Chapter 12 (Part 03)

I pushed open the restroom door and stepped inside, grateful for the temporary sanctuary. The space was as luxurious as the rest of the club—soft lighting that flattered everyone it touched, gold-framed mirrors that reflected back perfected versions of reality, marble countertops that probably cost more than my monthly rent. Black and white photographs adorned the walls, artistic studies of light and shadow that seemed to watch from their frames.

Not a soul in sight.

I braced my hands on the edge of the sink and exhaled slowly, studying my reflection in the mirror. My makeup was still perfect, my hair still artfully tousled, my dress still hugging my curves in all the right places. I looked like someone who belonged in a place like this, someone confident and sophisticated and entirely at ease with expensive liquor and designer clothes and the attention of handsome men.

But my eyes gave me away. They were too wide, too bright, filled with an uncertainty that no amount of concealer could hide.

My palms were sweaty despite the air conditioning, and I ran them under cool water before pressing them to my heated cheeks. My skin tingled where Zayn's hands had touched me—my waist, my hand, the small of my back—but now the memory felt different. Sharper. More significant.

Like it had been witnessed.

Catalogued.

Judged by a jury of one whose verdict I feared to receive.

"I'm not his," I whispered to the empty room, my voice echoing off the marble surfaces.

The reflection in the mirror stared back at me, skeptical and unsure. The woman looking back at me had swollen lips from drinking through a straw, eyes that were too bright with anxiety masquerading as excitement, and a flush across her cheekbones that had nothing to do with the club's warmth and everything to do with the memory of being watched so intently.

"He doesn't own me. Not here. Not outside work. He can't."

The words felt hollow even as I spoke them, a protest against something I didn't fully understand but felt in my bones. In the sterile environment of the office, surrounded by the trappings of corporate hierarchy and professional boundaries, it was easy to maintain the fiction that our relationship was purely professional. But here, in this place where normal rules didn't apply and the darkness revealed truths that daylight concealed, that fiction felt increasingly fragile.

And yet... something about the way he'd looked at me tonight suggested otherwise.

That look in his eyes—possessive, territorial, barely controlled—said I was wrong. Said I belonged to him in ways I didn't understand and hadn't consented to, ways that transcended job descriptions and corporate org charts.

He hadn't needed to say a word to make me feel claimed, marked, set apart from every other person in that crowded club as something that was fundamentally his.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to center myself the way my yoga instructor was always encouraging. Ground yourself in the present moment. Feel your feet on the floor. Remember that you have agency, choice, control over your own life and decisions.

But even with my eyes closed, I could still feel the weight of that stare, still sense his presence like a storm system moving across the horizon, beautiful and terrible and utterly inescapable.

"This is my night," I told myself firmly, opening my eyes to meet my own gaze in the mirror. "I can talk to who I want. I can dance with who I want. I can let someone touch me if I choose to let them. He doesn't get to—"

The door creaked behind me, the sound sharp in the relative quiet of the restroom.

I turned quickly, my heart jumping into my throat, but it was just another woman—a redhead in a sequined dress that caught the light like fish scales, her attention focused on touching up her lipstick in the mirror. She barely noticed me, too absorbed in her own reflection to spare more than a glance for the stranger standing by the sinks.

I took that as a cue to collect myself, to repair whatever damage my emotional turmoil had done to my carefully constructed appearance. I touched up my lip color with hands that trembled slightly, patted down my hair to ensure every strand was still in place, and tried to pull myself back together into someone who could sit across from Zayn and make pleasant conversation without constantly looking over her shoulder.

But no amount of powder could quiet the chaos in my head, couldn't silence the questions that multiplied like viruses in my thoughts.

Why did he have to look at me like that? Why did I care what he thought about how I spent my free time? Why did it feel like I'd done something wrong when all I'd done was accept an invitation from a kind, attractive man who wanted nothing more than to show me a good time?

And why, despite all my protests and rational arguments, did some treacherous part of me respond to that possessive stare with a flutter of something that felt dangerously close to desire?

I gave my reflection one final check, straightened my dress, and prepared to return to Zayn, who was waiting patiently with drinks and easy conversation and the promise of a uncomplicated evening. I would smile and laugh and let him tell me stories about his work in marketing, would let him order us another round and maybe even let him dance with me if the music wasn't too overwhelming.

I would not think about sharp suits and possessive stares and the way my name might sound in a voice that could command boardrooms and bend entire corporations to its will.

I would not.

I stepped out of the restroom a few minutes later, more composed on the surface but with thoughts that churned like storm clouds beneath my carefully maintained exterior. The hallway seemed longer than before, stretching ahead of me like a tunnel that might lead anywhere—back to safety and normalcy, or toward something far more dangerous and infinitely more complicated.

My heels clicked softly against the polished floor as I made my way back toward the lounge, adjusting the strap of my dress where it had slipped slightly off my shoulder and trying to summon the enthusiasm I'd felt earlier in the evening when the night had been full of possibility rather than fraught with tension I couldn't name.

But I didn't make it two steps before everything changed.

The moment the restroom door shut behind me with a soft whisper of expensive hinges, a hand shot out from the shadows that pooled between the abstract paintings lining the hallway.

Strong fingers, warm and sure and utterly without hesitation.

Deliberate in a way that spoke of certainty, of someone accustomed to taking what they wanted without asking permission first.

The hand grabbed my wrist with just enough pressure to be unmistakably intentional, and yanked me sideways into an alcove I hadn't noticed before—

Hard.

My back slammed against the cold concrete wall with a force that drove the breath from my lungs and sent my purse sliding to the floor with a soft thud. A gasp left my lips before I could stop it, surprise and shock and something else—something that might have been recognition—flooding through me in a rush of heat and adrenaline.

My heart was racing, pounding against my ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom, and I could taste copper on my tongue where I'd bitten it in surprise.

I opened my mouth to speak—to demand answers, to protest this manhandling, to scream for help if necessary—but the words died in my throat as the person stepped closer, moving from the deeper shadows into the sliver of light that filtered in from the main hallway.

I still couldn't see their face clearly, just the silhouette of someone tall and broad and utterly confident in their right to be here, to do this, to corner me in this forgotten space between the restrooms and the lounge where no one would think to look.

Only the outline of broad shoulders that filled expensive fabric.

Close enough that I could smell cologne—something dark and complex and undoubtedly expensive, with hints of cedar and amber and something else that spoke of power and danger and late nights in boardrooms where fortunes were made and lost.

Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from their body, could sense the coiled tension in their posture that suggested barely controlled restraint.

The hand that wasn't gripping my wrist braced against the wall beside my head, fingers splayed against the concrete in a gesture that was both protective and possessive. Trapping me in a cage made of muscle and expensive fabric and an intensity that made the air between us crackle with electricity.

I was surrounded.

Pinned like a butterfly to a collector's board.

Cornered by someone who moved with the fluid grace of a predator who had finally decided to close the distance between themselves and their prey.

And when I looked up, when I finally found the courage to meet the gaze I could feel burning into me like a brand—

Two eyes stared down at me from the shadows.

Dark as midnight and twice as dangerous.

Unblinking in their intensity.

Sharp with an intelligence that missed nothing and forgot less.

Possessive in a way that made my knees weak and my breath catch in my throat.

Eyes I recognized from boardroom meetings and quarterly reviews and a thousand professional interactions that had never felt remotely professional.

Eyes that belonged to Killian Vale.