Dinner that evening was a different kind of performance than the night before. Where their first meal had been cautious and formal, tonight carried an undercurrent of tension that made every bite feel charged with meaning. Cassian had changed from his business suit into dark slacks and a charcoal sweater that made his eyes look almost black in the candlelight, and he watched her with an intensity that made her skin feel too warm.
"You spent the afternoon exploring," he said as they worked through the first course, a soup that probably cost more than most people's weekly groceries.
It wasn't a question. Of course he knew how she'd spent her time. In a house with this much security, privacy was probably an illusion maintained only when he chose to grant it.
"Margaret gave me a tour. It's a beautiful house."
"But you found it incomplete."
She looked up to find him studying her face with the focused attention of someone reading a particularly complex text. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"The steel door. You were drawn to it."
Heat crawled up her neck at being so easily read. "I was curious. It seemed different from everything else."
"It is different." He set down his spoon with the precise movements of someone who never did anything without conscious intention. "It represents a part of my life that requires absolute privacy."
"Business?"
His smile was sharp as winter air. "You could call it that."
The vague answer was clearly all she was going to get, but the way he said it suggested that whatever business was conducted behind that door was far removed from the corporate empire that bore his name.
"I understand boundaries," she said carefully.
"Do you?" He leaned back in his chair, studying her with an expression that made her feel like a specimen under a microscope. "Because everything about your posture, your tone, your carefully neutral responses tells me you're cataloging information for future use. You're not accepting boundaries, Dalia. You're mapping them."
The accuracy of his observation should have been unsettling. Instead, she felt a perverse kind of pride that he saw her intelligence clearly, even when she was trying to hide it.
"Would you prefer someone who asked no questions?"
"I would prefer someone who trusted me enough not to need all the answers immediately."
Trust. The word hung between them like a challenge, loaded with implications that went far beyond employer and employee relationships.
"Trust is earned," she said.
"Is it?" He stood, moving around the table with that predatory grace that made her pulse quicken despite every rational instinct telling her to be afraid. "Or is it sometimes simply given, as an act of faith in someone who's proven their commitment to your wellbeing?"
He stopped beside her chair, close enough that she could smell his cologne, feel the heat radiating from his body. When she turned to look up at him, his face was closer than she'd expected, his dark eyes holding hers with magnetic intensity.
"You saved me from eviction," she said, her voice smaller than she'd intended. "That doesn't necessarily mean I should trust you with everything."
"Doesn't it?" His hand came up to trace the line of her jaw, a touch so light it might have been accidental if not for the deliberate way his thumb brushed across her cheek. "I've given you safety, security, luxury beyond anything you've ever known. I've asked for very little in return."
The touch was electric, sending shivers through her despite the warmth of the dining room. She should pull away, establish professional distance, remind both of them that this was supposed to be an employment arrangement.
Instead, she found herself leaning into the contact, her body responding to his proximity in ways that her mind insisted were dangerous.
"What are you asking for?" she whispered.
His other hand came up to frame her face, holding her gaze with an intensity that made the rest of the room fade away. "Your trust. Your loyalty. Your willingness to let me protect you from a world that would destroy you without a second thought."
"And in return?"
"In return, you never have to worry about anything again. No bills, no stress, no lying awake at night wondering if you'll have a roof over your head tomorrow." His thumbs traced across her cheekbones, the gesture possessive and gentle at the same time. "You let me take care of everything, and you trust that I know what's best."
The offer was seductive in its simplicity. Give up control, give up responsibility, give up the crushing weight of making impossible decisions with insufficient resources. Let someone else bear the burden of keeping her world from collapsing.
But the price was her autonomy, her right to question, her ability to make choices about her own life.
"That's a lot to ask," she managed.
"Is it?" He leaned closer, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "You've been carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders for years, Dalia. Fighting battles you can't win, protecting people who can't protect themselves, sacrificing pieces of yourself to keep everyone else alive."
His words cut too close to truths she'd never spoken aloud, observations that suggested he'd been watching her far longer and far more closely than she'd realized.
"How do you know so much about me?"
"Because I make it my business to understand the people who matter to me." His fingers tangled in her hair, the touch sending electricity down her spine. "And you matter to me more than you know."
The intensity in his voice, the way he looked at her like she was something precious and fragile and utterly essential, should have terrified her. Instead, it awakened something she'd thought was dead, a hunger for connection that went beyond mere survival.
"Why?" she asked. "Why do I matter to you?"
For a moment, something vulnerable flickered in his expression, there and gone so quickly she might have imagined it.
"Because you're stronger than you know and more breakable than you pretend," he said finally. "Because you've survived things that would have destroyed most people, and you did it with grace and dignity intact. Because when I look at you, I see someone worth protecting."
The words wrapped around her like silk chains, beautiful and binding and impossible to escape. She knew she should resist, should maintain the professional distance that kept her safe from whatever dark currents ran beneath his polished surface.
But his hands were warm against her skin, his eyes held promises of safety she'd never known, and she was so tired of being strong all the time.
"Cassian," she whispered, not sure if it was a protest or a surrender.
His name on her lips seemed to break something in his carefully maintained control. He leaned closer, his forehead almost touching hers, his breath warm against her skin.
"Let me take care of you," he murmured. "Let me give you everything you've never had."
The space between them crackled with tension, charged with possibilities that would change everything if she let them. His eyes dropped to her lips, then back to her eyes, asking a question that had nothing to do with employment contracts and everything to do with the dangerous chemistry building between them.
His breath ghosted over her lips. "Let me take care of you," he whispered again, the words a promise and a threat.
Then he kissed her.
Not gently. Not sweetly.
It was a claiming.
His mouth crushed hers, tongue sliding deep, tasting her like he had every right. One hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back, exposing her throat to his lips, his teeth. The other gripped her waist, dragging her body flush against his until she could feel the heat of his arousal through the layers between them.
"Say it," he growled against her skin, his voice hoarse. "Say you want me."
She couldn't answer—not with words. Her body betrayed her first, her hips arching into him, her breath hitching as he pressed his thigh between her legs. Her fingers fisted in his shirt, holding on like she might drown in the gravity of him.
"Cassian—"
He didn't wait. He scooped her up effortlessly, carried her to the nearest surface—the desk, the wall, the bed—it didn't matter. He needed her spread out and open, needed to see the look in her eyes when she gave in.
When he undressed her, it wasn't slow or soft. It was possessive. His hands tugged her blouse apart, buttons skittering across the floor. Her bra followed, stripped away so he could feast on the swell of her breasts, his mouth hot and wet, biting and sucking until she gasped his name again.
And then he was everywhere.
Kneeling between her legs, dragging her underwear down with a growl, his eyes dark and ravenous.
"You don't know what you do to me," he said, voice trembling with restraint. "You drive me out of my mind."
She opened her legs wider. "Then show me."
He did.
His mouth found her center, tongue lashing with a hunger that bordered on worship and destruction. She cried out, her back arching, one hand slamming against the headboard, the other buried in his hair.
He didn't stop.
Not when she trembled, not when she begged.
He wanted to ruin her for anyone else. Mark her so deeply she'd never forget the way he made her come apart.
And when he rose above her again, eyes burning, body tense, cock hard and heavy against her thigh, she wrapped her legs around him and whispered, "I'm yours."
He thrust into her in one deep, punishing stroke.
She shattered.
And he followed.
But even as he moved inside her—slow at first, then hard, then merciless—his gaze never left hers. This wasn't just lust. It wasn't just heat.
It was something darker. Wilder. Addictive.
"Mine," he rasped again and again, each word a thrust, a claim.
And she let him take her.
Because for once, surrender didn't feel like weakness.