Elara had sworn she wasn't going to break.
She'd rehearsed the speech in her head a hundred times: calm, professional, collected. She'd remind Damien Kane that they were boss and assistant, not star-crossed lovers in some forbidden office romance cliché. She'd remind him that her career, her reputation, her entire sanity depended on keeping him at a distance.
But the second he shut that conference room door and looked at her like she was the only thing tethering him to the earth, every single carefully rehearsed word went poof.
"You—" she started, pointing her pen at him like it was a weapon. "You are impossible."
Damien arched a brow, maddeningly calm. "Am I?"
"Yes!" Her voice cracked, too loud in the empty room. She threw her notebook down on the table with a dramatic thwack. "You walk around here with your perfect suits and your stupid cologne and your—your—" She waved vaguely at his entire face. "Your whole thing. And I'm supposed to what? Pretend it doesn't affect me? Pretend I don't notice? Well guess what, Damien? I notice! Everyone notices!"
For the first time in his billion-dollar life, Damien Kane looked… stunned.
Elara paced, words tumbling out of her mouth faster than her brain could stop them. "I came here to work. To work. Not to be another scandal in the New York Times, not to be some faceless assistant in a headline about your latest conquest. I wanted to be good at this job! I wanted to prove to myself I could handle it. And then you—" She jabbed a finger in his direction. "You just had to go and ruin everything with your jawline and your broodiness and your whole 'I don't mix business with pleasure' act which, by the way, is total garbage because look at us now!"
Damien's mouth twitched. "Jawline?"
"Don't you dare laugh at me," she snapped, cheeks flaming. "I'm baring my soul here and you're—ugh—you're smirking."
"I'm not smirking," he said, absolutely smirking.
She groaned, dragging both hands through her hair. "I can't do this. I can't… I can't keep pretending I don't feel anything. But I also can't keep feeling everything. Because you, Damien Kane, are a walking disaster for my heart, and I cannot afford to lose myself in you."
Silence.
Her chest heaved. Her throat burned. She'd done it—she'd finally cracked, spilled everything in a messy, emotional explosion that would probably haunt her for the rest of her life.
She braced herself for his cold dismissal. His carefully chosen words. His neat, polite rejection.
Instead, Damien stepped forward, slow, deliberate, until he was close enough that she could feel the heat of him seeping into her skin.
"Elara Hart," he said quietly, his voice so soft it nearly undid her, "you think you're the only one spiraling here? You think this is easy for me? I built an empire on rules, on distance, on keeping my heart locked up. And then you walked in with your sass and your stubbornness and your terrible coffee-making skills, and suddenly the rules don't matter. Nothing matters. Except you."
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
Because for once, Damien Kane wasn't the untouchable billionaire.
He was just a man.
A man looking at her like she was his undoing and his salvation all at once.
And God help her, that was even scarier than the smirk.