"Dangerous Curiosity".
839 Words
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CHAPTER TWO: Dangerous Curiosity
Zephyr Alaric D’Voré’s POV
She didn’t flinch.
Not once.
Zephyr leaned back in his chair long after the door closed behind her. He stared at the sleek glass of his office window, watching the blur of the city below. Meetings were waiting. Calls were piling. But all he could think about was the girl in the white blouse who had just left.
Amara Vale.
She had walked into his office like she didn’t belong, and yet somehow managed to command it without even trying. Too soft-spoken for this world. Too pure for a man like him.
He hated that he noticed.
His mind usually filtered people into categories within seconds—useful, threatening, disposable. Amara didn’t fit any of them. She had something… delicate, but not weak. She looked like someone who’d been protected all her life, and yet, when she spoke, her voice carried a quiet defiance he didn’t expect.
Zephyr hated surprises.
He tapped a finger against the glass desk, calling up her profile on the screen. No resume. No prior work experience. Just a name, an address in the quiet part of town, and a hastily written note of recommendation from someone he hadn’t spoken to in years—his late mother’s attorney.
He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes.
“Who the hell are you, Amara Vale?” he murmured.
The office door creaked open without a knock.
“Sir?” came his assistant's voice—Angela, his current assistant, soon to be replaced. She had long overstayed her welcome, but Zephyr didn’t fire people unless he had to. He preferred to move pieces quietly. Like a chessboard.
“Yes?” he said without looking.
“You have a 10:30 with the Tokyo partners.”
“Cancel it.”
“Sir?”
“I said cancel it.” His voice was steel.
Angela backed out quickly.
He rubbed his jaw. This wasn’t like him. One conversation shouldn’t rattle him. And yet, Amara had done just that—with big eyes and a trembling voice she tried too hard to steady. He could see the nerves in her fingers, the way she clutched that old leather journal like it was armor. But what intrigued him most wasn’t her fear.
It was the way she refused to submit to it.
Most women he met were confident, manipulative, or strategic. They knew who he was and what they wanted from him—money, power, a name to attach themselves to. But Amara had no agenda. No seduction in her eyes. Just... truth. Honesty, wrapped in a modest blouse and a mind he could already tell was sharper than she let on.
He liked control. Loved it, actually.
And something about her made him feel like he was losing it.
He pressed a button on the desk. “Tess, get me everything on Amara Vale. School records, birth certificate, known affiliations. And get it fast.”
“On it,” his head of security replied.
Zephyr stood and walked to the bar at the edge of the room, pouring a glass of whiskey even though it was barely past 10 a.m. He never drank in the morning. Another line crossed, thanks to her.
The problem wasn’t just that she was beautiful. Beauty was common, and he’d long since stopped being fazed by it. It was that she was untouched. Untouched by his world, by experience, by men. A virgin—he could almost guarantee it. He saw it in the way her cheeks flushed when he got close, the way her spine straightened in defiance even as her voice faltered.
But there was danger in that kind of innocence. It made men like him want to break it.
No. Not this one.
He downed the whiskey in one gulp and set the glass down harder than he meant to. The sound echoed.
He wasn’t supposed to want this kind of woman. He wasn’t the man for delicate things. The women in his bed came with an expiration date. They knew what they were getting—a taste of power, a night or two of pleasure, maybe a scandalous gift before he moved on.
But this? This was different. And that made it dangerous.
He needed an assistant. Not a distraction. And certainly not a girl who looked like she didn’t even know what temptation was until she walked into his office.
Yet he had hired her anyway.
Zephyr let out a low laugh, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “What the hell am I doing?”
He walked back to his desk and sat down, pulling up his schedule. She’d be back tomorrow. At nine sharp. He’d made sure of it.
He had thirty-seven people in the building he could’ve chosen for the role—qualified, experienced, capable. But something in her eyes told him Amara Vale would give him none of what he was used to.
She’d give him a challenge.
And God help him…
He was already looking forward to it.
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