Chapter 18
Static electricity is a curious phenomenon. You can't see it, but it's there, building on surfaces, charging the air with invisible ions, waiting for the slightest friction to release a spark.
Over the past three days, Cassian Varro's penthouse had become a power plant generating pure tension.
Since the incident in the car—that almost-kiss hanging between us like a ghost that refused to be exorcised—the dynamic had shifted.
Cassian had retreated behind his walls of ice.
He'd become the Consigliere again: polished, distant, monosyllabic.
But something was different. The ice had cracked.
And through the fissures, I could feel the heat seeping through.
I felt his gaze. Whenever I entered a room, his eyes followed me. It wasn't the watchful look of a bodyguard. It was a physical weight. He tracked me like a predator tracks prey he's decided not to devour yet—but refuses to let out of his sight.
And me? I'd stopped screaming. Stopped blasting music. The pink sofa was still there, a monument to my rebellion, but I no longer needed to jump on it to get noticed. I'd discovered that silence could be far more provocative than noise.
I walked through the living room toward the kitchen.
Eight o'clock at night. I wore a champagne silk robe—long, closed, modest at first glance.
But the silk was thin. And the air conditioning, which Cassian insisted on keeping at a frigid sixty-four degrees, made the fabric cling to my body and made certain... physical responses evident.
Cassian stood at the granite island, pouring himself a glass of water. He'd come home early today. Black suit, no tie, the top buttons of his shirt undone, revealing the base of his throat and that tendon in his neck I'd developed an unhealthy obsession with watching.
My bare feet made no sound on the concrete, but he stiffened before I even got close. He knew. He always knew.
“Good evening, Cassian.” My voice came out soft—a low purr.
He didn't turn around. He drank the water. I watched his Adam's apple rise and fall. I swallowed hard, mirroring the movement. “Solaia,” he responded. The name came out rough.
I moved past him to grab an apple from the fruit bowl.
The space between the island and the refrigerator was wide enough for two people, but I chose the narrow path.
I slipped behind him. Didn't touch him. But the air I stirred brushed against his back.
I felt the heat radiating from his suit.
Caught the scent of oud and sandalwood that made my knees go weak.
He froze with the glass halfway to his mouth. He didn't breathe until I'd passed.
I grabbed the apple and turned, leaning my hip against the counter, facing his back. I bit into the fruit. The sound was loud in the silence of the apartment. Crack.
Cassian turned slowly on his heels. His gray eyes fixed on my mouth, then tracked the drop of juice running down my chin before traveling down my body, wrapped in cold silk. His pupils dilated until the iris nearly vanished, leaving two black holes of hunger.
“You should get dressed,” he said. His voice was neutral, but there was tension in his jaw, a muscle pulsing rhythmically.
“I am dressed.”
“That's sleepwear. And you're not sleeping.”
“It's my home too, remember? Coexistence.” I took another bite of the apple, holding his gaze. “Besides, it's hot.”
“The thermostat's set to sixty-four.”
“I feel hot, Cassian.” I lowered my voice. “Maybe it's the tension. Don't you feel it?”
He gripped the glass so hard I was sure it would shatter in his hand. “I feel a headache, Solaia. That's different.”
He set the glass in the sink with a dull thud and left the kitchen, walking quickly toward the forbidden sanctuary of his office. I smiled at his retreating back. Run, Cassian. Run while you can.
Two hours later. The cat-and-mouse game continued.
I had a charity dinner the following week.
Not tonight, but I decided I needed to “try on” outfits.
I chose a dress from the back of the closet.
Navy blue velvet, heavy, fitted, with an invisible zipper in back that ran from the base of my spine to my nape.
I slipped into the dress. The fabric hugged my curves like a glove. I pulled the zipper up to the middle of my back. And stopped. I could close it myself. My arms were flexible enough. But Cassian didn't need to know that.
I took a deep breath, mussed my hair slightly to look casual, and left the bedroom. The door to his office was ajar. A beam of yellow light cut through the dark hallway.
I stopped at the door and knocked lightly on the wood. “Cassian?”
He sat behind the massive desk, surrounded by monitors, typing something with furious speed.
When he heard me, his hands froze, hovering over the keyboard.
He raised his head. The screen light illuminated his face from below, accentuating the faint dark circles and the hard lines of his features.
He looked tired. Tired of fighting the world, and maybe himself.
“What is it?” His tone was that of someone expecting catastrophe. A fire. An attack.
I entered the office. It was the first time I’d been in there since he’d established the rules. The place smelled of old books and pure masculinity. “I need help,” I said, turning my back to him before he could refuse.
I held my hair up, exposing my neck and the pale expanse of my back where the zipper hung open. “The zipper’s stuck. And Franco isn’t here to help me get dressed—unless that’s part of his new security duties.”
I heard his chair push back. The creak of leather. The silence stretched. I knew he was looking at the exposed skin of my back. I could feel his gaze like a physical touch, a rough caress trailing down my spine.
“You have dozens of other dresses,” he said. His voice came from closer than I expected. He’d moved silently.
“I want to wear this one.”
“For whom? We’re not going out today.”
“For me.”
I felt his presence right behind me. The heat of his body was a furnace.
He was so close that the front of his shirt almost brushed the velvet against my back.
His breath hit the nape of my neck, hot and uneven.
A violent shiver rippled across my skin, and I knew he saw it.
He saw the goosebumps rise. He knew the effect he had.
“Turn a little,” he commanded, his voice hoarse.
I obeyed, shifting my body by millimeters, but keeping my back to him.
I felt his fingers. Warm. Calloused. He didn’t touch the zipper right away.
His fingertips grazed the bare skin between my shoulder blades.
A light touch, hesitant, almost involuntary.
I closed my eyes, my breath catching in my throat. The touch burned. It was electric.
“Cassian…” I whispered.
His hand stopped. He pressed his palm flat against my bare back. The heat sank into my bones. I felt his thumb trace the line of my spine, vertebra by vertebra, rising slowly. It wasn’t the touch of someone helping with a zipper. It was the touch of someone memorizing territory.
He moved closer. His chest pressed against my back. I felt the hardness of his body, the belt buckle pressing into the velvet. He lowered his head. I felt his nose brush my hair, near my ear. He inhaled deeply. The sound was shaky, hungry. He was breathing me in.
My legs went liquid. I braced one hand on the bookshelf in front of me to keep from falling. “Are you going to close it?” I asked, my voice breaking, turning the question into a moan.
“I should leave it open,” he murmured against my neck, his lips brushing the sensitive skin below my ear. “I should take it off.”
His heart pounded against my back, fast and strong. Mine matched it. The tension in the room was suffocating—gunpowder waiting for the match. I turned my face toward him, seeking his mouth. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to finish what he’d started in the car.
But the moment I moved, the spell broke. Cassian’s logic—that damned concrete wall—fell back into place.
He yanked his hand from my back as if he’d touched hot coals. I heard the sharp, violent sound of the zipper. Ziiip. The dress closed, squeezing my body, suffocating the skin he had just worshipped.
“Done,” he said. The word was dry, cutting.
He stepped away. I turned. Cassian was already on the other side of the desk, putting the wooden barrier between us. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the dark window, hands braced on the desk, knuckles white. His breathing was still ragged.
“Leave,” he said.
“Cassian…”
“Leave!” This time it was a shout. A roar of pure frustration. He slammed his hand on the desk, making the monitors shake. “Get out of my office, Solaia. Now.”
I stepped back, startled by the intensity of the outburst, but strangely, not hurt. Because I saw. Before he looked away, I saw. It wasn’t hatred. It was desperation. He was fighting himself, and he was losing.
I left the office and closed the door. I stood in the dark hallway, my heart pounding in my throat, the skin of my back still tingling where he’d touched me.
I hugged myself, feeling the rough velvet under my fingers. My legs were trembling. There was a wet heat between my thighs—physical proof of how I’d betrayed my own pride.
I should hate him. I should want distance. But there, in the silence of the hallway, the truth hit me like a freight train.
I wasn’t provoking him just for power. I wasn’t wearing velvet to irritate him.
I remembered his hand on my back. His scent. His hoarse voice whispering in my ear. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cold wall.
“Shit,” I whispered into the darkness.
I didn’t just want his protection. I didn’t just want his money. I wanted him. I wanted him to lose control. I wanted him to touch me without the kid gloves, without the barriers, without the logic. I wanted the monster he tried so desperately to keep caged.
And the most terrifying realization wasn’t that I wanted him. It was that, from the way he breathed against my neck… he wanted me back. With the same violence.
I smiled in the dark. A trembling, dangerous smile. He could throw me out of the office. He could lock the door. But he couldn’t lock away what was happening between us. The ice was melting. And the flood was going to drown us both.