Beautifully Dangerous 🔞

Chapter Four — The Night the Distance Closed

It was a premiere. One of Hale Media's most anticipated film releases a full red carpet, three hundred guests, the kind of evening where the city held its breath and dressed accordingly.

Celeste had spent the day dressing other people. By the time the official portion of the evening ended and the private dinner began smaller, quieter, the inner circle only she was running on adrenaline and the particular exhaustion of someone who had been performing composure for twelve hours.

She found a quiet corner of the terrace. The city below. The cool night air. She let her shoulders drop for the first time all day and tipped her head back and breathed.

"You look like someone who just took off shoes that were too tight," said a voice beside her.

She didn't startle. She had heard him coming had always been attuned to the particular quality of his footsteps, unhurried and deliberate.

"I've been on since seven this morning," she said.

Damien stood beside her at the railing. Close enough that she was aware of the warmth of him not touching, but present. He had loosened his tie somewhere in the last hour. The top button of his shirt was open. He looked, she thought with the part of her brain she couldn't fully discipline, devastatingly human.

"You never dress yourself the way you dress them," he said. He wasn't looking at her. Looking at the city. "Your clients you translate them into the loudest version of what they're trying to say. But you—" He glanced at her. "You dress yourself to disappear into rooms."

She turned to look at him.

"That's very perceptive," she said carefully.

"I've had three months to pay attention." His eyes moved over her face not invasive, just honest. "Why do you want to disappear?"

Because I was trained to. Because the mission requires invisibility. Because the woman underneath the invisibility is someone I haven't been in four years and I'm not entirely sure she still exists.

"Old habit," she said.

He turned to face her fully. This close she could see the scar at his collarbone above the open button. Could see the particular darkness of his eyes in the low light. Could feel unmistakably the shift in the air between them from professional to something that had no professional category.

"I'd like to see you," he said. "Not the version you curate for rooms. You."

Her breath did something.

"Damien—"

"I know." He didn't move closer. Didn't reach for her. Just stood in front of her with that unguarded directness that was more intimate than touch. "I know the timing is strange and I know there are things you haven't told me I'm not blind to that. But I've spent two years not feeling anything I couldn't explain and I would like, for once, to not explain it."

She looked at him. At the scar. At his mouth. At his eyes.

Walk away, said the part of her that was still on the mission.

Stay, said every other part.

She stayed.

She lifted her hand and touched the edge of his jaw barely, fingertips only and watched his eyes close for exactly one second the way people close their eyes when something they've been waiting for finally arrives.

When he opened them he looked at her like a question he already knew the answer to.

"Tell me to stop," he said quietly, "and I stop."

"I'm not telling you to stop," she said.

He kissed her.

Not rushed. Not desperate. The way he did everything with total attention, as if she were the only problem in the world worth solving. His hand came up to her face warm, careful, tilting her chin and she felt herself exhale something she had been holding for months. Something that had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the terrifying reality that she was, against all professional judgment and operational training, completely undone by this man.

When they broke apart the city was still there. Still glittering below them. Still indifferent.

She pressed her forehead to his collarbone against the scar, without thinking and he put his arm around her and neither of them said anything for a long time.

This, she thought, is the most dangerous thing I have ever done.

She was right. She stayed anyway.