Under His Table

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Under the table, a man's shoe dragged up the side of my leg. Slow. On purpose.

The man it belonged to could end anyone in this city with a phone call. I was nobody. The stray my own sister had brought to a dinner I had no business at.

It was his mother's birthday. A long table of them, crystal and old money and careful smiles.

And his shoe was climbing my leg like it had all the time in the world.

I snapped my head up and looked straight across at him. Adrian Hawthorne. The man the whole family held its breath around.

"Something you want to say?" Not a muscle moved in his face. Like nothing at all was happening under the linen.

Heat climbed my throat. "Mr. Hawthorne." The words came out thin. "You're stepping on my foot."

He looked at me. The corner of his mouth curved, and there was no apology anywhere in it.

"Sorry," he said.

The next second that shoe settled flat over mine and pressed down. Unhurried. Like he owned it.

Like he had every right.

Chapter 1

Grandmother Hawthorne was turning seventy, so the family sat down to dinner.

Adrian Hawthorne came late. A delayed flight, someone murmured, and then not another word about it, because no one complained about anything he did.

The old woman beamed at the head of the table, warm and easy. Everyone else wore a second face under the first.

The Hawthornes were money and teeth. A big, tangled family, and not one of them was safe to cross.

But all of them went quiet around him.

Because Adrian Hawthorne was patient the way a knife is patient. He'd taken the empire in under three years and put the whole of Ashmore under its heel. Cross him, blood or not, and he peeled you slow. Smiling while he did it.

So the whole house lived and died on his mood. Everyone but the old woman.

The air over the table was strange, thick.

I was the outsider here, the last name that didn't belong, so I kept my head down and ate small and tried to take up no room at all.

I ate too much. Across the table my sister caught my eye. She'd married into this house as the eldest son's wife, and she knew its rules to the inch. Slow down, her look said. Sit up straight.

I chewed slower, like a good girl.

And somewhere in it, without meaning to, I looked up and met his eyes over the rim of his soup spoon.

Black eyes. Cold, still water. My pulse tripped.

I looked away fast.

It wasn't only the family who feared him. I did too.

After that I kept my eyes on my plate. He sat directly across from me, and the weight of him settled on my chest like a hand.

I wasn't even supposed to be in this seat. When we sat down, he'd looked up and picked me out of the room.

"I remember Elodie likes shrimp," he'd said. "Sit there."

So there I was, in front of the dish of poached shrimp.

Hawthorne dinners had a rule: until the old woman and Adrian rose, no one else left the table. So I settled in for the long haul and peeled shrimp to pass the time.

I'd just worked one free of its shell, halfway to my mouth, when something nudged my shin under the table.

My fingers stopped. I blinked.

I drew my legs back.

The nudge found me again.

That was when it landed. It wasn't an accident.

He was doing it on purpose.

I'd tucked my feet against the chair legs, and his still reached me. Following. Closing in.

I glanced down. A man's shoe, black, hand-made, pressed to the hem of my slacks. My head shot up.

I stared across the table at that calm, unbothered face.

That angle. That shoe. It could only be him.

A joke? A hint? A dare?

A hundred guesses tore through my head. My scalp went tight and cold.

His lowered eyes lifted. Found mine.

Ink-dark and bottomless, giving nothing back.

"Ellie's been staring at me a while now," he said, level. "Something on your mind?"

The second the words landed, half the table turned to look at me.

Under all those eyes, my face went hot.

Some things you can say. Some things you can't.

I worked my mouth, and it took me a moment to get anything out. "Mr. Hawthorne. You. You're kind of stepping on my foot."

The whole table froze, caught somewhere between surprise and secondhand embarrassment. Not what any of them had expected.

He heard my little complaint, and he smiled.

"Sorry," he told me.

He was, to be fair, obscenely good to look at. The kind of face that stopped you mid-thought. And he wore it like frost, cold to the bone. The kind of man you didn't look at too long.

That smile was a beautiful thing. It was also a warning.

I just sat there and didn't answer, staring at him like an idiot.

My sister stepped in to save me. "Ellie's still young, says whatever's in her head, doesn't know any better. She gave you a laugh, Mr. Hawthorne."

No one saw.

No one knew.

Chapter 2

A breath after he said sorry, his shoe came to rest over my white sneaker.

Not hard. Not soft. Just a weight with no give in it, a pressure that dared me to pull back.

That one small thing set the whole ocean in my head heaving.

My thoughts scattered. Everything in me locked.

Grandmother laughed her easy laugh. "Have Mr. Hawthorne buy you a new pair, sweetheart. See something you like, just say so. Don't be shy with him."

"Sure," he said, light, like it cost nothing.

My hands went up fast. "There's really no need, Mr. Hawthorne."

He watched me, the smile still hooked at his mouth.

"Don't be shy with me, Ellie."

I pressed my lips together and dropped my eyes. "Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne."

The pressure lifted off my foot. But something heavy hung in my chest now, swinging.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

When dinner ended, they set up the card tables in the big room. The old woman let herself be swarmed by grandchildren, playing sweet, soaking up every bit of the fuss.

My sister saw me standing there with nothing to do and drew me close. "If it's too much in here, go take a walk in the garden and come back. Today's a special day. You can't leave early." A beat. "Don't be gone long. Be back before Grandmother turns in, to say a few nice words."

She patted my hand, tender. "Understand?"

I nodded.

Being the eldest son's wife had never been easy for her. My brother-in-law was born to a woman the old patriarch never married. Four more sons after him, two daughters, and only one of them, Adrian, had come from the single wife who ever wore the ring. So he gave my brother-in-law, the eldest, a thin sliver of courtesy, and looked through the rest of his half-siblings like they weren't in the room.

And my sister still had to sit and play cards with the sisters-in-law who never stopped needing her, which meant she couldn't watch me every minute. I was on my own.

I gave her a look that said don't worry, and slipped out.

After I turned eight, it was just my sister and me. Ten years older, she'd been half a mother. I boarded at school and spent the holidays at her and my brother-in-law's. But a house like the Hawthornes ran on rules, and holidays meant the old estate. Grandmother Hawthorne took pity on the girl with nowhere else to go and said I should come along too.

I never wanted to. But she'd said it out of kindness, and for my sister's sake I couldn't say no.

So I came. A Locke at a Hawthorne table. My sister's tag-along, nothing more.

Out past the big room, there he was. Back to me, on the phone.

I tried to slip off along the side.

I'd barely taken a step when he turned.

He hung up. His gaze came to me, cool and clear.

"Tea?" A pause. "Sit with me."

Something in me pulled tight.

Under that black gaze, I heard myself answer. "Okay."

I loved tea. Anyone who knew me knew that. My grandfather raised me on it, back when I was small.

Once, when I was young and greedy and didn't know any better, I even used to beg him for the rare, expensive leaves. Then I grew up. Learned a few things.

And never dared again.

The tea table sat in the far corner, a folding screen carving out a small, old-fashioned nook.

He heated the water and steeped the leaves, every motion clean and unhurried. Still. Precise. A pleasure to watch, if I'd been in any state to enjoy it.

I wasn't. Across from him, my stomach was a knot.

What happened at dinner was still fresh, still crawling on my skin. I didn't know what he wanted. He wasn't a man who joked.

Which meant this was a move, and I'd already lost sight of the board.

That was exactly why I couldn't get a full breath.

Chapter 3

"Try it," he said, and set a white cup in front of me.

I took it carefully, sipped, and drank the whole thing down slow. With everything I was hiding, I couldn't do anything fast.

His eyes stayed on me the entire time. It put every nerve I had on end.

When the cup was empty, he poured again. This time I didn't wait for him to pass it. I reached for it myself.

And watched him pick up the cup I'd just drunk from and lift it to his own mouth.

Something in my chest lurched. I nearly lost my grip on the calm I was wearing.

It was just the two of us in that little room. The cups were identical, but they sat in different places. There was no way he'd taken the wrong one by accident.

He drank from my cup with his eyes on me the whole time. And what was in them turned my guess into a fact.

He wanted me.

My heart slammed. My thoughts churned, and I had no idea what to do with any of it.

That was when my phone went off on the table.

The screen: Colton.

His gaze drifted over it, light as anything. "Your little fianc's calling," he said softly.

I grabbed the phone like a lifeline. "I'll take it outside, Mr. Hawthorne."

He looked at me, and there was no give in it at all. He smiled. "Take it here."

My family had money once. We didn't anymore. And to Colton, the girl he was engaged to was something to order around.

The second the line connected, his voice came through, high and offended.

"Elodie. I texted you. Why didn't you answer?"

"And who said you could go telling Kaylee you're my fiance?"

"You think a little too much of yourself, don't y"

I hung up before he could finish. The noise cut off clean.

A few seconds later, he called back.

I hung up.

He called again.

Call after call, each one angrier than the last. So I stopped answering. I turned the phone face-down and let it buzz itself into silence.

The tea steamed between us. The room was still.

He watched me, unhurried. No sneer. No contempt. Just one knuckle tapping the wood.

In all that quiet, meeting his eyes, I sat caught somewhere between awkward and ashamed. To cover it, I reached fast for another cup of tea.

And he picked that second to drop it on me like a live wire.

"You slept with me. You planning to just let that slide?"

I'd drunk too fast. The tea scalded my tongue.

I looked at him through the sting of it, disbelieving.

And a memory I'd shoved down deep came up on its own.

Two weeks ago. At Colton's birthday party, someone had put something in my drink.

I only knew the room had gone soft and wrong, that my skin was burning, that I'd stumbled out of the club on nothing but instinct. I caught sight of a back I knew. I followed it, climbed into his car, and didn't let go. I grabbed his hand and begged him to help me.

In the dark of that car, out of my mind, I was the one who reached for him. I was the one who couldn't hold still. His hand came to rest at my throat, the cold weight of his watch against my skin, and the shock of it made me shiver and press closer.

He caught me. Held me where I was. Said something low I couldn't hold on to. My whole body ached like it was crawling out of itself, and I started to cry.

He was the one holding a line that night. With me clinging and pleading and all but handing myself over, he didn't take it. He kept his hands where they belonged, and he called a private doctor, cool as anything.

I remember gripping his sleeve and not letting go. Making a wreck of the two of us the whole night through.

Chapter 4

I woke the next morning in a room I didn't know.

There was water running in the shower. I dragged my aching body up and fled before it stopped.

It never once crossed my mind that the man had been Adrian.

The memory came back blurred, full of holes. But I knew one thing for certain: it never got to the last step.

So how could he call that sleeping with him?

The most that had ever happened was...

My eyes dropped to his hands, long and elegant on the table, and heat steamed up my whole face.

"You don't remember?"

"Or you won't admit it?"

"Or should I help you remember?"

When I didn't answer, he laid the three of them down slow, one after another, walling off every dumb, blank look I'd been about to reach for.

Right then, I panicked for real.

He wasn't leaving me a way out.

He wanted me to show my hand.

Because the moment he brought it up himself, it meant he wasn't going to let me run.

A memory surfaced. Me as a kid, across a board from him. And here I was on a board again, and somewhere along the way he'd surrounded me, every exit quietly cut off, while he sat turning the one piece that ended the game between his fingers.

There was no world where he and I ended up together.

I was too far beneath him. His other half would be someone who matched him. For years the old woman had been hunting the next Mrs. Hawthorne, impossible to please.

I didn't believe he "liked" me, not as an equal. Maybe that one night had just made him curious. Maybe he wanted me for a mistress. That kind of thing was ordinary in his world, and the line of men and women who'd have killed to warm Adrian Hawthorne's bed ran out the door and around the block.

But I couldn't. Not ever.

My lashes trembled. My pulse wouldn't come down.

Under that black stare, the words wouldn't line up. "I... I..."

With anyone else my tongue worked fine. Just not with him. The man who scared me and awed me, who'd watched me grow up.

I never once, in my whole life, imagined getting tangled with him like this.

I gathered what I had and bowed my head, honest as I could make it.

I said it all in one breath. "Thank you for saving me, Mr. Hawthorne."

There. Gentle, but clear enough. That was my answer.

I thanked him for saving me. Nothing more.

Nothing more was allowed to be.

I kept my head down and traced the grain of the wood with my eyes. He didn't say anything. The tea steam climbed. My heart sank, inch by inch.

"Look at me."

Out of the long silence, his voice, quiet and level. Leaving no room to refuse.

I lifted my head, slow.

My eyes hit his. And the thing he'd put on the table sat there between us, unanswered, waiting.

Chapter 5