Damian Wolfe should not look that unsure holding a frying pan.
Aria leans in the doorway of the penthouse kitchen and stares, because she honestly doesn’t know what else to do. The man who ordered assassinations before breakfast is frowning at a carton of eggs like it personally offended him. The marble counters are already a disaster—shell fragments, a smear of butter, a knife abandoned halfway across the stove like he forgot he owned hands.
He glances up and freezes when he sees her.
“You’re awake,” he says, as if that wasn’t obvious.
Her fingers curl tighter into the sleeve of his black T-shirt she slept in. It hangs past her thighs, swallowing her, still faintly carrying his scent—smoke and cedar and something darker she can’t name. “I… yeah,” she answers, suddenly self-conscious. “What are you doing?”
Damian looks back at the pan. Something in it hisses ominously.
“Attempting,” he mutters, “not to poison you.”
She blinks. “Is that supposed to be food?”
“Don’t push it, Navarro.”
He reaches for the spatula with the kind of focus he usually reserves for negotiation tables. The eggs in the pan are half-scrambled, half-charred, edges crisping into black. The toast on the counter looks like it lost a fistfight with the broiler.
Aria shouldn’t laugh.
She really shouldn’t.
It slips out anyway—small at first, a startled bubble in her chest that turns into a real, full laugh before she can stop it. She claps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Damian goes completely still, shoulders tensing, jaw tightening like he expects mockery.
But when he looks at her, the sound is still spilling out.
He’s never heard her laugh like that.
His expression changes. Softens. Shock flickers through the cold steel of his gaze, then something warmer that terrifies her more than his anger ever did.
“You think this is funny?” he asks, but his voice is lower, rougher, not truly threatening.
“A little,” she says, breathless, dropping her hand. “The Devil of Manhattan can’t cook eggs.”
One corner of his mouth twitches like it wants to be a smile and isn’t sure how. “You want edible food, you shouldn’t let me near appliances.”
“You let yourself near them,” she points out.
“That was clearly a mistake.”
He scrapes the eggs onto a plate anyway, then adds the toast like an apology and slides the whole thing onto the island in front of her. It’s the ugliest breakfast she’s ever seen. It’s also the most intimate thing anyone has done for her in years.
Her chest aches.
“You cooked for me,” she says quietly.
His gaze snaps to hers, guarded again. “Don’t make it sound like something it isn’t.”
“What is it, then?”
His throat works. He looks away first, reaching for the coffee pot like he needs something to do with his hands. “You need to eat,” he says. “You haven’t been sleeping. You keep skipping meals. You crash, you become a liability. I don’t tolerate liabilities.”
It should sting.
It doesn’t.
Because his ears are faintly red. Because he’s still standing on the far side of the counter like if he gets too close, he’ll shatter whatever this is.
Aria slides onto one of the high stools and picks up the fork. She hesitates, then takes a bite. The eggs are rubbery, over-salted, edged with bitterness from the burn.
She swallows and looks up at him.
“Well?” Damian demands, watching her like men watch verdicts.
“It’s…” She tilts her head. “Aggressively cooked.”
His eyes narrow. “Aggressively.”
“In a…endearing way.”
“I don’t do endearing.”
“You did today.”
The silence stretches, fragile. The city hums far below them, muffled by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Rain from last night’s storm still streaks the glass in faint, dried trails.
He pours coffee into two mugs and sets one in front of her, then takes the stool across from her instead of walking away.
That alone feels like another impossible thing.
They eat in an awkward quiet for a few minutes, the clink of her fork on the plate the only sound. Every few seconds, she feels his gaze brush her, quick and sharp, like he’s checking that she’s still there.
“You’re staring,” she murmurs, without looking up.
“So are you,” he counters.
She lifts her eyes and catches him in the act. He doesn’t look away this time.
“How long,” she asks carefully, “have you known how to burn toast this perfectly?”
A huff of something like a laugh escapes him, involuntary. “My culinary training consisted of prison rations and Navarro’s leftovers,” he says. “You’re lucky it’s not raw.”
The mention of her father is a knife. It always is. But today, there’s no venom in it. Just fact. History. A scar they both know is there.
“Did you…” She swallows, fingers tightening around the mug. “Did you ever have breakfast like this? Before him?”
His gaze drifts past her, somewhere far away. His shoulders, always so square and controlled, sag just a fraction.
“No,” he says eventually. “We didn’t…do mornings. Not like this.”
“What did you do?”
Damian shrugs with one shoulder, the motion sharp. “Got up. Tried not to be in the way. Tried not to get hit. Ate whatever was cheap or stolen. Went to school when I wasn’t locked in a basement. That’s it.”
Her hand moves before she can overthink it.
She reaches across the counter and lays her fingers over his knuckles.
He goes rigid.
It’s such a small thing—her hand on his—but it feels monumental. She can feel the calluses, the faint tremor in the muscles of his forearm, the warmth of his skin under hers. He stares at their joined hands like he’s not sure whether to yank away or pull her closer.
“What did you like?” she asks softly. “As a kid. Before Navarro. Before all of this.”
His jaw flexes. For a long moment, she thinks he won’t answer.
“Toy cars,” he admits, voice quiet, eyes fixed firmly on the table. “Little metal ones. Couldn’t afford them. Used to watch other boys roll them through the dirt and pretend I had my own. I liked…cereal. The kind with sugar. We never bought it. Too expensive. Once, my mother stole a box and we ate it dry for three days.”
Aria’s eyes sting.
“Damian…”
“Don’t,” he snaps, anger flaring—not at her, but at himself, at the words he just let slip. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re sorry.”
“I am sorry,” she says. “Not for you. For him. For what he did to you. For what my name did to you long before I existed.”
He yanks his hand back as if burned and shoves both fists into his hair, elbows on his knees. For a terrifying second she thinks he’s going to shut down again, retreat behind the cold, ruthless armor she’s come to know too well.
Instead, he exhales slowly and lets his hands fall.
His eyes meet hers.
“You’re sitting in my shirt,” he says, like he needs to anchor himself on something simple. “At my counter. Eating my terrible cooking. You know that, right?”
She glances down at herself, at the way the fabric hangs off one shoulder, exposing a line of skin from her neck to her collarbone. The collar rests there, cool and familiar, no longer glowing with active threat.
“I noticed,” she says dryly.
His gaze lingers on the hollow of her throat. His voice goes low. “I should send you back to your room.”
“You did.” She lifts her chin. “I walked out.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Maybe a little.” Her smile fades, softening into something more serious. “I like seeing you like this.”
“Like what?” He sounds wary again.
“Human.”
The word hangs between them.
His eyes darken, but he doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t reach for the nearest sharp thing and turn it into a weapon. He just looks at her, really looks, and for once doesn’t look away.
“You make me sloppy,” he murmurs. “You know that?”
“You’re not sloppy,” she says. “You’re trying.”
“I don’t know how to be this.” His fingers tap the counter once. “Breakfast. Talking. Not…breaking things to get what I want.”
“What do you want?” she asks before she can swallow the question.
His gaze drops to her mouth.
Her heart stops.
The world narrows to the distance between them, the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the way his fingers curl slowly into fists like he’s strangling himself with his own restraint.
He stands up.
The air shifts when he comes around the counter. Every instinct she has screams danger and something else, something warm and traitorous that unfurls low in her stomach. She turns on the stool to face him, tilting her head back to keep his eyes.
He reaches out.
His hand trembles—barely, but she feels it—when he tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His knuckles graze her cheekbone. The touch is clumsy, hesitant, nothing like his brutal precision with weapons and orders.
“Damian,” she whispers.
His thumb drags along the edge of her jaw, grazing the pulse fluttering there. “You should be afraid of me,” he says quietly.
“I was,” she answers. “I still am. Just…not for the same reasons.”
His brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m more afraid of what happens to you without anyone to pull you back.”
Silence. Heavy. Electric.
His hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. He steps in, close enough that her knees brush his thighs, close enough that she can feel the heat of his body through thin cotton and air.
“Aria,” he warns, even as he leans in.
“Stop,” she whispers.
He stills.
“Stop warning me,” she breathes. “If you don’t want this, let go. If you do…then stop pretending you don’t.”
Something shatters in his eyes.
He lowers his forehead to hers, breath hot against her lips, and for a heartbeat they just stay there, hovering on the edge of something neither can take back. His fingers tighten in her hair like he’s holding on to the last thread of his control.
Then he kisses her.
Slow.
Devastating.
His mouth moves over hers with a hunger he tries—and fails—to hide. It’s not the violent, punishing claim she braced for. It’s worse. It’s careful. Reverent. His hand slips around her waist, pulling her off the stool and against his chest, like he can finally breathe now that she’s where he’s kept her in his mind for weeks.
Aria melts.
Her fingers fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, opening her mouth under his without thinking. Heat surges through her, sharp and overwhelming. She can taste coffee and something bitter and uniquely him.
He groans—quiet, strangled—and deepens the kiss for one dizzying second, then another. When he finally tears himself away, his breath is ragged against her lips, his forehead still pressed to hers like he can’t stand to be any farther.
“Now you understand,” he murmurs, voice hoarse, “why you can’t leave me.”
Her heart hammers against his chest.
“I think,” she whispers, fingers still curled in his shirt, “you just proved why I can’t.”
He closes his eyes like the words hurt and heal at once.
And for the first time, breakfast in the Devil’s tower feels less like captivity…and more like the terrifying, fragile beginning of something neither of them knows how to survive.