Chapter 14 - Caught in His Space
1193 Words
Elara flinched violently at the sound of his voice.
The file nearly slipped from her hands.
Her pulse slammed against her ribs as she turned halfway toward him, breath catching so abruptly it burned her lungs. Fear wiped every thought from her head for one disoriented second while cold panic rushed through her body fast enough to leave her dizzy.
He was here.
Thorne stood just inside the office with the door open behind him, his broad frame filling the space so completely the room seemed to shrink around her. Shadows from the corridor stretched across the floor at his feet while the warm light inside the office caught against the hard lines of his face. Cedar, pine, and whiskey lingered in the air, surrounding her senses until it became difficult to focus on anything except him.
His gaze stayed fixed on her, steady and unreadable, controlled in a way that made the anger beneath it far more dangerous.
The file remained open in her hands, though she had stopped processing the words on the page the moment he spoke.
It didn’t matter anymore because he had already seen enough.
Slowly, Elara straightened while her fingers tightened around the paper hard enough to crease the edges. Heat crawled beneath her skin as panic fought to stay hidden behind her expression. Her mouth had gone dry, and even breathing felt difficult beneath the weight of his attention.
She placed the file carefully back onto the desk before forcing herself to face him fully.
Neither of them spoke while the silence stretched tighter with every passing second.
His eyes moved across the desk, taking in the open compartment, the scattered files, and the paper she had touched before returning to her face. The change in his expression barely showed, but the tension in the room deepened anyway.
“What are you doing in my office?”
The question came low and controlled, pressing into the space between them hard enough to tighten her chest.
Elara opened her mouth to answer, but panic tangled the words before they could fully form.
“I… I wasn’t—”
The excuse collapsed immediately.
Thorne moved toward her.
The movement carried no urgency, yet the distance between them vanished anyway, forcing her back against the edge of the desk before she fully realized it. Her palms pressed against the wood behind her while the cool surface dug into her skin.
She forced herself to hold his gaze because looking away would have made her appear even guiltier.
“I was looking for…” Her voice nearly failed again before she forced it steady. “I thought I saw something earlier. I just wanted to check.”
Even to her own ears, the excuse sounded weak.
His expression hardened slightly.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Her throat tightened painfully.
“I didn’t take anything,” she said quickly while her pulse continued hammering beneath her skin. “I was just—”
“Going through my things.”
He finished the sentence for her, the quiet force in his voice cutting straight through her.
Elara stayed where she was, painfully aware of how little ground remained beneath her. The office suddenly felt too small, the air too thick, his presence too overwhelming to escape.
His attention never left her face.
“You think you can walk into my office,” he said, his voice lowering further, “search through my desk, and I won’t notice.”
Her heartbeat stumbled unevenly while fear twisted through her stomach. The bond reacted immediately to his anger, and the pressure of it wrapped around her chest until breathing became harder.
“I needed answers,” she admitted, quieter now, though the truth still held steady beneath the panic rising inside her. “Nobody here is willing to give them to me.”
Something changed in his expression then, subtle enough that she almost missed it.
“And this is how you chose to find them.”
She couldn’t answer because he already knew why she had done it.
Silence pressed between them again, carrying a tension that thickened the air inside the office. Every second he stood over her made it harder to think clearly. Her pulse roared loudly in her ears while his scent settled deeper into her lungs with every breath she took.
Then he moved again.
His hand struck the desk beside her with enough force to make her jump hard against the wood behind her.
The sound cracked through the office and sent another wave of panic through her chest.
Elara’s breath caught as his arm boxed her in beside the desk, blocking the clearest path away from him without touching her. The sudden closeness destroyed what little composure she still had.
Heat radiated from him while dominance pressed against her senses hard enough for her wolf to recoil instinctively beneath it.
“You don’t get to do that,” he said quietly.
The control in his voice made the words land harder than shouting would have.
Elara felt the edge of the desk against her lower back while her hands curled faintly at her sides. Every instinct inside her screamed at her to move even though she knew escape would only make things worse.
Fear spread through her chest in uneven waves.
She hadn’t expected this.
She hadn’t expected him to look at her like this.
His gaze stayed locked onto hers, leaving little room to breathe around the pressure building between them. The office felt unbearably warm now, her skin overheated while unease moved lower through her stomach.
“You don’t get to walk in here and decide what matters,” he continued while the weight in his voice grew stronger. “You don’t get to search through things you don’t understand.”
Her throat tightened as she struggled to force words past the panic lodged there.
“I—”
The sound broke apart before she could finish it.
She swallowed hard and tried again while her hands trembled faintly at her sides.
“I wasn’t trying to—”
The explanation failed again.
Frustration flashed through her chest, tangled tightly with fear. She hated how uncertain she sounded. Hated how easily his presence disrupted her ability to think clearly.
Thorne remained exactly where he was, refusing to step back or ease the crushing intensity surrounding her.
“Then explain it.”
The words hung between them.
Elara held his gaze while the certainty she had walked into the office with unraveled piece by piece beneath the force of his attention. The confidence that had carried her through the corridors earlier felt impossibly distant now.
She had wanted answers.
Instead, she had walked directly into him.
Her pulse continued hammering beneath her ribs while questions and panic crashed together inside her head too quickly to separate.
She had no explanation.
At least none he would ever accept.
Standing this close to him made that impossible to ignore.
The bond pulsed again, carrying the heat of his anger through her chest, and Elara realized with growing dread that he still hadn’t moved away from her.
- Writer
