“You can tell me all you like that this is for my mum, but I’m still adding that tick.” She reaches out and places her hand on my chest as she adds, “There’s something in here. I’m sure of it.”
Jesus fuck.
Her touch is electric. It fucking lights me up with desire in a way I can’t recall ever experiencing. I have to lay the fucking law down with her.
Pulling the car to the side of the road, I find her eyes and say with some force, “Don’t mistake shit for something it’s not. There is something in here”—I jab my chest—“but I can assure you it’s blacker than you can ever imagine.”
The tension sitting between us swallows her words and the car is filled with silence. It’s a noisy fucking silence, though, and with what I’m beginning to know about Zara, it won’t last long. “I don’t think I’m mistaking anything, Fury,” she says slowly. “Your heart might be black, but I’ve seen the patches of red. And I’ve also seen the way you look at me. You can’t deny you’re interested.”
“I look at you the way any man would look at you unless he’s gay or blind. As far as being interested, I’m interested in a lot of fucking things, the least of which is touching something that’ll put me in hell.”
Her eyes search mine for a long moment before she leans closer to me and places her hand on my leg. “I’ve tried to ignore this thing between us, but—”
I don’t allow her to go on because fuck knows where we’ll end up if I do. Forcibly removing her hand from my leg, I growl, “Don’t touch me again, Zara. I might want to put my hands and mouth on you, but I can’t. That can never happen between us. Not while your father is my president.”
“King told you not to go near me?”
“It doesn’t matter whether he told me that or not. The president’s daughter is off limits.”
“But did he?” she demands.
“I’m not getting into that with you. The only thing you need to take from this conversation is that nothing can happen between us. Understood?”
Her lips flatten. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Just tell me you hear me.”
“Yeah, I hear you. But you should know I don’t go running to King when I sleep with a guy and tell him all about it.”
This is the moment I know I’m truly screwed with Zara. When she mentions sleeping with a guy, I immediately think of her with someone other than me. And I don’t fucking like the thought.
I pull the car back onto the road. “This conversation is over,” I snap. “And we both know where we stand.”
12
Zara
* * *
“I’m glad you’re back doing yoga,” Holly says early Sunday morning as I move into lotus pose in our living room. I’ve been up for an hour and am trying to take my mind off Fury. This pose usually helps calm me, but it’s not doing much for me today. “I feel like yoga will go well with the sessions you’re doing with the shrink,” she adds.
I crack an eye open. “Maybe.”
“You’re still not keen on the shrink, are you?”
I crack my other eye open and find her curling up on one of our couches. “Would you be?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to contemplate it.”
“Well I can answer for you, Hols: you wouldn’t be keen. You’d hate the idea of it and would probably refuse to go. So don’t give me grief for not wanting to do it.”
She holds her hands up defensively. “Whoa, calm down, Zar. I’m not here to argue with you about it.”
I relax my muscles that have tensed. “You’re not?” I’ve felt so pressured by King and Mum that I just assumed my sister would be as determined about this as they are.
“No. I think it will be good for you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll hound you about it. I will say this, though: I’ve seen a change in you this week. Whether that’s because of the psychologist or something else, I don’t know, but I think if you dig deep on that, you’ll find you know the reason.”
“What change have you seen?”