Chapter Eight
394 Words
It was his hand on her back of events that she’d started to think about at inconvenient times.
He was unfailingly proper— a hand at the small of her back when he guided her through a crowd, fingers brief and sure. A professional touch. An arrangement touch. She knew this.
Her nervous system had apparently not received this memo.
They came home from the Ashford Foundation dinner at eleven. The house was quiet, the staff gone, they stood in the entry hall in that particular looseness of end-of-evening, his bow tie undone, her heels in her hands.
“You were watching me tonight,” she said, because she was tired and her filter was low. “When I talked to Lady Ashford.”
“She’s a significant donor to three of my charitable interests. I was monitoring the conversation.”
“You were watching me.”
He turned from the side table where he’d set his keys. His expression was whatever was underneath careful.
“Yes,” he said. “I was.”
The word landed.
She crossed the hall. She stopped close, not improper— just close, close enough to set the slight unevenness of his breath, close enough to know that the composed, infuriating, occasionally tender man in front of her was not as untouched by this as he wanted her to believe.
“Julian,” her voice was low.
“Cara.”
“Stop being— she started.
“Careful?” He said
“Yes.”
He moved first, or she did. It was impossible ,later, to reconstruct the sequence— only the result, which was his mouth on hers, brief and devastating, and then his hands on her face, and then not brief at all.
He kissed her like she was a problem he’d been solving for weeks and finally understood.
She kissed him back like she’d been waiting without permission.
He pulled back just enough to see her face. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones and his eyes were dark and undisguised, every layer of composure gone.
“This isn’t— he started.
“I know,” she said.
“If we —-
“I know Julian.”
He searched her face. “I don’t do this carelessly.”
She held his gaze “Neither do I .”
He took her hand and he led her upstairs.
- Writer
