Chapter Five
ZACHARIE HAD NOT SLEPT.
This was not unusual. Sleep had always been a negotiation rather than a surrender, his body too well-trained to let its guard down completely. But tonight, last night, the sleeplessness had taken on a different quality. Less vigilance, more...something else.
Something he refused to name.
He stood outside her door at six in the morning, a medical kit in one hand and a tray of breakfast in the other. The staff had offered to handle both tasks. He had dismissed them with a look that brooked no argument.
It was practical. He needed to assess her condition himself. Gauge her mental state. Determine the next steps.
That was all.
He knocked once. Waited. Knocked again.
“Come in.”
Her voice was different. Softer than yesterday, but not in the warm way. Muted. Like someone had turned down her volume overnight.
Yesterday, she had been all nervous chatter and wide eyes and that ridiculous moment where she had almost called him mine. He had caught the shape of the word on her lips before she swallowed it down, and the memory had lodged somewhere inconvenient in his chest.
He pushed open the door.
She was sitting up in bed, the silk sheets pooled around her waist. The morning light caught her hair, turning the dark strands almost auburn.
Her oversized cardigan, the cream one, now ruined beyond salvation, had been replaced by one of his guest robes.
It swallowed her whole, making her look smaller and even more fragile than she already was.
Zacharie noticed the way she avoided his gaze as he approached her.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning,”
Her voice was a mumble. And her face was...wan. No smiles, no-near blushes. Nothing that indicated she was still the same girl he had rescued.
Something had changed overnight, and Zacharie did not know what.
“I need to change your bandages.”
She nodded without looking up and shifted, turning slightly to give him access to her wounded side. The movement was cooperative but distant, like she was performing a task rather than allowing an intimacy.
Zacharie set the tray on the bedside table and lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped under his weight, and she tensed almost imperceptibly before forcing herself to relax.
Not good.
His awareness of hers...
It made him notice everything about her.
And it had to stop.
“This may sting,” he said, reaching for the edge of her robe.
“O-Okay.”
At last, a crack in her wall, but the fact that she was walling him off in the first place did not sit well with him. Then again...that anything about her bothered him was also unfortunate, and it was this that had his lips tightening even as he proceeded with his duty.
Zacharie carefully peeled back the fabric as he slowly exposed the bandaged wound beneath. The gauze was spotted with dried blood but not soaked through. It was a good sign, indicating healing.
His fingers brushed her skin as he worked, but his movements stilled the moment he noticed her flinching, a tiny, involuntary shiver that ran through her whole body, her breath catching audibly in the quiet room.
“Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, her gaze still avoiding his. “It’s f-fine.”
And so he continued to peel away the old bandage.
Ah.
The wound beneath was angry but clean, the stitches holding. His medical training took over, antiseptic, fresh gauze, tape, but some other part of him remained hyperaware of everything else that made Mira...her.
Even though this was all about his duty, he could not deny how delicate and warm the curve of her waist was beneath his palm.
Or how the uneven rhythm of her breathing had an effect on his own breathing, and how goosebumps rose on her skin wherever his fingers grazed, trailing in the wake of his touch like he was leaving marks on her.
As he pressed the new bandage into place, he noticed the way her hands fisted in the silk sheets, noticed the way her heartbeat fluttered against his hand.
She still wasn’t looking at him. Had not looked at him once since he sat down. Her gaze fixed on her own hands, twisted in the sheets, her jaw tight, a flush spreading down her neck and disappearing beneath the collar of her robe.
Yesterday, she had stared at him constantly. Had blushed and stammered and looked at him like he was something between a predator and a puzzle she desperately wanted to solve.
Today, she wouldn’t meet his eyes....even as her body burned up beneath his hands.
“Mira.”
He said her name deliberately. Low. A command wrapped in silk.
But she still didn’t look up.
“Mira,” he repeated, and this time he let his thumb brush the edge of the fresh bandage, let the touch linger. “Look at me.”
Her breathing stuttered even as she shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She swallowed hard, the movement traveling down her throat.
“I just...can’t.”
Zacharie knew he should let it go. Just finish the bandage and leave her to rest and stop pushing for something she clearly didn’t want to give.
Instead, he found himself leaning closer.
“Why can’t you look at me?”
“I just...can’t.”
“But when we were in the car yesterday, you couldn’t stop—”
“T-That was then!”
She had cut him off in an embarrassed stammer, yet another crack in the walls he so despised.
“Then what changed?”
Her hands twisted tighter in the sheets.
Zacharie waited.
But she offered nothing else, and the silence stretched between them, heavy with everything she wasn’t saying.
Fine.
He withdrew his hands. Slowly. Perhaps more slowly than necessary, his fingertips dragging across her skin in a way that could have been accidental but wasn’t.
Her whole body shuddered.
“A-Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” Still not looking at him. Still that soft, muted tone, like she was speaking from somewhere far away, and he was nothing but a stranger performing a service rather than the man who had carried her through gunfire twelve hours ago.
And yet...
Her pulse was still racing.
He could see it fluttering in the hollow of her throat.
So what had changed?
What had happened between last night and this morning to make her build this wall?
A part of him wanted to shake the truth out of her.
Threaten her even.
But his control held through at the last moment, and Zacharie nodded toward the tray instead. “You should eat.”
“I will.”
He rose from the bed even as his lips tightened at her still-mumbling tone. “I have business to attend to. If you need anything—”
“The button. I remember.”
She was speaking so fast, he could not help but feel that she just wanted him to leave.
Why?
Zacharie paused at the door.
Look at me.
The words burned on his tongue. He wanted to say them again. Wanted to cross back to the bed and tip her chin up and force her to meet his eyes, to see whatever it was she was hiding from him.
But since only madness lied ahead if he were to say and do any of those—
“Rest,” Zacharie bit out. “The doctor will check on you this afternoon.”
He turned away, and his jaw clenched.
Because unlike last night...
Zacharie knew she was not watching him go this time.
And it pissed him off that he even noticed this.
****
THREE HOURS LATER, Zacharie found himself back outside her door.
This was the fourth time he had passed by.
The first time, he had told himself he was simply walking to his study.
The second, checking on the security detail he had posted at the end of the hall.
The third, he had given up on excuses entirely and simply stood there like a fool, listening for any sound from within.
Four times.
He had faced down cartels, survived interrogations, built an empire from nothing. And here he was, pacing past a guest room like a lovesick schoolboy.
Pathetic.
He knew she was likely asleep at this time, but he still found himself pushing the door open. He wasn’t sure what he thought he would see...but it was certainly not this.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the breakfast tray pushed aside and barely touched, and completely unaware that he had entered, with her attention fixed on the television mounted on the wall opposite.
A legal drama played across the screen, some courtroom thriller with a silver-haired prosecutor delivering what was clearly meant to be a devastating closing argument.
“Luc Infernalis would never make that mistake,” she mumbled to herself, so quietly he almost missed it. “Luc would have caught the inconsistency in the witness testimony three scenes ago.”
Zacharie froze in the doorway.
Who the heck was Luc?
“And his suit is all wrong,” she continued, shaking her head, her voice still that soft murmur like she was talking to someone only she could see. “Luc would never wear pinstripes to a jury trial. Too aggressive. He knows juries respond better to approachability. He’d wear charcoal. Maybe navy.”
She hugged a pillow to her chest, chin resting on top of it.
“And the way he’s standing? Too stiff. Luc moves like he owns the courtroom, but he never makes the jury feel small. He makes them feel like they’re the smartest people in the room, like of course they’ll see what he sees, because they’re not idiots...”
Her voice was soft. Almost tender even. And the sound of it made his jaw clench as he slipped out of the room.
Zacharie walked back to his study with measured steps, his face perfectly blank, his mind anything but.
Luc.
She had spoken of him like he was someone she knew intimately. Someone whose preferences and mannerisms she had memorized. Someone she compared every other man to and found them wanting.
He opened his laptop and initiated the search.
Luc Infernalis.
The name alone had him bristling. It just rubbed him off the wrong way for no reason. He was not a man who was easily annoyed, but whoever this Luc was...
That man grated on his nerves simply by existing, and thirty minutes later, the fact that his search failed to yield a single result pissed him off even more.