Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
We don’t speak for a while. The band plays. His thumb traces a circle on my waist, absent, and the circle sends heat through the fabric and into my hip and down my leg and I close my eyes because if I keep them open I’ll have to see his face this close and I’m not strong enough for that.
“You’re tense,” he murmurs. His mouth is near my ear. I can feel the shape of the words against my temple.
“I don’t dance.”
“You’re dancing now.”
“I’m standing in proximity to a man who’s moving.”
His chest vibrates against mine. A laugh, barely there, swallowed before it forms. “Is that what this is?”
“That’s what I’m telling myself.”
His hand tightens on my waist. Not a grip. A gathering. He pulls me a centimetre closer and the centimetre is the entire distance between professional and something else, and I let him, and I hate that I let him, and my hand on his shoulder curls into the fabric of his jacket and holds on.
“Daisy.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
Like it belongs to you. But I don’t say that. I can’t say that, because saying it would make it true and it isn’t true, it can’t be true, because this man propositioned me at a restaurant and every person in this room thinks I accepted.
The song ends. Another begins. We don’t stop.
THE BALCONY IS HIS idea.
“You need air,” he tells me, and I do, I need air so badly that my lungs are making decisions my brain hasn’t approved, and he takes my hand and leads me through a door I didn’t notice and we’re outside.
Monaco at night from the balcony of Ace Royale is obscene. The harbour is a bowl of light, yachts strung with gold, the water black and still and reflecting everything twice so the city appears to go on forever, above and below, real and mirrored. The air is warm and salted and carries the faint bass thrum of the casino behind us, and we are alone, and his hand is still holding mine, and I haven’t pulled away.
He leans against the railing. The black suit against the black sky. His face is half in shadow and half in the amber glow from the casino’s upper windows, and he is beautiful and I’m tired of pretending he isn’t.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask.
“You know why.”
“As your paralegal.”
He turns his head. His eyes find mine. “Is that what you think you are?”
“It’s what I am.”
“It’s what you tell yourself. There’s a difference.”
I should leave. I should drop his hand and walk back through the casino and call a taxi and go home and hang the navy dress next to the green one and add them both to the growing collection of clothes my aunt bought me for purposes I’m only beginning to understand. I should do all of these things.
I don’t.
I step closer. I don’t decide to. My body decides. My feet move and my hand tightens in his and I’m standing in front of him with the harbour below and the music behind and his face above mine and the distance between us is the width of a held breath and I can feel his heartbeat through our joined hands, that same fast beat from the file room, the one that wasn’t performance.
He lifts his free hand. His fingers find my jaw. The touch is featherlight and it goes through me like voltage, temple to collarbone, and I don’t flinch, I don’t pull back, I tilt my chin up and his eyes are on my mouth and his thumb traces my cheekbone and I’m falling. I’ve been falling since the conference room and the five thousand miles and the coffee that was black with one sugar, and I don’t want to stop.
He kisses me.
His mouth on mine. Warm. Certain. A man who has kissed before but not like this, not standing on a balcony with the city burning below and his hand trembling against my skin, and I feel the tremble and it undoes me because trembling is not what powerful men do. Trembling is what boys do at school dances when they’re terrified the girl will say no, and Anton Almazov is trembling against my mouth and I kiss him back.
I kiss him back before I remember I shouldn’t.
His hand moves to the back of my neck and he pulls me closer and I let him and my free hand finds his chest, that same place from the file room, and his heart is hammering and mine is hammering and the harbour light is gold on the inside of my eyelids and his mouth tastes like champagne and need and something underneath both that is urgent and careful at the same time, and I’m kissing a man who offered me an arrangement at a restaurant and I don’t care.