Page 66 of Safe Word

His eyes stayed on me a moment longer than they should have, something hot and damning flaring in them.

Then, his voice dropped an octave – still quiet, still professional, but slower. Careful. ‘You think it takes complete trust to enjoy… darker things?’

I held his gaze, my fingers hovering over the trackpad. His tone wasn’t challenging. It was… searching. And something was telling me we weren’t talking about the lines on our screens any longer.

Cain D’Angelo was forty-something, if Google was to be trusted. I knew he wasn’t married, but surely… surely, he must’ve had some sort of relationship in his past. Not to mention that he was a romance author.

Yet something in his eyes made me think whatever love he’d known wasn’t the right kind.

I scowled, scolding myself inwardly – as if I were the one to preach here.

‘It’s the only way, Cain,’ I said after a beat. ‘Without it, it’s just… noise – control without connection, pain without purpose.’ I hesitated, then added, softer, ‘Anyone can take… but that’s not the point, is it?’

He stared at me.

‘No,’ he murmured, almost absent-mindedly. ‘It’s not.’

Something shifted in the space between us. It wasn’t inappropriate, just… too still. Like a thread drawn taut between two points, waiting for the smallest tension to snap.

He gave a small cough, as if trying to dispel it, but it didn’t leave.

I went back to the keyboard, trying to ignore the thrum in my chest.

‘Besides,’ I said, voice softer now, ‘when there’s trust, the darkness stops feeling like a threat, and starts feeling like… surrender. Voluntary. Wanted.’

Cain stared at his own screen. Didn’t type. The skin between his brows puckered as he roiled the thoughts in his mind.

Then he leaned forward slowly, gaze drifting towards the window. Still nowhere near casual.

‘Sounds like you’ve thought this through,’ he said, carefully neutral. But with an edge – as though he were treading on foreign soil.

I gave a small shrug to conceal the tremor that surged over me, eyes on the document. ‘Writers have to, don’t we?’ An uneasy smirk tugged at the corner of my lips. ‘We live a thousand lives. Sometimes the ones no one talks about.’

A beat of silence. Then Cain gave a quiet, dark chuckle – more breath than sound.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the ones we don’t even admit to ourselves.’

And maybe it was the way he said it. Or maybe it was just my own heart being reckless. But for one second, a strange chill threaded down my spine. As if we weren’t just talking about fiction any more. As if some part of him knew a part of me. Intimately.

But I shook it off.

We were just a writer and his assistant. That was all this was.

He braced his forearms against the desk, the shift in posture too slow to be anything but dangerous. His voice was calmer and cooler on the surface now, but I could still hear the gravel beneath it.

‘Very well, DeLuca,’ he said, his mouth curving into a slow smile, though it never touched his eyes. ‘You do the heart… I’ll handle the dark.’

There was humour in it, but one that came with teeth. An unspoken agreement sealed in a single sentence, and yet… the delivery made my breath stall.

‘As long as we meet in the middle.’ I winked at him, not quite trusting my voice to stay steady. He gave a low hum, eyes back on the screen, fingers already drumming against the keyboard.

Neither of us spoke after that. But the silence wasn’t empty.

It was electric.

That broken piece in me wanted to know exactly how long it would take to get to the dangerous part.

The office was unusually cold today, as if even the weather knew it needed to hold its breath. Outside, the sky hung heavy with silver clouds, cloaking Rome in a calm that was anything but peaceful. The wind dragged against the windows like it was trying to listen in.