Under His Authority

Chapter 3

Maren's POV

"Stay exactly where you are."

I stayed. Not because I chose to, but because somewhere between him stepping closer and those words landing against my mouth, my body had already decided for me.

He still wasn't touching me. That was the problem.

He stood close enough that I could feel the shift of air every time he breathed, close enough that if I moved even slightly forward— my brain said he was going to kiss me. My body said let him.

His hand lifted. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he had all the time in the world to decide what to do with me. My eyes closed on their own. My fingers tightened around the papers in my hand.

And then nothing. No contact, no warmth, no kiss. I opened my eyes and he had already stepped back. A thin strand of thread hung between his fingers, barely visible. He looked at it for a second like it had personally offended him, then let it fall onto the table.

His gaze came back to me. Knowing— the kind of look that meant he had seen every single thing he wanted to see and was done pretending otherwise.

"You stopped breathing," he said.

My throat went dry. "I didn't—"

"You thought I was going to kiss you," he said.

I wanted to object but the words got stuck in my throat. My cheeks burned under his gaze…

"You did." He said it the way he said everything, like the matter was already closed and my disagreement was just background noise. "That's interesting."

The heat that climbed my neck was so fast it made me dizzy. I turned away before he could read anything else off my face.

"I told you, I was in a rush this morning."

"You're always in a rush," he said, reaching for his jacket. He buttoned it like nothing had just happened, like I hadn't just stood there waiting for something I had absolutely no business wanting. "And yet you're always late."

"That is not fair. Today was a one-time—"

"Fix yourself." The words cut clean through mine and I stopped talking. His gaze moved over me once, not lingering, just assessing, the way he looked at a quarterly report he had already decided was underperforming. "Then clean the room."

"Yes, sir," I said, because it was that or say something I would regret.

The door opened and Kaden stepped in with his tablet, eyes moving briefly between us before he settled into that careful, neutral expression he wore like a uniform.

"The Oslo delegation confirmed for seven tomorrow morning," he said. "Legal is waiting on your sign-off for the eastern boundary documents."

"Send them through." Dorian didn't look back at me. "Brief me at two."

"There's also the Harlow rep. He's been waiting since—"

"Then he can continue waiting. He came to me. I didn't go to him."

Kaden nodded once and Dorian walked past him without another word. At the door he paused, still not turning, still not looking back.

"Try not to be late again, Maren."

And then he was gone.

Kaden gave me a look that was one part sympathy and two parts amusement. "You good?"

"Wonderful," I said. "Fantastic. The best day I've had all week."

He pressed his lips together like he was trying very hard not to laugh, nodded once, and followed his Alpha out the door.

The room felt different after he left. Too quiet, too still, like something had been pulled out of it.

My hands weren't fully steady and my pulse was sitting somewhere too high in my chest for a woman who had just been made a fool of.

Well, that's Dorian Voss for you. He had always had a way of making me feel… smaller. I'd just never reacted like this before. Or maybe I had. I'd just gotten very good at pretending I hadn't.

I exhaled and forced my body to move. I gathered the files and stacked them. Straightened the chairs. Collected the glasses left behind by the investors. Small, simple tasks that made sense, tasks that didn't look back at me the way his eyes just had.

My phone buzzed on the table. I ignored it and finished aligning the last stack of documents. It buzzed again. I picked it up.

Unknown number. No name, no saved contact, nothing to tell me who was on the other end.

An image loaded slowly and then sharpened and my breath left me.

It was the conference room, taken from outside through the glass wall. The angle was perfect in the worst possible way. Dorian standing in front of me, too close. My back against the table. His head lowered toward mine.

Whatever space had existed between us was gone in the frame and the thread wasn't visible, his hand wasn't clear, and what was clear was everything it looked like. It didn't look like nothing. It looked like something that could be twisted into anything by anyone with a reason to twist it.

Someone had been standing in that corridor the whole time. Watching. Waiting for exactly that moment. And they had sent it to me specifically, which meant they already knew my number, my face and enough about my life to know what this photo in the wrong hands could do.

A second message came through before I could put the phone down.

Does your boyfriend know how close you are to his father?