testing him.
Cooking became foreplay. He chopped with quick, decisive strikes, muscles in his forearm flexing.
She drizzled oil, licking a stray drop from her finger, aware of his eyes tracking the movement to her mouth.
She tasted the sauce, then offered him the spoon, holding it up.
His hand covered hers, his mouth closing over the same spot her lips had touched.
He held her gaze as he swallowed, and her knees almost buckled.
“Good?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat.
His eyes burned into hers. “Perfect.”
The word hung heavy, meaning more than the sauce.
They plated together, movements in sync, as though they’d been cooking side by side for years.
The table was simple, meat seared and juicy, vegetables glistening with oil and herbs, bread warmed and torn by hand.
He poured wine, the deep red catching the light, and sat across from her at the long sleek table.
Despite the space between them, she felt him everywhere.
They ate in silence at first, each bite grounding her, steadying her after the intensity of the office. But silence couldn’t last. The questions rose like steam, curling between them.
“Who taught you?” she asked softly, cutting into the meat.
He didn’t look up at first. “My grandmother. Cooking was the only time she let me near without reminding me who I belonged to.”
“Bjorn?”
“Bjorn.”
Mariah paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. He said his father’s name so flatly, but she heard what was beneath it: a boy who’d been claimed by a name before he could claim himself. She swallowed. “My mother taught me. She said food was love, even when there wasn’t much else to give.”
He looked at her then, and for a moment the burden of the Severins and the Dantes and the bomb and the Brand fell away.
It was just two people at a table, sharing something real.
It hit her harder than the brush of his thumb, harder than the almost-kiss in the office.
Because it was intimacy he hadn’t planned.
He studied her for a long moment over the rim of his glass, then asked quietly, almost as if testing her: “What do you fear?”
She set her fork down, fingers trembling. She didn’t hesitate, but answered directly. “Being invisible. Being nothing more than a shadow in someone else’s war. I’ve spent my life being overlooked until I was convenient. I don’t want to disappear again.”
His eyes sharpened, the kind of focus that could gut a man. “You won’t disappear. Not with me.”
The words made her chest ache. “And you?”
He leaned back, swirling his wine, but his voice was stripped of pretense. “Losing control. Control is the only thing between me and my father’s brutality. It’s the only thing that keeps me from becoming him.”
The admission cracked something open. She wanted to reach across the table, to cover his hand with hers, to tell him he wasn’t his father. But she didn’t know his father, so didn’t move. Couldn’t. The tension curling between them was too sharp, too fragile.
They ate slower after that, conversation weaving between bites.
Every word drew them tighter. Every glance carried the promise of more.
When he reached across the table and brushed his thumb along her knuckles, she didn’t pull away.
The Brand pulsed in her palm, answering his.
She let the silence stretch, let him watch her shiver.
“Together,” he said again, voice final.
This time Mariah knew he didn’t mean just the investigation. He meant the two of them, the meal, the confessions, the night waiting ahead.
Her breath caught, but she didn’t argue.
She couldn’t. For the first time, she didn’t want to.
His gaze lingered long after the words left his mouth.
He didn’t move to clear the table, didn’t break the silence with some casual remark.
He just looked at her, as though memorizing the exact shape of her surrender.
Her skin prickled. She picked at the stem of her wineglass, desperate for something to do with her hands.
Finally, she pushed her chair back. The scrape of it on the polished floor sounded too loud in the hush. “I’ll help with the dishes.”
He stood at the same time, the chair silent under his control. “No. Sit.”
She lifted her chin. “I said I cook, too. That includes cleaning.”
One dark brow arched, but instead of arguing he gathered the plates in one hand and carried them to the sink.
She rose anyway, following him, the air electric with the unfinished conversation between their bodies.
Shoulder to shoulder at the sink, they rinsed, scrubbed, stacked.
Soap foamed, warm water steamed, and each brush of his arm against hers stole her breath.
The intimacy gutted her—more dangerous than sex at the Alabaster.
When he passed her a glass, his wet fingers slid over hers, lingered.
She looked up sharply. His face was close, too close, the blue of his eyes nearly black.
Her lips parted on a breath that sounded like a plea.
He leaned in, stopping a fraction of an inch short, and the restraint in him vibrated through the air.
“Leif…”
He set the glass on the counter instead of kissing her, a warning in his words. “If I start, I won’t stop.”
Her pulse battered against bone. “Maybe I don’t want you to.”
The words hung between them, dangerous, impossible to take back. His hand fisted at his side. For a long beat, neither of them moved.
Then he stepped back, breaking the thread with visible effort. He dried his hands, the motion sharp, controlled. “Tomorrow we’ll press the banker. Tonight…” His gaze swept her, slow, scorching. “Tonight, we stop before we burn the place down.”
Her whole body tightened with furious want. But beneath it was something steadier. The certainty that this wasn’t over. That every withheld kiss, every unfinished touch was winding the coil tighter. When it broke, it would consume them both.
She followed him back toward the living area, the city glittering beyond the glass. They didn’t speak again. They didn’t need to. The silence was alive with everything they hadn’t done.
And for the first time since the blast, Mariah sensed something that might almost be peace. Not because the danger was gone, but because she wasn’t facing it alone.