Page 7 of Dominate

“He can call it whatever he wants,” I say. “Won’t change the outcome of the fight.”

Another laugh, louder. Someone whoops from the back. Victor makes a noise that’s almost a cough, and I know without looking that he’s proud.

At the far end of the table, the corner of Zane’s mouth tugs. Barely. Then it flattens.

The next question goes to him, and the next to me, a long rhythm of weight cuts and training camps and what it means to be a favorite. I answer, keep my hands loose, keep my voice warm. I say the thing about respect, the thing about gratitude, and every few sentences I glance down the table to the left.

Every time, he’s already looking.

The first time, I assume coincidence. The second, I decide it’s strategy, the kind of mind game fighters play to get under your skin. The third, I catch myself holding his stare a second longer than necessary. By the fifth, I’ve stopped counting, and I notice the rough weave of my collar against my neck, the heat rising in the room, and his fingers tap once against the tablecloth when I laugh at something a reporter says.

Tap.

One knuckle. Barely a movement.

I look at the ceiling. I look at Theo. Theo raises an eyebrow, and I look back at the cameras.

“Okay, we’ll wrap the Q&A there,” the moderator says. “The moment everyone’s been waiting for. Gentlemen, if you’d join me at center stage for the face-off.”

Chairs scrape. My knees, thank God, work.

The stage is smaller than it looked from the doorway. Officials in gray blazers form a loose circle, and photographers crowd the barricade’s lip, lenses angled up at us like a firing line. Someone’s placed two strips of tape on the floor, a yard apart. I step onto mine.

Zane steps onto his.

“Closer,” the moderator says. “Toe to toe, please. Hands at your sides.”

We close the gap.

I expect anger. I’ve known anger all my life. It sits in my hands and shoves at my sternum whenever some guy in a suit calls me a charity case, and it should be roaring in me now. Competitive fire. Rivalry. The familiar pressure behind my teeth.

I don’t get any of it.

What I get is Zane, inches away. He smells like cedar and soap, and his body throws off heat like a furnace with the door cracked. Up close, his eyes are worse. Not amber. Gold, molten and ringed in darker brown, flecked with green near the pupil. I have to tip my chin up an inch to hold them, two inches of height between us that suddenly feel like a mile.

His jaw is locked so hard a muscle jumps beneath the skin. His breath comes slow and level, in through the nose, out through the mouth, like a man counting. Too slow. Too careful. I watch his throat instead, the hollow at the base of it, and there, a pulse jumping hard enough to see.

The room fades. Not the noise, just my ability to hear it. Flashbulbs stutter at the edge of my vision like distant lightning.

I’m aware of every inch between us.

Neither of us blinks. Neither of us gives an inch.

“You’re going to lose,” Zane says.

It’s low. A murmur meant for me and nobody else, rough at the edges, and it lands somewhere under my ribs and stays there.

“You’re going to break,” I say back.

The words leave me before I decide to say them, quiet and steady, and his eyes change. The gold sharpens, goes dark and dangerous, and for one wild second I think he’s about to hit me. My weight shifts, ready.

His gaze drops.

To my mouth.

One second. Less. His lips part, and I see the exact moment he realizes what he’s doing, because his eyes snap back up like he’s touched a live wire.

Holy shit.