Chapter six

Zara’s Pov

I was halfway through the door when Pinky made a decision.

She turned back.

Not because she was weak. Not because she was rattled. Because walking out of a room with that particular energy at her back was the same as admitting it had gotten to her and Pinky didn’t admit things like that.

I turned slowly. Let my eyes find him across the amber light.

He hadn’t moved. Still in the chair, one arm resting along the back, watching me with that patient, unblinking focus that had been quietly dismantling my composure for the last thirty minutes. His glass sat untouched on the side table. He looked like a man who had all the time in the world and had decided to spend it on this.

You don’t get to make me leave my own room, Pinky thought.

I moved back in.

I kept it slow. Deliberate. Each step reclaiming ground I was supposed to have never surrendered.

His eyes tracked without moving his head. That particular stillness again contained, precise, the kind of attention that felt less like watching and more like measuring.

I stopped just inside his space. Close enough to be intentional. Far enough to stay untouchable.

My fingers grazed his shoulder as I passed light, unhurried, the barest suggestion of contact and I felt the tension that moved through him like a current finding wire. His jaw shifted. Almost imperceptible.

Good.

I circled slowly, letting the silence do its work, until I was at his other side. His eyes followed.

“You came back,” he said.

“I forgot something,” Pinky said.

“What?”

I let my gaze move over him slowly, the way Pinky assessed everything top down, unbothered, like she was deciding whether he was worth the next five minutes.

“To finish on my terms,” I said.

Something moved behind his eyes. Not surprise. Something that looked uncomfortably close to satisfaction.

“Do you always hide this much?” he asked.

“Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Only when something’s worth understanding.”

I leaned close not giving full access, just closing the distance enough to make him aware of it and let my voice drop.

“Understanding me isn’t what you paid for.”

“No.” His eyes didn’t move from mine. “But it’s what I want.”

“Most men want things they can’t have.”

“Most men give up,” he said. “I don’t.”

I pulled back slowly. Giving him the withdrawal. Making him feel the absence.

His jaw tightened. There it is.

I moved in front of him and let the eye contact hold unbroken, deliberate, Pinky’s full attention like a hand pressed flat against his chest.

He didn’t look away. Of course he didn’t.

But his breathing had changed. Slight. Controlled. The kind of shift a man made when he was working harder than he wanted to admit.

“You like control,” he said. Not a question.

“I like outcomes,” I said. “Control is just how you get there.”

“And what’s the outcome here?”

I tilted my head slightly. “You tell me.”

A beat of silence.

“You,” he said quietly. “Properly.”

His hand moved.

Slow. Deliberate. Rising toward my face not grabbing, not aggressive, just a man reaching for something he had decided he was allowed to have.

He stopped just short of contact.

The air between his fingertips and my cheek was the thinnest, most dangerous thing in the room.

Don’t move. Don’t react. You are Pinky and Pinky is not afraid of hands that don’t touch her.

Inside a memory detonated without permission. Adrian at seventeen, reaching across a table to brush something from her hair, so casual, so unbothered, completely unaware of what it did to her. The same hands. Older now. Steadier. Infinitely more dangerous.

Stop.

“You’re getting greedy,” Pinky said.

His hand lowered. Slowly.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I just know what I’m looking for.”

I stepped into his space.

His turn to hold still.

I reached up and adjusted his collar one slow, deliberate movement, fingers grazing the line of his jaw as I withdrew and watched his breath shift. Felt his hand tighten on the chair arm. Saw the precise moment his control developed a hairline fracture.

There, Pinky noted. That’s what I needed.

He was good. Composed. But he wasn’t untouchable. And now he knew that I knew it.

“You feel familiar,” he said quietly. Almost to himself.

The words landed like a stone dropping into still water.

Everything rippled.

I felt it move through me sharp, cold, the specific terror of a door being pressed from the outside by someone who didn’t know yet that they had the right key. For one fractured second Zara rose straight through Pinky’s floor and I had to press her back down with everything I had.

My expression didn’t move.

“People say that,” Pinky said. Easy. Unbothered.

“Not like this,” he said.

I stepped back.

Smooth. Unhurried. Like it was entirely my decision and had nothing to do with the fact that another ten seconds in his proximity might have cost me something I couldn’t afford to lose.

I reached the door.

This time I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look back.

I let Pinky walk out the way she walked into everything like she had already decided the outcome and the outcome was hers.

“Same time,” I said, without turning.

His voice followed me into the corridor. Quiet. Certain. The voice of a man who had made a decision somewhere in the last hour and had no intention of revisiting it.

“Next time,” he said, “I won’t ask.”