FORBIDDEN DESIRE

Bad days never came alone. Aria knew that better than most. She walked the dark road with nothing but the cold and her thoughts for company. The Velmorian night pressed against her skin through her thin jacket like it had a personal grudge. Her brown hair whipped across her face with every gust of wind and she let it. She didn't have the energy to care. The interview had been in the Mirren District. Forty minutes by bus, another twenty on foot. She had skipped lunch every day for two weeks to save the fare, telling herself it would be worth it. Entry level admin work for a textile company. Nothing close to what she had studied for but it was something and something was everything when you had nothing. She had arrived ten minutes early. She had left running. Not the kind of running that came from embarrassment or a bad interview. The kind that came from a man whose eyes changed the moment his assistant stepped out of the room. The kind that came from grabbing the nearest object, a glass of water as it turned out, and swinging before her brain caught up with her body. She still didn't know if he was breathing. She told herself she didn't care. She almost believed it. The last bus had gone without her. Forty minutes of empty countryside road still stretched ahead and the dark here was the kind that had weight to it, thick and unbroken except for the occasional sweep of distant headlights through the trees. Her feet hurt. Her chest still hadn't fully settled. She was thinking about that, about the particular exhaustion of a body that had been running on fear all day, when she stepped further onto the road without looking. The headlights came without warning. The screech of tyres tore through the silence like something violent and Aria froze, palms slamming flat against the warm hood of the car, heart gone completely from her chest. The vehicle stopped so close she could feel the heat of the engine against her legs. For one suspended moment she thought, absurdly, that this would have been a terrible way to die. The door opened. He was tall. That landed first. Tall and broad shouldered, stepping out of a black car that cost more than everything her uncle owned, brown hair catching the wind, jaw set with the kind of controlled calm that didn't rattle easily. He looked at her the way people look at something that nearly went very wrong and somehow stayed intact. His green eyes moved over her once. Quick. Assessing. "Are you hurt?" Low voice. The kind that didn't need to compete with anything. "No." She pulled her hands off his hood and straightened. "I wasn't looking." "No," he said. "You weren't." No accusation. Just fact. She almost preferred cruelty. Cruelty she knew how to handle. He studied her for a moment in the way that made her feel oddly visible, not exposed, just seen, which was somehow worse. "Where are you going?" "Home. Past the Callen farmlands." "That's six kilometres from here." "I know." "It's almost nine." "I know that too." He looked at the empty road behind her. Then back at her. Something moved behind his eyes that she couldn't read. "Get in," he said. "I'll drive you." She looked at him. At the car. At the dark road stretching endlessly behind her and the darker one ahead. After everything tonight, after the running and the fear and the cold and the missed bus and the forty minutes she had already walked with her heart still not fully back in her chest, she almost laughed. "I don't know you," she said. "No." A pause. "But it's dark, you're alone, and you just nearly became a very unfortunate headline." His eyes dropped briefly to her chest then back up. "Get in, Aria." She went still. "How do you know my name?" He nodded once toward her chest. She looked down. Her interview lanyard. Still around her neck like she had forgotten it existed. Aria Voss. Applicant. She looked back up at him. He waited with the patience of someone who had never needed to rush anything in his life. She got in the car. End of Chapter 1