Chapter 12 - Playing the Game

FREYA'S POV

If Raiden Ravenscroft wanted to run tests, I decided somewhere around my fourth week, then he could get used to being tested back.

I told myself it wasn’t about the wrist or the way he’d walked me to the elevator like it meant nothing. It was strategy. If proximity to him meant proximity to money, to leverage or whatever version of security I could carve out of this job before Elena’s window closed, then I’d be a fool not to use every advantage I had.

I started small. A blouse with one more button undone than strictly professional, nothing anyone could call inappropriate, just enough to make a point. I timed my coffee runs so I’d pass his office when the door was open. I found reasons to bring him things myself instead of leaving them with Garrick, Things like signature that could have waited or a call that could have been routed through the assistant line.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. Nothing got past him, which was exactly the point.

“You could have emailed this,” he said the first time, holding the paper I’d hand-delivered, not looking up right away.

“I was already up.” I let my hip rest against the doorframe, unhurried, watching him instead of the floor the way I usually did. “Seemed easier.”

“Mm.” He signed it without further comment, but his eyes came up before I left, and they stayed on me a beat longer than the exchange required, satisfying proof that whatever careful distance he’d been keeping wasn’t as absolute as he wanted me to believe.

I started lingering. A minute longer in his doorway than necessary, waiting for him to dismiss me instead of turning to go the second my task was done. A slower walk past his desk on my way out, so he’d have time to watch if he wanted to. I wore my hair down on the days I knew we’d be alone late.

He gave me almost nothing back. That was the annoying part. He’d let his gaze hold a second too long, let his voice drop slightly when he said my name, and then come back to himself again just as fast, back to contracts and calendars and instructions and meetings, like he’d caught himself doing something he shouldn't be doing and stopped himself before it cost him anything.

“You’re wearing perfume today,” he said one evening, out of nowhere, while I was gathering files off the corner of his desk.

I froze for half a second before I made myself keep moving, casual, unbothered. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” He didn’t look up from what he was writing. “I noticed it. That’s all.”

I did not respond, though my heart skipped a beat, knowing he was actually paying attention. I could'nt let him see that he had any effect on me.

I started keeping score, in the small childish way people do when they’ve decided a thing is a competition instead of admitting it’s something more dangerous than that. A point for every time his eyes lingered. A point for every time his voice dropped out of its usual flat tone. A point for the afternoon he stood close enough behind my chair to point at something on my computer that he could have pointed at from three feet away, close enough that I felt the heat of him along my spine and had to concentrate very hard on not leaning back into it.

He never broke first. Not once. Every time I thought I had him or thought I’d catch some crack in the control, some moment where he’d stop pretending this was nothing, he’d pull it back together faster than I could close the distance, leaving me standing there with my carefully planned out strategy and nothing to show for it except my own racing heartbeat and his annoyingly emotionless voice asking if there was anything else he needed to sign.

It should have discouraged me. Instead it did the opposite. Every time he did not react made me more determined to find the thing that would actually break him because I’d felt a part of him in that hotel room so I knew exactly what was under all that discipline when it finally gave way, and some reckless, hungry part of me wanted to see it again so badly that Icould no longer to tell if I was doing this for the money or for other immoral motives.

I caught him watching me on Thursday night. Both of us were still around later than either of us should have still been in the building. His eyes tracked me across the room in a way he didn’t bother hiding at all this time.

“You could just say it,” I said, before I lost the nerve and crawled back into my shell, “whatever it is you keep almost saying.”

Something shifted behind his expression. It wasn't the crack I wanted, not yet, but a warning...or maybe a promise, low and certain, “Careful, Ms. Dalton,” and that told me exactly how close to the edge of his control I’d actually got to.

I smiled and walked out anyway, because for the first time since I’d started this game, I finally believed I could win it. And I was looking forward t o how this was going to go. Two could definititely play this game.