LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Five

      ZAIR AL RUYI wanted her to think the worst of him. So it shouldn’t have felt like a red-hot poker through the chest—like the worst kind of betrayal—that she did.

      “Will we get to the truth this time?” he asked. He put the wineglass down and then leaned against the rail, shifting so he was closer to her.

      Nora Grant, who had always believed the best of him. It stunned him to realize that he’d imagined she always would.

      “I’m not the one who’s been concealing the truth,” Nora said, her voice thick, but she swayed toward him anyway, as though her body trusted him no matter what came out of her mouth. “I’ve told you everything. All you’ve done is talk about obedience and make me trail around after you like a dog on a leash.”

      “Why did you come here, to Cannes? Into this grim little world?” he asked her, making no attempt to modify his tone. “What on earth would make you put yourself at risk like this?”

      Her eyes glittered with emotion. “I told you—”

      “Yes, of course.” He moved so he was trapping her at the rail, a hand on either side of her hips and his face too close to hers. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t need to touch her—not when he could see the fine little tremors that moved over her skin. Not when he could smell her perfume and the warm heat of her arousal beneath it. Not when he could see the way she melted toward him, then yanked herself back. “This epic friendship of yours, the likes of which the world has never seen before or since. I am fond indeed of my friends, Nora. And if I suspected they were caught up in something like this, I would contact the authorities. I would not prance into the middle of this cesspool with absolutely nothing to protect me.”

      “That might not have been my smartest move,” she acknowledged. “But you don’t understand.”

      “Tell me, then, what I need to know,” he encouraged her, but his voice was a dark thing and he could see it move through her and tangle inside her. He could see the misery and the longing transform her lovely face. “Tell me why.”

      “Harlow is the best friend I’ve ever had,” she whispered. “Do you know what it’s like to meet someone and feel like they instantly become family? So much so that it’s inconceivable that they weren’t always there? She isn’t just a college friend, Zair. She’s like a sister to me.”

      He held her gaze for a long moment and then slowly shook his head. Nora swallowed, hard.

      “Try again,” he said. He saw unshed tears glimmer in her eyes, and she raised her hands up as if to push him away—but only held them there, in fists, and didn’t touch him. Her blue eyes filled with misery.

      “It’s my fault,” she whispered, spitting out the words as if they were poisoned.

      Zair didn’t question the impulse to gather her to him, pulling her into his arms and ignoring those fierce fists, hard against his chest. He didn’t question that thing in him that made him bring her close, made him bend down so her face was buried in his neck, so she could whisper all her guilt and panic and fear into something hard and strong like his shoulder, which could take it.

      “My life is so hollow,” she told him, told that dark little pocket of space. She rested her forehead against him and her lips barely moved, but he heard her. He could be her confessional. He could give her absolution, if nothing else. “It’s a constant battle between expectations and pointlessness and none of it matters. It’s empty and I know—I know—what a privilege it is to have that kind of life in the first place. I have nothing to complain about. And Harlow was just like me.” She pulled in a breath, short and hard. “But at least she wrote a thesis on something more important to the world than a bunch of two-hundred-year-old paintings. So I told her she had to do something with that. She thought maybe she’d take a year or two to travel, to go to Bali and do yoga for months. And I said she could either fake spirituality with a bunch of assholes like the ones we already knew or she could go a completely different way and make a real difference. I was her best friend and I was a jerk about it.” Her voice was choked then, and Zair lifted a hand to cradle the back of her head, his gaze trained on the glittering shore in the distance but his attention entirely on Nora. “So she went to London and she worked in another Treffen law firm, and you know what happened in New York. You know what happens in places like that. With those people who use girls exactly like her… You know what she was walking into.”

      “I do,” he agreed. “But I don’t understand how you had anything to do with it.”

      “I made her go!” she hissed at him, and she moved her fists against him in emphasis. “If it weren’t for me she’d be working on her downward dog in Bali, Zair. She wouldn’t be missing in France!”

      He shifted back so he could look down into her face.

      “Are you so powerful?” he asked mildly. “Did this friend of yours require that you make all her decisions for her? Did she pledge to obey you in all things?”

      “Of course not. But—” He shook his head and she fell quiet, and he saw the exact moment it occurred to her that she had pledged to obey someone else. In public, anyway. “What are you trying to say? That you’re responsible for me because I agreed to play these games with you?”

      “My responsibilities aren’t the point,” he said, dark and low. “This is about your guilt.” She tried to pull away from

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