Page 10 of The Enforcer (Damn! #2)

Just stared at him like she was trying to process what he’d said, like her body hadn’t caught up with her mind yet. Her chin trembled once, just barely, and her eyes glistened. Not with tears, she wasn’t there yet, but with the threat of them.

Fury warred with humiliation, fear tangled with the remnants of arousal, and she looked like she didn’t know which part to trust. Her hands clenched tighter at her sides, and her breath hitched sharp enough to cut through the silence. But she held his gaze.

Her arms hung rigid at her sides, fists clenched tight, nails digging into her palms. Her breathing was shallow, chest rising in quick, uneven lifts, and her whole body looked strung tight, like a live wire stretched too taut.

Vulnerability rolled off her in waves, but so did rage.

She looked like a woman on the verge of breaking, or detonating. But her eyes… her eyes didn’t waver.

There was no gratitude in them. No relief.

Only heat.

Not sexual this time, it had nothing to do with want.

It was raw, volatile emotion seething just beneath the surface.

Hurt twisted into rage. The kind of fury that came from being cracked open and watched like a threat.

But this was something else. The edge of something wild and wounded, something that didn’t know whether to trust him or bare teeth.

Lily wasn’t flattered that he believed her.

She was furious it took that to convince him.

And still, she held the line. Didn’t cry. Didn’t crumble. Didn’t try to win him back with sweetness or submission.

Just stood there in the wreckage of what almost happened, daring him to make the next move.

And damn him, it only made him want her more.

Then her chin lifted. “Next time you want to test me, try a question. I answer those, too.”

Zane’s eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t smile, but something shifted behind his gaze, just a flicker of acknowledgment.

A grudging respect, maybe. Or the warning prickle of something deeper, harder.

He didn’t like being challenged. But damn if her defiance didn’t draw him like a blade to a magnet.

And for the first time since she’d stepped into his world, he realized she might be just as dangerous as he was. If in a different way.

Unable to help himself, his mouth twitched, almost a smile.

Almost.

He reached for the shirt she’d dropped, lifted it from the floor, and handed it to her without a word.

Then he turned away and gave her the dignity she hadn’t asked for, but damn well earned.

“I don’t know what else to say to convince you,” she said quietly.

He heard the rustle of fabric behind him as she pulled the shirt back on, her voice steady but raw. “You want me to admit something I didn’t do. You want me to explain why someone threw my name out in their final breath, hell, I want to know that too. But I can’t give you answers I don’t have.”

Zane turned slowly.

She was standing tall again, at least as tall as her tiny frame could manage, but he could see the fine tremor in her fingers as she buttoned the last few fastenings.

Her chin was lifted, her gaze unwavering.

But her skin appeared too pale. Her mouth too tight.

She was scared, and trying like hell not to be.

He crossed his arms. “Then tell me what you do know. Every detail. From the first moment you found that backdoor to the second you ran.”

“I didn’t run,” she said. “I didn’t even get the chance.”

It wasn’t a revelation, he already knew she hadn’t run.

She’d been cornered, dragged into his world before she had time to think.

But hearing it aloud, simple, honest, unpolished, it scraped against something sharp inside him.

It chipped away at the certainty he’d been gripping too tightly. Because the truth wasn’t always loud.

Sometimes, it was quiet. Intimate.

Like this.

She released her breath in a long, drawn-out sigh. “Look, Zane. I hit send, and you instantly appeared. I didn’t know I’d tripped an alarm before then, I didn’t know there was anything to trip. If I had, I wouldn’t have touched it. I sure as hell didn’t know it was yours.”

Zane stared at her.

“You were scared.”

“Yes.”

“You’re still scared.”

She swallowed, but didn’t look away. “Yes.”

He stepped toward her again, not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel her heat.

“And yet you stood here when I ordered you spreadeagle on my bed and defied me.”

Her breath hitched. “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t?”

Zane’s voice was soft. “I would’ve stopped wanting you.”

Lily’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

She didn’t look away, but she did blink, slow and deliberate, as if steadying herself.

Her throat worked around the silence. A breath caught.

She wasn’t shaking, not visibly, but something in her had gone still.

As if the full weight of what he’d said had dropped straight through her spine and caught there.

Not rage. Not panic. But something quieter, deeper.

The realization that the line between desire and destruction had never been thinner.

Zane exhaled slowly, scrubbing at his jaw. Every instinct told him to shut this down, to lock her out, to put distance between them. She was a threat. Maybe not with a weapon, but with everything else. With the way she looked at him. With the way she stood in fire and didn’t blink.

But she was still standing there.

Still wearing his shirt.

Still in his space.

Still in his head.

And now she wasn’t just under his roof, she was under his skin.

He still didn’t know who or what she was or what she still wasn’t saying. But one thing cut through the static like a blade.

He wasn’t letting her go.

Zane dragged a hand through his hair and muttered under his breath, more to himself than her.

“What the hell am I going to do with you.”