Crimson Devotion

Chapter 2 : Eight O'Clock

She told herself she wasn't going to go.

She told herself this while she stood in front of her closet at six-thirty, holding a black dress in one hand and a voice of reason in the other, both losing badly. She told herself this while Priya sent a string of texts — are u actually doing this, he's like nationally terrifying, also send location — that she answered with noncommittal emojis instead of the truth, which was that some reckless, starved part of her wanted to know what Damian Cross looked like when he wasn't performing for a camera.

At 7:58, a black car idled outside her building, and a driver in a charcoal suit held the door without a word, as though her arrival had been a foregone conclusion since the moment Damian Cross decided to want something.

The restaurant wasn't a restaurant at all — it was the top floor of a building she didn't recognize, private, empty except for a single table set for two beside a wall of glass overlooking a city glittering like something spilled and precious. Damian stood when she entered, and for a moment neither of them said anything, because the black dress had done something to his composure that the tattoos and the money and the whole terrifying architecture of him had never quite managed to do to hers.

"You came," he said.

"I told myself I wouldn't."

"And yet." He pulled out her chair, close enough that she felt the warmth radiating off him before he'd even touched her. "I find I'm rarely wrong about people, Mira. It's an inconvenient talent."

"What did you decide about me, then?"

He sat across from her, green-gold eyes steady in the low light. "That you ask more questions than you answer. That you photograph danger for a living and have never once, in that whole career, let it get close enough to touch you." A pause, weighted, deliberate. "Until today."

She should have laughed it off. Instead, she found herself leaning forward, chin propped on her hand, some reckless smile tugging at her mouth despite every warning bell going off in the back of her mind. "You talk like you already know how this ends."

"I know how I want it to end." His voice had dropped, rough and low, the boardroom polish stripped away to something rawer underneath. "The rest is up to you."

Dinner arrived and went cold, mostly untouched, because they were too busy talking — about the tattoos, each one a scar turned into art, a story of loss recorded on skin instead of paper; about her mother, who'd taught her photography in a dark apartment darkroom before cancer had taken the light out of everything; about the empire he'd built out of his father's ashes, brick by brick, enemy by enemy, and the loneliness that came with sitting at the top of something you'd built entirely alone.

"Most people I sit across from at this table want something from me before the appetizer's even cleared," he admitted, turning his wine glass slowly by the stem, watching the light catch and slide along the bowl. "A contract signed. An introduction. A favor they'll cash in eighteen months from now when I've forgotten I owe it. You haven't asked me for a single thing all night."

"Should I have?"

"No." His eyes lifted to hers, steady, unreadable in the candlelight. "That's precisely why I noticed."

She turned her own glass, mirroring him without meaning to. "Maybe I just haven't decided what I want yet."

"Take your time deciding." The corner of his mouth curved, slow and private, a smile that seemed to belong only to this table, this hour, the two of them and no one else. "I find I'm suddenly in no hurry at all."

"You don't seem like the man the tabloids write about," she said, somewhere around the second untouched glass of wine.

"The tabloids write about a man I let them see." He reached across the table, not quite touching her hand, just close enough that the air between their fingers felt charged. "You're the first person in a long time I haven't bothered performing for."

"Why me?"

"I don't know yet." His thumb finally grazed her knuckles, slow, deliberate, testing. "I intend to find out."

• • •

The elevator ride back down was silent, charged, the kind of silence that has weight and heat and a pulse of its own. She was aware of every inch of distance between them — half a foot, maybe less — and aware, too, of him watching her in the mirrored doors, green-gold eyes tracking the rise and fall of her breathing like he could read the whole confession of it.

"Mira." Her name in his mouth was rough velvet, low enough that it seemed to vibrate somewhere beneath her ribs.

"Yes?"

"Tell me to stop, and I will." He turned, slow, deliberate, closing the distance between them until she had to tip her chin to hold his gaze. "Tell me to stop right now, and I'll put you in the car and you'll never hear from me again."

She didn't tell him to stop.

His hand came up, fingers threading gently into the dark fall of her hair, tilting her face up to his with a tenderness that felt almost violent in its restraint — like a man holding back a great deal more than he was allowing himself to show. "I've wanted to do this since you walked into that studio," he murmured, "and told me not to smile."

"That's a strange thing to want," she whispered, breathless, "from a woman giving you orders."

"I don't take orders from anyone." His mouth hovered, a half-inch from hers, close enough that she felt the words more than heard them. "You're the first exception I've made in a decade."

When he finally kissed her, it wasn't gentle — not entirely. It was searching, hungry, edged with a restraint that felt like it cost him something to maintain, his hand fisting carefully in her hair, the other flat and warm against the small of her back, drawing her in until there was no pretending, anymore, that this was anything but exactly what it felt like: two people who had spent an entire evening circling a fire, finally stepping into it.

The elevator doors opened. Neither of them moved.

"My apartment," he said against her mouth, low, rough, a question disguised as a statement, "is faster than yours."

She should have said no. She should have remembered the folder, the rumors, the rival who'd vanished, the whispers that followed Damian Cross like smoke follows fire. Instead, she curled her fingers into the collar of his shirt and pulled him back down to her mouth, and let the elevator doors close again.

"Faster," she agreed, "sounds perfect."

• • •