Chapter Five #3
"You're the first thing in twelve years I haven't been able to talk myself out of wanting," he said, rough and immediate, cutting through her question before she'd finished asking it.
"That makes you a great many things tonight, Sienna.
A liability is the least dangerous of them, and even that one, I intend to manage rather than regret.
" His hand slid to the back of her neck, gentle, grounding.
"I should have told you all of this before I ever let you walk through my front door.
I told myself there'd be time. I'm beginning to understand that time is not something this house has ever been generous with me about. "
Across the ballroom, through the terrace glass, Sienna caught sight of Julian again, no longer watching them directly but speaking low and fast to Marcus, both men's postures angled toward the exit with a purposefulness that made her stomach drop.
"Damian." Her voice came out tighter than she meant it to. "They're leaving."
He followed her gaze, and whatever calm he'd managed to rebuild for her benefit disappeared entirely, replaced by something sharper, more alert, a coiled stillness she recognized now as the same quality that had made her instinctively step back from him in the study that first night.
"That's not a good sign," he said quietly.
"Men like Julian don't leave a party early because they're bored of it.
They leave because they've already gotten what they came for.
" He took her hand, decisive now, all the earlier gentleness folded away beneath something harder, more urgent.
"We're leaving too. Now, while it looks unremarkable, before anyone decides our exit is worth discussing over breakfast tomorrow. "
"What did he get? What could he have gotten just from seeing us together?"
Damian didn't answer right away, guiding her swiftly back through the crowd, his hand firm at her waist, his eyes moving constantly, cataloguing exits and faces with the same restless vigilance she was beginning to understand had never fully switched off, not once, not even at the height of the evening's warmth.
"Proof," he said finally, low, grim, as they reached the entry hall and the cool night air beyond it. "That I have something now worth threatening. That's all men like Julian ever need, Sienna. Not a weapon. Not even an opportunity yet. Just proof that the threat will land somewhere that matters."
The car was waiting exactly where they'd left it, and Damian didn't relax until the doors were shut and the estate's lights had shrunk to a distant, glittering smear behind them, his hand still wrapped tight around hers in the dark of the back seat, his thumb moving over her knuckles in slow, unconscious circles as though reassuring himself she was still there.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, into the quiet.
"I wanted tonight to be simple. A dance.
A dinner. The two of us, finally allowed to want each other in front of people, without twelve years of consequence standing behind every look we exchanged.
" His jaw tightened, some old, familiar guilt moving across what she could see of his face in the passing streetlight.
"I should have known better. I always know better. I let myself want this anyway."
"I'm not sorry," she said, and meant it, surprising herself with how steadily the words came out.
"Whatever this costs. I'd still rather know, and be standing next to you, than go on pretending the west wing light was nothing and the mask was nothing and you were just a strange, careful man with excellent taste in door rules. "
Something in him seemed to loosen at that, not fully, not with Julian's car presumably somewhere on the same dark road behind them, but enough that his hand came up to cup her jaw the way it had in the kitchen, thumb tracing slow along her cheekbone.
"You should be more frightened of me than you are," he murmured. "I keep waiting for it to happen. Some morning where you wake up and finally do the sensible thing and ask Mrs. Voss to call you a car."
"Maybe I don't want to be sensible."
"No," he agreed, low, almost pained with how much the words seemed to cost him to say aloud.
"I'm beginning to understand that about you.
It is, without question, the single most dangerous thing about this entire arrangement.
" He drew her closer across the seat, until her head rested against his shoulder, his arm settling around her with a possessiveness that felt less like danger now and more, terrifyingly, like home.
"Whatever Julian does with what he learned tonight, I promise you this much.
I will not let it reach you. Not while I'm still breathing to stand between it and you. "
She believed him. That, she thought, watching the dark countryside slide past the window, her hand still folded inside his, was perhaps the most reckless thing she'd done since stepping out of that taxi three weeks ago — not the dancing, not the kiss in the kitchen, not even walking into a house that watched her the moment she arrived.
It was believing a masked man's promise to keep her safe from a danger she still barely understood, and finding, despite every rational argument crowding the back of her mind, that she wasn't afraid enough to take it back.
Behind them, unseen in the dark, a second car pulled out of the estate's long drive and turned to follow at a careful, patient distance — close enough to track the taillights ahead of it, far enough back not to be noticed at all.