Chapter 7 Naomi
NAOMI
He thinks he has me.
Thinks a performance kiss and one brush of his hand beneath a linen-draped table is enough to melt my spine and silence my fire.
He forgets who I am.
I’m the granddaughter of Theodore Kane, the man who could charm a trustee while bleeding out from a bad headline, who taught me to smile with my chin lifted when the floor gave way.
I may be the woman he married for show…assuming I’d play the prop while he played the puppeteer, but he underestimated the one thing the Kanes never surrendered: the stage.
Vasso Dillinger wants a performance?
I’ll give him one.
We barely make it through the door of the living room—the one with the impossible ocean view and the limestone hearth big enough to roast his ego—when I turn on him.
My clutch hits the marble with a soft, expensive thud.
I step into his space the way he stepped into mine all night, and the room tightens like a drum.
His brow arches. His lips tilt, amused. “You’re angry.”
“No,” I say, sliding a finger down the lapel of his jacket, following the clean line straight to the button. “I’m inspired.”
His eyes catch and hold—dark, bright, a storm deciding what to do with the coast. He doesn’t move when I tug the button free or when I smooth both palms down his chest, slow enough to memorize the texture of his arrogance through fine wool and heat.
He remains a breathing pillar when I lift onto my toes and let my mouth brush the line of his jaw—no more than a shadow of a kiss, the kind you leave if you want to ruin a man a second later.
“You wanted to sell the illusion,” I whisper, warmth skimming his skin. “Let’s practice better so we can really sell it.”
His hand finds my waist with the surety of someone who’s mapped me before. Whether he means to stop me or drag me closer, I don’t wait to learn. I keep going. My fingers slip into his hair, anchoring, and I scrape my nails against his scalp exactly where I remember he’s weakest.
His jaw tightens; his pulse answers at his throat.
“Naomi.” One word, low and raw. A warning. And—betrayal—my name in his mouth feels like a lit match and is shiver from old chills and the promise of warmth.
I smile against his throat. “What? Can’t take the heat now, husband?”
His breath hisses through his teeth, a knife-slice of sound.
I shift, slide my leg between his, deliberate as a chess move. His grip bites a little at my hips—possession or restraint, I can’t tell, and I don’t care. Good. Let him feel leverage and know it’s mine.
“You think I don’t remember how to play this game?” I murmur, letting my lips ghost his jaw as if confidence were a kind of kiss. “You forget, it’s in my blood. I was raised by the man who invented it.”
His eyes, danger-dark and hungry, latch onto mine, and for the first time all night, he’s not entirely certain.
Censure flickers there, yes, but so does something else. Curiosity, the predatory kind. The kind that wants to know how far I’ll go and whether he’ll like the price.
“You’re not the only one who can scheme and seduce, Vasso.”
He doesn’t reply. He can’t. Not with my mouth hovering, not with my fingers at his belt, tugging, loosening, the soft, obscene slide of leather in the quiet. And certainly not with the full length of my body aligned with his, the restraint in every inch of me a dare.
I feel the moment his body surges in response, his cock thickening. Pressing against my belly.
And God help me…it’s affecting me, too.
I tell myself it’s time to stop, that I’ve made the point on the stage he set, and I should step off before I trip, but I can’t seem to pry myself away from the heat of him.
His scent, all sandalwood, sea air, the mineral tang of the night, gets into my head like a song I used to love and refused to delete from my playlist. I feel him harden into rigid steel against and something low in me answers, shameless and entirely female, a pulse that says yes in a language I’ve outlawed since my life turned into triage.
I have not felt like this about anyone in years—between hospital forms and board meetings, between shielding Grandpa from grief and trying to keep what’s left of the Kanes from dissolving, romance became a luxury item I couldn’t afford.
But this—this is not romance. This is a burner I shoved to low suddenly leaping to high, the pan smoking, the room filling, my brain telling me to reach for the off switch while my body leans into the flame.
And I know him. That scheming I named earlier—it glows at the back of his eyes now, banked but ready, a furnace with the door cracked. If I push one inch farther, we both go in.
So I stop.
I step back.
I smooth my dress like nothing happened and hope the fabric hides the fact that everything did.
It might be the hardest thing I’ve done in years. My hands tremble, and I lock my elbows to keep from reaching again.
The ring on my finger—his ring, a cold star—catches a lick of firelight and throws it in my eyes. I blink away the sting and pull my spine straight.
“Goodnight,” I say sweetly, too sweetly, and pivot toward the hall like the higher ground is located somewhere near the nearest door with a lock.
“Naomi—”
I pause, look back over my shoulder because I can’t help myself, because he says my name like a pulled thread. He’s still standing where I left him: shirt unbuttoned at the throat, belt loose, chest rising like he ran the length of the terrace.
He looks wrecked. He looks like he’d wreck me. His gaze drags up my body with deliberate insolence and settles on my mouth, and I feel naked despite the silk.
I swallow and lace my sweetness with steel. “Here’s a tip for your next rehearsal,” I say, voice soft enough to carry a blade. “If you plan on devouring me in public, try not to look so hungry in private. It ruins the surprise.”
The line lands. A muscle jumps in his cheek; his eyes darken, not with shame but with promise. I remember, a beat too late, that lines like this are gasoline to his particular engine. He thrives on dares. I just handed him one with a bow.
He takes one step, only one. It’s enough to light my nerves like fuses.
“That so?” he asks, silk-skinned danger. “We’ll see who ruins what.”
My heart stumbles, then sprints.
I should bite my tongue and walk away. Instead I tilt my chin, because I have never known how to back down once I’m in the ring. “Try me.”
There it is, the gleam I feared and craved, building in his eyes like heat lightning on the horizon. A storm setting up shop.
I turn before I do something catastrophic, like close the space and learn how he tastes when he’s this close to losing control.
My heels click a steady rhythm across the marble, one-two, one-two, the sound of someone who knows exactly where she’s going and not at all what she’ll do when she gets there.
I reach the door with my pulse in my mouth.
I look back one last time because self-preservation and I are not currently on speaking terms.
He hasn’t moved.
He’s watching me like a problem set he cannot wait to solve, lips parted, hands loose at his sides as if he’s reminding himself not to use them. The lighthouse’s slow blink rolls across the windows behind him and crowns him for a heartbeat like a king.
“Sleep well, Mr. Dillinger,” I say. “You’ll need your rest.” A softer woman would leave it there. I don’t. “I expect a better performance tomorrow.”
I shut the door before I can see his reaction, and the latch catches with a clean, final click.
Inside, I lean against the wood and breathe like I’ve been underwater too long.
My hands are shaking. My mouth is swollen.
My body is a chorus of wants I refuse to name.
I slip the bolt, because pretenses aside, I don’t trust myself, and when I cross the room the floor seems to tilt as if the island is reminding me that nothing here is stable, least of all me.
Only when I’m alone, when my reflection stares back from the dark window like a woman I half recognize, do I let the smile come. Not victory but something wilder, something reckless and edged with dread.
Because I can still feel his breath against my neck and his pulse under my fingers, and I can still see the way his eyes heated when I told him to try me.
Because for a breathless, fatal moment in the living room I forgot why I need to hate him.
The upper hand doesn’t feel like an upper hand anymore. It feels like the lip of a cliff, the wind rising, the rocks below insisting that falling is not the worst part.
Behind the door, somewhere in the house that doesn’t know what to do with the two of us, I swear I can hear his low laugh—one note, unamused, aroused, promising more.
Game on, I told him.
And God help me, I meant it.
But suddenly, it feels like less of a fight for survival and more of a forewarning of my surrender.