The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”Hmm,” she replied and said nothing more.

She lifted her chin to meet his eyes. His reflected darkness that simply went further, pulling you in one layer at a time until you forgot you had ever been standing on solid ground.

Cixi felt herself drowning in them.

Not the violent kind of drowning, where your lungs burn, and your arms flail, and your body fights the water with everything it has. The quiet kind. The kind where the water is warm, and the current is slow, and you stop struggling because some part of you has decided that wherever this takes you, you would rather go there than swim back to shore.

But beneath that — beneath the warmth and the pull and the unbearable closeness of his face to hers, something else stirred inside her.

Fear!

Not the fear of Cassian the man. Not the fear of what he could do, what he had done, what she had seen him do to others without flinching.

The fear of loving him.

The realisation had not arrived with fireworks or trembling hands or a dramatic intake of breath.

She had slept with Cassian Crown.

In her wildest imagination, Cixi’s imagination had been stretched to its limits since the day she met him — she had never pictured herself doing what she had just done. With a man who changed partners the way other men changed shirts. A man whose bed had seen more women than his dining table had seen plates. A man whose reputation for detachment was so well-documented that the women who left his apartment in the morning after the seventh day did so knowing they would never return.

And yet she is now in his arms. And she doesn’t want him to leave or go away from her.

She looked at his face now carefully, searching it, scanning it, the way you scan a contract for the clause that will undo you. Looking for answers to questions she was too afraid to ask out loud.

Did this mean something to him? Does she mean something to him? Will he stay with her forever? Or will he leave her?

Neither of them had said anything to each other. Neither of them had spoken the word that would have changed everything and the three-syllable confession that people in films delivered with tears before the music swelled and the screen faded to black.

He had not said he loved her.

She had not said she loved him.

What they have would be called casual?

But they had shared the intimacy without planning it. And she was not regretting it — that was the part that frightened her most.

She should have regretted it. She should have been drowning in guilt, in doubt, in the sharp, bitter aftertaste of a decision made with her body instead of her mind.

She felt none of that. But felt happy being in his arms! It felt safe and warm.

She wanted him. She could not deny it. Every touch he had given her, and every breath she had taken against his skin, and every moment she had pulled him closer instead of pushing him away — her body had written a confession that her mouth refused to deliver.

Did he feel anything?

He was looking at her with something she could not decode. Not hunger — that had passed. Not possession — that was always there. He looked at her gently. And this gentleness that sat behind his eyes felt like a candle flame behind frosted glass, visible but untouchable.

Was it Admiration?

Then why did she feel so insecure?

”What is troubling you?” Cassian asked.

His voice was soft. Not the commanding low he used in rooms full of people, or the dangerous low he used when someone had crossed a line. This was private. The voice he used when it was just the two of them and the walls had stopped listening.

Cixi’s lips parted. Then closed.

She could not tell him. Should she tell him what was running through her mind? She decided against it.

Because she had not forgotten. He had told her during the contract, clearly and directly, in a voice that left no room for interpretation — not to ask him for love.

He had drawn that line in the sand, and she had nodded and accepted it because at the time she had not wanted it.

But things had changed now. She had changed. Her feelings had grown for him. And now she wanted the one thing he had warned her not to ask for.

She genuinely wanted Cassian Crown to love her. Not because of a contract. Not because of a curse. Not because the Grim Reaper had issued an ultimatum. She wanted it because her chest ached when he was not in the room and filled when he was, and that was the simplest and most devastating definition of love she had ever encountered.

So why was she scared?