001

MACEY

I sat behind my desk, pretending to work, when in reality I was watching from the corner of my eye. My boss, Zinna, was laughing with her brother in the open space outside my office. He was with another girl. A blonde. Of course.

I bit the inside of my cheek, annoyed. Seriously, how many blondes existed in the world? And how come Damien had gone through all of them except me? Not that I wanted to be on his ridiculous roster. Not that I wanted him at all.

Except… my thighs pressed together automatically just thinking about him.

I hated the way my body reacted before my brain had the chance to shout at it to behave. It was humiliating, how one careless glance in his direction could send heat curling low in my stomach, like a match flaring against dry kindling. 

I told myself it was just chemistry, nothing more. But even chemistry had no right to be this reckless, this consuming.

I huffed and dragged my focus back to my laptop. Our newest client was driving me insane. She wanted vintage lace and at the same time no lace. She wanted roses embroidered, but also her late mother’s face painted on her veil.

May her mother’s soul rest in peace, but someone needed to tell this woman to let the poor woman stay peacefully dead. 

The request itself bordered on grotesque. Who in their right mind wanted their mother’s face hovering like a ghostly watermark over wedding vows? But apparently, people with too much money and too little sense existed in droves, and they all seemed to find their way to Seams & Touch.

And who got stuck with turning that disaster into a design? Me. Lead designer at Seams & Touch, thank you very much. Zinna had practically shoved the client into my lap with a sweet smile that said good luck, sucker.

I almost admired her for it. Almost.

At least I only had to sketch it. The seamstress who had to actually bring it to life deserved my prayers, maybe even a shrine.

I stretched in my chair, letting my neck roll lazily as I sneaked another glance back toward the lounge. My eyes searched instinctively for him. Zinna was gone now, leaving only Damien.

And just my luck—I turned my head at the exact wrong time. Damien was walking away with the blonde, his palm resting firmly on her ass.

The sight punched the air right out of me.

Heat shot through me, embarrassingly fast, coiling sharp and sweet at the base of my spine. My body betrayed me, like it always did when it came to him. I clenched my thighs tighter under my desk, furious with myself for caring at all.

Damn Damien. Damn his smile. Damn his hands—those hands that looked like they could unravel me in seconds.

I snapped my gaze back to my screen, glaring at the lifeless lines of my sketch until they blurred. No. I wasn’t going there. Not today.

I needed a break. Coffee. Coffee would fix this. Coffee and maybe ice water over my head.

I left my office and headed to the kitchen, rehearsing a long lecture in my head about how I would tell Zinna we needed normal clients with sane wedding dreams. Reasonable ones. Brides who didn’t treat veils like haunted canvases for their dead relatives. 

My speech was shaping up beautifully, dripping with sarcasm and indignation, when the second I stepped into the kitchen, all of it vanished.

Because I froze.

Damien was there. And so was Blondie.

The room was charged before I even processed what I was seeing. They were facing each other, his body angled forward, hers leaning back, but neither one willing to budge. Damien’s voice was low, clipped, the kind of tone that brokered no argument. “I said wait in the car.”

Blondie tossed her hair like she was auditioning for a shampoo commercial, arms crossed tight over her chest, chin jutted in defiance. “And I said I’m not waiting like some pathetic side chick.”

Her words dripped with entitlement, but they sounded hollow in the face of Damien’s authority. His stare was lethal, like he could pin her to the spot without lifting a finger. Still, she didn’t fold. Blondie must have thought she was special. They all did, until they weren’t.

I moved toward the coffee maker, making no effort to pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping. Subtlety wasn’t my strong suit, and frankly, how often did I get front-row seats to Damien putting one of his girls in her place? If this was a show, I wasn’t about to miss the climax.

The girl must have felt my eyes on her, because she whipped around suddenly, her gaze snapping to mine like daggers. “Can you please focus on your own business and stop staring?”

I blinked, my hand frozen halfway to the sugar jar. Excuse me? This Barbie had the nerve?

Sarcasm bubbled on my tongue, sharp and ready to launch. I was two seconds away from verbally peeling her like an orange when Damien’s voice sliced through the air.

“Quiet.”

One word. Just one, and it landed like a whip crack.

The girl’s jaw fell open, outrage colouring her cheeks, but she didn’t speak again.

Then his eyes shifted to me. Immediately, his whole demeanour softened, the iron in his tone replaced with something gentler. “Sorry, Macey.”

My heart actually forgot to beat. For a single second, the world tilted, and I stood suspended in the gravity of him. Damien apologized to me. To me. The girl was still there, fuming silently, and yet he chose to be polite—to me.

It was a small thing. A blink-and-you-miss-it moment. But to me, it was monumental.

Without another word, Damien reached for Blondie’s arm and steered her firmly out of the kitchen. She sputtered some protest as he dragged her along, her heels clicking indignantly against the tile, but it didn’t matter. He was already gone.

The silence that followed was deafening.

I stared after them, my pulse thrumming in my ears, and muttered under my breath, “Good riddance.”

But the corners of my mouth betrayed me, curving into the smile I tried to suppress. Because Damien had looked at me. Spoken to me. Defended me.

And God help me, I already wanted more.

I stood there another moment, coffee forgotten, body still buzzing from the intensity he left in his wake. 

The kitchen smelled faintly of him—clean, sharp cologne, the kind that clung to expensive suits and made women weak-kneed. It lingered in the air like a phantom touch, teasing me, daring me to breathe it in deeper.

I curled my fingers into fists, as if I could squeeze the warmth flooding my stomach straight out of me. “You’re ridiculous,” I whispered harshly. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

Finally, I forced myself to move. I poured the coffee, more for distraction than caffeine. The spoon clinked against the ceramic as I stirred in sugar, and I noticed the faint tremble in my hand. That only irritated me further. Since when did I, Macey Williams, lose composure over a man who treated fidelity like a foreign word? 

I carried the coffee back to my office, shutting the door with more force than necessary. Sitting again at my desk, I glared at the half-finished sketch glowing on my tablet. 

My client’s mother’s face looked more like a smudged ghost than a tribute. Perfect metaphor for my life—half-finished, smudged, unflattering.

I dropped my stylus and leaned back, closing my eyes. For a moment, I let myself imagine it. Damien, walking into my office, shutting the door behind him. That voice—smooth and dangerous—saying my name not with politeness, but hunger. His hand, not on some random blonde’s ass, but on mine.

My thighs clenched again, traitorous.

The fantasy shattered when someone knocked lightly at my door. My eyes flew open.

“Macey?” It was Zinna.

I straightened immediately, smoothing down my blouse like I’d been caught naked. “Come in.”

She peeked her head in, her smile too bright, too knowing. “How’s the sketch coming along?”

“Wonderful,” I lied smoothly, angling the tablet away. “Really capturing the… uh… essence.”

Her smile widened, but she didn’t push. Instead, she tilted her head. “Did you see Damien?”

I froze. My lips parted, then closed again. She asked it so casually, but her gaze sharpened like she was gauging my reaction.

“Briefly,” I said finally, sipping my coffee to mask the tremor in my voice.

She hummed. “He’s trouble, you know.”

I scoffed. “You don’t say.”

But the look in her eyes lingered, heavy with something unspoken. Like maybe she knew more about my thoughts than I wanted her to. Like maybe she’d seen the way I watched him when I thought no one noticed.

When she left, I sagged back in my chair. My heart was still racing, but not from Zinna. From Damien. From the fact that he’d chosen me in that tiny moment in the kitchen, however meaningless it probably was to him.

To me, it meant everything.

And I hated that.

Because wanting Damien felt like standing at the edge of a cliff. One step closer, and I wouldn’t just fall—I’d crash.

But oh, how tempting the fall looked.