His hands were strong on her chin and yet surprisingly tender, like he was afraid to hurt her.

Like she was something to be protected and cherished.

She was scared both to leave and to stay. Afraid to walk out of the office and never again feel the swell of need in her body, the strange knowing of someone she didn’t know. Afraid of the destruction that would be wrought if she didn’t.

“I asked you a question.”

His voice was gruff, and she could suddenly imagine the way it would sound in bed, intimate and rough with need. The idea set a pulse beating between her legs, made it hard to breathe. She’d thought his eyes were brown when she’d first seen him at the club but now she saw that they were almost black, an infinite universe of mystery that would take her a lifetime to explore.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He sounded almost confused, the first time she’d heard even a note of uncertainty in his voice.

He was still holding her chin, his body only inches from hers. He was almost as close as Malcolm had been in the kitchen the night before and yet she felt none of the revulsion that had coursed through her body then.

This was the opposite of revulsion — the desire to slip her arms around his neck, to press closer to the fortress of his chest, the muscled peaks and valleys visible under his tailored shirt. The desire to be wrapped in his arms.

She took a step back and his arm fell to his side. She thought the spell would be broken then. That the small distance she’d put between them would call forward the reason she’d come to see him — to protect Primo, not to engage in lustful thoughts about his enemy.

Because that’s what this was. What it had to be.

She didn’t know Damian Cavallo. Anything she thought she saw in his eyes — tenderness and reason and security and maybe even the same kind of loneliness she tried to ignore in herself — was just a projection.

She wanted to believe it but the thought rang hollow. The city was full of beautiful men. Successful, powerful men who went to the gym every day to hone their bodies, who ruled empires both legitimate and illegitimate.

Aria had never felt a thing for any of them.

“I’m trying to help you,” she said. She wanted to put them back on safer ground, but she also needed to be honest. “And myself. No good will come of this for Primo. Don’t you think I know that?”

He turned to face the window, silent for so long she thought maybe he intended to ignore her until she left. When he finally spoke, the curiosity in his voice was laced with something like pain.

“Why don’t you leave him?” he asked. “Why do you stay when he hurts you?”

“Primo doesn’t hurt me.” She said it too quickly, coming to her brother’s defense as always.

He turned around. “He may not have done that,” he gestured toward her face, “but I think we both know you’re in pain. And I think we both know that pain is because of Primo.”

His words struck a chord, some melody in her body that knew Primo was to blame for her predicament. A song she’d tried to ignore for as long as she could remember.

But the fact that he was right only made her angry. Who was he to make pronouncements about her brother? What gave him the right?

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I think I do,” he said.

“You’re wrong.” Even as she said it she wasn’t entirely sure she believed it. She felt known by him, even though it didn’t make an ounce of sense.

Silence stretched between them, his body silhouetted against the sun setting beyond the city. He looked at her for a long time before he spoke again.

“No one can free you,” he said. “You have to do that yourself, and I suggest you do it quickly. Primo’s story — and its ending — has already been written. It’s not too late for you.”

“So you won’t give me more time?” she asked.

“Will you pledge to leave him? Get out while you still can?”

She sighed, knowing she was defeated. “I… I can’t.”

“Then more time won’t change anything, however much you try to tell yourself it might.”

There was something dark in his voice, something that made her think he wasn’t talking about her and Primo at all.

“You’re a cold-hearted bastard,” she said.

A sad smile touched his lips. “That would be the least of it.”

“I hope he ruins you.” She hated how much she didn’t mean it, but reminding herself that he was Primo’s enemy — and therefore hers — was all she had.

“And I hope he doesn’t do the same to you,” he said quietly.

She turned away, hurrying for the door, desperate to get away from him. From everything he called up in her and every lie he wouldn’t allow her to tell herself