20. CHAPTER 18 #3
I glanced at her one more time, closed the door, rounded the car, and slipped into the seat on the far side. The space was already saturated with that dangerous, heady scent that had followed me all day.
She didn’t have to do much to seduce me tonight. I was already there.
Stephen slid back into the driver’s seat and steered us away from the mansion.
The atmosphere in the car felt suspended. Thick with a silence that held too many things.
City lights skimmed across her face in bands of gold and shadow as we moved through the streets.
She looked out of the window, her profile turned away from me.
The diamond bracelet on her wrist, and the ring on her finger both caught the light, throwing small shards of it across the dark interior of the car.
Her shoulders were held too high.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered, almost immediately.
It sounded like a lie. An acceptable lie.
We drove in silence. I usually liked silence but tonight it was suffocating.
I loosened my bow tie, dragging the knot she’d made a few hours earlier down until it came free. The memory of her gentle hands still seemed to linger at my throat. It was irrational, the way my body remembered that more clearly than the countless, nameless touches I’d allowed before tonight.
In the reflection on the tinted glass, I couldn’t help but watch her. I noted her fingers tracing the invisible lines by the door handle, the rapid blink rate that betrayed her racing pulse. She was trying to look calm, and she was failing.
The reception played in the back of my mind on a loop. The first dance. Her palm in mine. The feel of her body fitted to mine as we turned and moved through the room with every step.
How she felt against me was a complication I hadn't budgeted for. The thought of the reckless, burning friction made my pulse erratic. It annoyed me that I was already looking for reasons to cross the distance between our seats just to feel it again.
I pushed my back into the seat.
Stephen turned through the gated entrance of the Kade estate twenty minutes later. The iron gates slid open on silent hydraulics, security lights tracking the car as we passed.
He opened my door; I stepped out first, then went to her side, opened her door and offered her a hand. She hesitated, then placed her palm in mine. The contact quickened my pulse. I reined myself in.
“Welcome home.”
The words came easily. I had rehearsed them once in my head, more for effect than sincerity. They still felt heavier spoken aloud than I expected.
Her gaze lifted to the house, her eyes roamed over the fa?ade, the columns, the windows. There was a wariness in her expression, mixed with awe… a hint of resignation too perhaps. She was too quiet.
Not that I was expecting a comment. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting.
Inside, Mrs Lewis waited by the foyer. She stood straight despite the late hour, her grey hair neatly pulled back, dressed immaculately in black as always.
“Monsieur,” she said, then turned to Léonie with a measured smile. “Madame Kade. Welcome.”
The title hit differently this time. Mrs Lewis said it as if it had always been a truth. That Léonie had always held this title, and it was normal to call her that.
“Mrs Lewis runs the house,” I said releasing her hand. “If you need anything, speak to her. She’ll show you your rooms.”
Not room. Rooms.
I’d reserved most of the west wing for her.
I only used three rooms in that section myself: the bedroom, the office, and the gym.
The rest had been vacant, so I’d had a team redecorate enough to make them habitable.
The rest was up to Léonie. She could strip the walls or add whatever she liked; I simply provided the canvas.
I spotted the surprise that surfaced in her eyes before she smoothed it over. She wore her emotions in quick flashes, an open book for anyone who knew how to read it.
There was also an approval under the surprise. That amused me.
Of course she had expected to be dumped into my bed like some formality I intended to consummate for optics.
The relief on her face only validated my reasoning for separate rooms. They were necessary.
I’d never shared my personal space with anyone before. And as an only child, privacy has always been a constant in my life.
I’d grown up with my own wing, my own schedule, my entire life arranged strictly around my solitude. Sharing space felt deeply unnatural. Intrusive, even.
Boundaries were also easier to maintain when doors stayed closed at night.
“Thank you,” she said to Mrs Lewis.
The housekeeper inclined her head. “This way, Madame.”
I watched them move down the hall, Léonie’s dress trailing over the polished marble floor, the bracelet at her wrist twinkling as she adjusted the train. She didn’t look back.
Good.
I made a mental note to be careful. As much as I liked how her emotions lived on her face—as vividly as daylight, I could already tell it was going to be her most dangerous trait.
Transparency was vulnerability, and vulnerability was a liability I couldn’t afford.
I turned and made my way toward my side of the wing. My room was the one place in this house that was sacred. No one entered it. Tonight wouldn’t be an exception.
I stripped out of the suit, left the bow tie on the dresser without really seeing it, took a quick hot shower to unknot my shoulders. The day still didn’t leave me.
When I finally laid down, sleep was distant.
On my bed in the dark, the reception looped in fragments—her laugh, the dance, my hand on the small of her waist, the heat of her body on mine, the way she’d looked up at me like she couldn’t decide between panic or breathing. Her eyes reflecting her willingness to fight me.
The memory sent heat coursing through me, waking every nerve it touched. Each thought was a bad combination for a man of my status.
My phone lit the room with a soft glow as I pulled up the Stratum interface.
The dashboard appeared. Perimeter feeds, Gate logs.
The east wing. There was no movement anywhere.
Then I clicked on the new addition in the corner of the screen.
A pulsing dot on the screen moved across the map of the west wing—this wing. A single moving dot. Her.
Weeks ago, I’d had Severin install a tracker inside my grandmother’s ring before it ever reached Léonie’s finger. Something simple and impossible to detect without ruining the piece.
It was necessary security, I’d told myself.
Just like all the previous surveillance, it was a necessary precaution. A reasonable measure for a woman stepping into my world.
The dot moved again in a line across the floor plan. Then a pause. Then movement in the other direction, as if she’d changed her mind halfway through whatever thought might have carried her across the room in the first place.
She was pacing.
My gaze stayed on the screen, monitoring every move.
There was no surveillance inside her room yet. I hadn’t decided on it. I’d deemed it unnecessary since she lived under my roof now. The walls themselves were enough of a safety net. For now.
Still…what kept her awake?
Fear? Nerves? Regret? Or perhaps something more… inconvenient?
For a moment, I pictured her having traded her dress for a silk night slip. I saw her standing in my room, my hands threaded in her hair as I watched her give me permission to do what I'd wanted to do all day.
Because honestly, temptation wasn’t the issue. Consent was.
I wouldn’t touch her unless she asked me to. I wouldn't move until she came to me with her own needs, her own surrender. Anything else would be a cheap conquest—an insult to the man I was, and the woman I intended for her to become.
I stared at the pulsing dot.
She stopped pacing for a few minutes, then started again.
I considered going to her door. Just to see her, or maybe hear her voice. To look into her eyes and see if they held something—anything—other than fear when she looked at me.
The urge to test that theory burned along my nerves like wildfire.
I could walk down the corridor. Two turns and seventeen paces; I knew the exact count. I could knock, step inside, and gauge her reaction. I could ask why she wasn’t sleeping… if she needed anything.
I could—
But my hand stayed on the phone instead, willing my body to remain in place. One mistake tonight could set a tone I didn’t want.
I clenched my jaw and kept my eyes on the moving dot. I stretched one arm under my head, anchoring my neck on the headboard as though I were studying a document that required my full attention, while pointedly ignoring the growing bulge in my joggers.
It was our wedding night, after all, and she was just as restless as I was.
It was a perfect, pressurized stalemate. Two strangers in the same house, wired by a tension neither of us fully understood, orbiting each other without making contact.
I set the phone down beside me, and forced my eyes close.
There was only one way this would end. Eventually, one of us would knock on the other’s door. The only question was when… and what would remain of our composure afterward.