Page 27 of The Boss
“You are,” he said. “You see structure. You understand how people move. Do it for me.”
The ridiculousness of the request, its arrogance—and the bedrock trust under it—did something terrible and lovely to her chest. She swallowed. “One condition.”
His mouth tipped at the corner. “Name it.”
“I get to choose where the kitchen goes.”
He didn’t smile. He leaned in the smallest measurable distance. “Done.”
The music went on, but they didn’t. He released her, as if understanding the exact moment to hold and the exact moment to let go. He crossed to the sideboard and returned with two small crystal tumblers and a bottle with no label. The amber liquid caught the light like caughtfire.
“Not wine,” she said.
“Not tonight.” He poured two fingers into each glass and handed her one. The scent rose—smoke, vanilla, something that remembered peat bogs and storm.
She tasted. Heat ran a track down her throat and settled in a slow bloom low in her belly. “That’s indecent.”
“Good,” he replied, and they stood there and drank indecency and watched a city that had tried to kill them keep breathing.
“Tomorrow,” he said, when the glasses were a third lighter, “we take the banker and shake him until coins fall out of his teeth. We strip Riverside to rebar. We walk the south spans with a grid that reads like a confession.”
“And tonight?” she asked, knowing the answer and asking anyway.
He set his glass down and took hers and set it beside his. Then he curled his hand at the back of her neck, not pulling, not pressing, not yet. “Tonight I walk you to my guest room and I don’t follow you in,” he said, every word a clean cut. “Tonight I keep you and me both breathing.”
Something defiant rose sharp in her. “You don’t get to decide what I can breathe through.”
“I do when the smoke is mine,” he said, and the unyielding in it should have angered her. Instead it softened something she didn’t know how to soften alone.
He released her. The loss was worse because it was chosen. Without a word, he stripped off his shirt and handed it to her. It was soft and white and too big and smelled like him. “Sleep,” he said. “You’ll need the mean kind of alert tomorrow.”
She took it. “I don’t sleep,” she said lightly, the lie as old as the ceiling tiles she used to count.
“You will,” he said. “Here.”
He walked her down the private hall. Lights came on in soft bands at the baseboards, more glow than illumination. He opened a door onto a guest room that looked like the inside of a thought—spare, quiet, the bed made with hospital corners that still somehow looked inviting. He didn’t cross the threshold. His hand braced above the jamb and his body blocked the world and everythingelse.
“Leif,” she said, because there were too many other words and none of them were survivable.
He angled his head and, for the first time all night, let himself touch her mouth. Not a kiss. The press of his thumb to her lower lip, slow, devout, ruinous. The kind of touch that told her exactly what the kiss would be when he finally took it, and guaranteed she wouldn’t sleep atall.
“Together,” he said. No vow this time. No strategy. Apromise that sounded like an order because he only knew how to speak one language when it mattered.
She nodded. It wasn’t assent. It was admission.
He stepped back. She stepped inside. The door closed with a click like a line drawn not to keep her in but to keep everything elseout.
She stood with her back to it and listened to the penthouse breathe. The river moved, unseen and insistent, where fire followed current and tomorrow waited. She stripped, then pulled his shirt on. It fell to mid-thigh and made her seem more naked than she had been in the shower with him. She switched off the light and the city poured itself into the room. She didn’tcount exits. She counted the beats until sleep took her by the wrist and led her under.
Out in the living room, Leif set his glass down and stood a long time looking at the dark line of the Trinity. He didn’t pray. He didn’t plan. He listened—to the music still low, to the city’s engine, to the animal thud of his own heart—and let the night harden into resolve. Tomorrow would be war in a different key. Tonight he would keep his hands empty.
He didn’t, quite. He lifted his right and looked at the lion burned into the center of his palm, and then he closed it, the way a man closes over awoman.
Chapter 9
LEIF SATalone in the dark, the Dallas skyline burning against the glass, neon and streetlamps and headlight trails stretching into the night like veins of fire. His shirt was gone, given to Mariah hours ago, and the glass of whiskey he cradled had long since warmed in his hand. The ice had melted, the drink untouched for too long, but he kept it anyway. Something to hold. Something that wasn’t the heat pulsing in hispalm.
The Brand.
