Unscripted Seduction - Chapter 8
Damian changed direction without a word and strode towards his study.
Ama followed.
By the time he pushed open the door, the house was already dimming with the weather, the light outside gone from bright coastal gold to a hard pewter gloom. His study was all dark wood, clean lines, stacks of annotated pages and a desk that had become both battlefield and prison over the last several weeks.
Ama took one look at the scattered drafts and said nothing.
Smart woman.
Crossing to the desk, he lifted a bound stack from beneath a marked-up notebook, and turned to face her with it in his hand.
Her eyes sharpened at once.
‘This,’ he said, every word precise with reluctance, ‘is where the script actually stands.’
For the first time since she had arrived, Ama looked genuinely caught off-guard.
‘You’ve written that much?’
He almost laughed at the accusation hidden in her surprise. ‘Disappointed?’
‘No.’ She stepped closer, gaze dropping to the pages. ‘Suspicious.’
‘As well you should be. You will read it and you will leave. Or trust me, I’ll throw you out, rain or no rain.’
He held it out. Because he wanted this over. This inconvenient hunger and…awarenesst hat him gripped hard in its merciless talons.
And maybe after she left, he might head down the mountain and find a willing woman to…
Why not her?
He inhaled sharply at the bold suggestion. Then again as she took the script with both hands, and something about that tiny act, the unexpected care in it, landed under his skin in a place he didn’t appreciate.
Then, to his astonishment, she crossed the room, lowered herself into the leather chair by the window and settled in as though she belonged there.
Rain hammered the glass behind her in relentless silver sheets.
Damian stared. ‘What are you doing?’
Ama glanced at the storm, then back at him. One elegant shoulder lifted in a shrug. 'I’m clearly not going anywhere.’
‘That doesn’t mean you start reading.’
She opened to the first page. ‘It rather does.’
‘No one reads my work until I say it’s ready.’
Her mouth curved, cool and infuriating. ‘Then consider me the exception to the rule.’
He opened his mouth, fully prepared to tell her no. To take the script back. Remind her that talent didn’t answer to panic, that art did not move on command, that she’d mistaken temporary access for authority.
Instead, nothing came out.
He just stood there, absurdly arrested by the sight of her in his chair with his pages in her lap and thunder rolling behind her like a private drumbeat. He hadn’t let anyone this close to the work in weeks. Hadn’t wanted the contamination of opinion, or pity, or forced reassurance. Yet now that the moment had arrived to stop her, the words would not form.
That unsettled him more than anything else she’d done.
Ama looked up, waiting. When he still said nothing, one brow lifted. ‘I’ll be gentle.’
‘You won’t understand all of it.’
‘Try me.’
The arrogance of that should’ve restored him. It did not.
He took one step back, then another, every instinct telling him to shut this down while he still had control over it.
Instead, he heard himself say, with all the frost he could summon, ‘You have two hours.’
Her attention had already dropped back to the first page.
He stood there one second longer than necessary, watching the storm-light move over her face, the silk at her throat, the long line of one crossed leg, and felt something low and dangerous shift inside him.
Then Damian turned and walked out of the room, leaving her with the script and the storm and the deeply unwelcome knowledge that he was far more shaken than he had any intention of admitting.