Chapter 3 – The Table Encounter: A Dangerous Dance
1261 Words
The office was silent, a painful silence. The only sound was the measured ticking of an antique clock on the wall.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
A soft, golden glow from the floor lamp spilled over the walls, casting warm shadows across the room, just like the presence of the man who owned it. Warm, composed… and yet, tonight, the air felt anything but relaxed. It pulsed with something heavier.
Ayra stood beside the enormous walnut bookshelf, her fingers slowly skimming across the spines of old leather-bound volumes. She wasn’t reading; her touch was performative. Deliberate. Each motion was a silent call for attention, her presence writing itself into the room like a slow-burning poem.
Her eyes weren’t on the books.
They were on him. Only him.
Zarun Bram.
He sat, dignified and still, behind his grand mahogany desk, the therapist, the observer, the fortress. Yet tonight, he wasn’t just studying Ayra. He was watching her. Trapped somewhere between fascination and self-restraint.
Something about her tonight was… different. The dark tousled hair, her smaller frame wrapped in a loose-fitting corduroy, the way her light brown eyes wandered curiously but calculatedly, the curve of her lips, her dainty fingers as they lingered too long on the spine of a book, everything seemed dialed in. Weaponized.
Could he ignore her? Could any man?
Zarun was silence made flesh, always measured, always contained. But even the most disciplined predator feels the rush of proximity. Even the calmest sea knows the tremor of a storm approaching.
Ayra stretched the moment. She liked this dance. She liked knowing she was seen, and she knew she was seen. The tension in Zarun’s jaw gave him away, the way his fingers laced tightly together, the stillness of a man holding back the waves.
Let’s see how long that lasts.
Without turning, Ayra broke the silence with casual venom.
“I half expected you to ignore my message.”
Zarun exhaled slowly, lifting a brow, composed irritation.
“Because you assume too much.”
She smiled, a quiet, knowing smirk that curved just enough to provoke. Her nail traced the spine of a book again, then paused.
“Or maybe… you’re just bad at pretending.”
There. The line dropped like bait.
The room shifted. Footsteps. A suffle of breath. A stir of fabric.
He was moving.
Her pulse flickered. Still, she did not turn.
Then
“What exactly do you think you’re doing, Ayra?”
His voice was closer now, much closer, low, smooth, like aged scotch and secrets. She could feel the warmth of his breath near her ear. Was he that close?
She finally turned, slowly, deliberately, her eyes sharp and bright, head tilted like a feline teasing danger.
“What does it look like?”
His gaze dropped briefly, but just briefly, before locking onto hers again.
“It looks like you’re testing me.”
She took a small, calculated step forward. The click of her heel echoed against the hardwood.
“And if I am?”
Her voice, sugar-coated mischief, didn’t match the fire brewing beneath her skin. Zarun didn’t move. He didn’t have to. The air itself grew heavier around them.
She could feel it. The tension. The heat. His cologne wrapped around her like a whisper against her skin. Rich, magnetic. Familiar.
Her nerves betrayed her. A flutter in the chest. But she held her ground.
She had wanted this.
Zarun leaned forward. Just enough to make her breath stall. Close enough to blur the boundaries of restraint.
Then…
He reached past her. Fingers brushed the shelf behind her shoulder, light, deliberate, pulling a book from the shelf as if she had never even existed there.
A goddamn book.
He stepped back. Casual. Calm. The audacity of that move stung.
He flipped through the pages.
“Disappointed?” he asked, his tone a silken dagger.
She was. But she would rather bleed than admit it.
Instead, she crossed her arms, her frame pressed lightly against the shelf. Calm. Unbothered.
“Hardly,” she said, tilting her chin. “I just didn’t take you for a coward.”
That landed.
The book snapped shut. His gaze met hers, sharp, cold, cutting.
“And I didn’t take you for desperate.”
Silence.
No retort came. Not immediately. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Not this time.
For the first time… he had flipped the game.
She felt it.
Zarun’s smirk ghosted over his lips. Controlled. Superior. He turned away and placed the book on the desk like a final chess piece dropped.
“Go home, Ayra.”
Dismissed. Again.
Her fingers curled into her palm, nails digging into the skin.
Fine.
But this wasn’t over. Not even close.
Zarun walked toward the hallway. His voice was distant now, cold.
“Your Uncle Zarun will now have a word with your father. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to continue your therapy sessions. They’re beginning a project together. Time won’t allow him to entertain general patients anymore.”
Then silence. The faintest click of the door.
Ayra stood frozen. Her breath caught in her throat. A tear burned its way down her cheek.
Why did it hurt? Was it the dismissal… or the fact that she believed, even for a moment, that he might have wanted her too?
Zarun closed the door behind him and exhaled as if the air had been burning inside his lungs.
What he said it had been harsh. But necessary.
He knew Ayra. Knew her fragility behind the performance. Knew what heartbreak had done to her.
She had come to him broken. Therapy sessions after a devastating breakup, sessions she claimed were helping. And they were, until suddenly, she wasn’t healing anymore.
She was… redirecting.
Redirecting her pain, her need, her desire… toward him.
Zarun had watched her grow from a wide-eyed child to a confident, complex woman. He had never blurred that line. Not even once.
But she had.
And now?
Now she was trying to pull him in. Into her chaos. Into her storm.
He wouldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t.
Her father was his closest colleague, his senior. Her family trusted him. And Ayra? She was spiralling. She needed grounding, not indulgence. And if pushing her away meant hurting her, then so be it.
Better a wound now… than a ruin later.
He leaned against the hallway wall, hand running through his hair, eyes closed. That look on her face, the moment he said “desperate”, it would haunt him.
But lines had to be drawn.
And she needed to feel them.
Back in the office, Ayra still hadn’t moved.
Her world felt unsteady. Her confidence, the armor she wore like skin, had cracked. She bit her lip, tasting the faintest hint of blood.
Desperate.
Coward.
Dismissed.
Zarun knew exactly where to hit. He had studied her, after all. He knew her heart, her wounds, her vulnerabilities. She hated him for that. For using her truth like ammunition.
But another part of her?
That part respected it.
Because if she were being honest, deep down, buried under every bold move, she wanted someone who could stand against her fire. Someone who didn’t melt. Someone who saw her.
And he did. In ways no one else ever had.
So, she let the tears fall, only for a moment. Just enough to feel.
Then she wiped them away.
Straightened her shoulders.
And smirked.
Because this… this wasn’t the end.
It was my first real move.
And the dance? The dangerous, reckless, electric dance?
Had only just begun.
- Writer
