For a second or two, maybe longer, she couldn't tell, Amara simply watched Darien Dravik taste the coffee she had made. He didn't gulp it or sniff it dramatically like those coffee-reviewing YouTubers she sometimes watched while half-asleep. He took a measured sip, slow and quiet, the way a man did when he was concentrating on something that seemed ordinary but wasn't.
Then he licked his lower lip. Just a small movement, but somehow it felt impossibly loud in the silence of the room.
"It's really good," he said it like someone commenting on the weather. Simple, pleasant, and oddly intimate.
He took the cup directly from her hand. His fingers grazed hers. Very lightly. Enough to make her nerves go wild. And then he added, "Thank you."
That tiny, polite courtesy somehow pushed her brain back into place.
She blinked, realized she was still frozen, and blurted, "Good… morning, sir."
