Truthfully, I’d always been kind of take it or leave it on kissing. I’d enjoyed it, of course, but in the way you enjoy canapés at a posh party. Very nice and everything, artful even, but wouldn’t some real food be better? It was hot on the dance floor—kissing, not canapés—tongues grinding like bodies, somebody’s fingers tangled in my hair, before we stumbled to their place, or mine, to finish things off. But mainly it was prelude to the good stuff.
Not with Caspian Hart, though.
It was a no-mercy kiss. A brutal claiming, full of teeth and desperate hunger, forcing my surrender to his will and his passion.
I strained toward him, opened to him, as if we were at the end of the journey, not the beginning. More than that, he made me forget there was a journey. There was only his mouth on mine, his hands holding me, his body pinning me. And just like that, everything I’d felt—listening to his voice on the phone, seeing those icy predator eyes of his, talking with him on the balcony, the woody-acrid scent of his cigarette, being on my knees for him—yes, everything I’d felt was real again.
And he kissed me like it was real for him too.
Attraction, symmetry, freedom, trust. Something a little bit magical, even if its bewitchments were on the hard-core side.
When he drew back, I felt taken and tender, mouth-fucked afresh.
His eyes held mine, dazed and wild, gleaming with all the light from the horizon at my back. “Arden, I—”
“Oh no.” I just about managed to catch my breath enough to speak. “I’ve had bad experiences with you and sentences that begin with my name.”
“Yes, I—” He had the grace to look faintly uneasy. “I can understand that. I know I’ve treated you badly. It was never my intent.”
I wriggled my hands, enjoying the way his tightened. “Kiss me again and I’ll forgive you.”
“God,” he muttered. “I really need to stop doing this.”
But he kissed me anyway. Slowly this time, conquering me by inches, seduction of a kind.
The kind I liked: thorough and deep and merciless.
He tasted of heat and coffee. I hadn’t liked nicotine, but if I had maybe it would have been like this. A smoky velvet kiss drawing me softly into danger, into addiction.
He was breathing hard after. A little flushed. A lock of hair had fallen like a wayward comma across one eye. If he hadn’t had me so deliciously trapped, I’d have pushed it back for him. “Arden—”
I gave him a look.
He closed his eyes briefly, a frown line crinkling at the top of his nose. Something else I would have loved to touch. Smooth away. “I have to tell you, I don’t do relationships.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” I hooked a leg across his hip. “Let’s just have sex.”
He let me go so abruptly I nearly toppled over. Saving myself only by slithering sideways over the glass like a smooshed insect. “I don’t do that either.”
My mouth fell open. “You don’t have sex?” The words bounced crazily off the walls and the polished floor. I’d accidentally used my interrobang voice.
But he only smiled his distant smile. “I don’t have casual sex.”
“Why not?”
“Because it sometimes leads me to forget myself.”
“Well, we don’t have to have casual sex.” I rubbed my wrist, my thumb lingering on the spot where his own had pressed. “We can have…smart-casual sex. Or formal sex.”
“I thought you didn’t like formal.”
Oh God. His teasing undid me almost as thoroughly as his savagery. Or perhaps it was knowing he was capable of both.
He’d retreated to his desk. If you could call that curve of edgeless glass a desk. Bare, of course, except for an equally sleek laptop, a phone, and a lamp. And a frighteningly futuristic-looking ergonomic chair: this del Toro monster of steel and black leather. I could imagine him sitting there against the darkening sky. His own little world, his own circle of light, as stark as the rest of his office.
“I would do formal for you,” I said.
He glanced away. “I would never want to make you do anything you didn’t want.”
“You never have.” I probably sounded pathetic, but since I’d just chased him to London, interrupted his meeting, and then burst into tears, it was a bit late in the day to be worrying about my dignity. “I don’t think you could. I think”—my mouth had gone dry—“if you wanted something, I’d want it too.”
“We can’t do this.” He braced his hips against the desk, hands on either side. It was a nonchalant pose, except for the tight grip of his fingers.
Even I could tell it was slightly mortifying how quickly I jumped on the fact that he went for “can’t do this” over “don’t want to do this.” I wasn’t quite enough of a dickhead to call him on it though. “Why not?”
“I’ve already explained.”
“But there’s an entire spectrum of behavior between relationship and casual sex.”
“I’m sure, but I’m quite a busy man, Arden, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to embark upon something both complicated and inevitably unsuccessful.”
And again with the half-empty glass. “How can you say that without even trying?”
He sighed, a finger stroking the crease between his eyes, as though it pained him slightly. “Because I know myself. I know what I’m capable of and I know what my life permits.”
“But what’s the point of”—I made a not-very-eloquent gesture—“any of this if you can’t…uh…have your wicked way with a cute boy you met at Oxford?”
He stepped away from the desk and crossed the room toward me. His shadow engulfed me but I wasn’t threatened by it. Up close, like this, with nothing sexual between us, the difference in our heights seemed more than usually ludicrous. He put his hands on my shoulders. I didn’t exactly feel infantilized by it—just physically small, which I didn’t mind. But I also had a sense he was trying to be fraternal, which I, well, did. People who fucked your mouth didn’t have the right to pretend they hadn’t.
“I think,” he murmured, “you underestimate my wickedness.”
And, just like that, my irritation was gone. I grinned up at him. “Oh I really hope I don’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Then let me.”
Yeah. That was deliberate. I was hoping he would remember the last time I’d said that to him. For a moment, he seemed to soften, his touch turning almost into a caress. It wouldn’t have taken much—just a hint of pressure—to send me to my knees again. I could have rested my head against his thigh and he could have run his fingers through my hair. I imagined his expression, open and at peace, like when he smoked.
But even as his hands made promises, his eyes were winter days, just ice and emptiness. And then he told me with terrible gentleness, “I’m saying no, Arden.”
Um, right.
Well.
Not really much I could say to that. At least, nothing that wouldn’t be pleading or sound creepy. There were names for people who didn’t take no for an answer, and I had no intention of being one.
Suddenly I wished he wasn’t this close. I didn’t want the heat of his hands or to see the silver filigree in his irises. But unless I started sliding across the window again, there was nowhere for me to go. “You kissed me.”
“I know. I…I’m not devoid of feeling. I’m just usually in better control of myself.” He glanced away. Frown back. Mouth to match: another tight line. “I don’t know why you…how you do that to me.”
I let out a shuddery breath. “So I’m not making it up. It’s there for you too? This is something.”
“It’s nothing I want. And I have to get back to my meeting.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’d done the same thing on the balcony, after all, just less kindly. But it still made my heart reel: the ease with which he could think one thing—feel one thing—and do another. That he could share even a small piece of my pleasure and still turn away.
That it could be nothing he wanted.
But then I had no idea what kind of life he lived. Maybe thrilling sexual connections were falling into his lap like summer apples. Or—more likely—gauche twenty-year-olds were a lot easier to find than breathtakingly beautiful billionaires. When I was gone, he would probably phone through to his Calvin Klein secretary and be all “bring me my coffee and unleash the boys.” And then twenty-four university students would come bounding in and fight to the death for the privilege of deep throating him. Talk about a new twist on The Hunger Games.
I had no idea what my face was doing. My eyes felt big though. And my mouth pouty. But whatever it was, it made him touch my cheek like he had on the balcony. “I’m sorry, Arden. I never wanted or meant to hurt you. On the contrary I…I like you very much. I think you’re…delightful.”
He’d gone a little pink along the top of his oh-so-defined cheekbones. It would have been adorable if he hadn’t been in the process of rejecting me. “Well, thanks. But that’s pretty scant consolation. I like you but I still don’t want you?”
“I don’t like the way you make me behave.”
“Caspian, your cock didn’t suck itself.”
“I’m very aware of that.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t—”
I knocked his hand away, the impulse sudden enough that I only realized what I’d done when the harsh slap of flesh against flesh resounded through the room. “Stop fucking regretting me, okay? You liked it. I know you did. So you might as well just fucking admit it.”
“I just did. I said I liked you.”
“And you liked what we did. You liked having me on my knees, choking on your—”
“Arden, we’re in my office.”
“Sorry. But it’s true.”
He made a stifled noise, almost a growl. “Yes, it’s true. But that doesn’t make it right.”
“There’s nothing wrong in—”
“Right for me.”
And there it was again. That unbreakable wall, built of his own convictions and the things he believed he truly wanted. I didn’t have much grace or dignity left—not that I was over-endowed with either at the best of times—but I mustered what was left of it and said “okay” in what I hoped would be a brave voice.
Though it ended up being a small, somewhat pathetic voice.
Eh, in for a penny, in for a pound. I took a deep breath and met his eyes. So much steel and certainty. I couldn’t have said why, but it made me oddly sad for him. This man behind glass who had briefly been mine. “Just don’t think bad things about me.”
He nodded. “I never intended for you to believe that.”
“And you need to get my name off that scholarship thing. It’s weirding me out.”
“I was trying—”
“To say sorry, I know.”
“And thank you.”
There was a longish silence while I wondered what to make of that. In the end I laughed. “Next time just send flowers.”
He smiled, and it was real for a moment or two, gentling his eyes and his fierce symmetry. But all he said was, “I’ll arrange for a car to take you back to Oxford.”
“It’s fine. I bought a day return.”
Yet ten minutes later I was sitting in the back of a Maybach being whisked through the streets of London. It was like a very small hotel in there. Hell, it was more comfortable than my actual bed.
And I felt completely dazed. By loss and luxury, and the suddenness of both.
I’d been pretty firm on the whole not needing to be chauffeured sixty miles up the M40, but nobody had listened to me. Caspian hadn’t exactly been aggressive. More sort of implacable. Telling his lovely assistant—Bellerose, apparently—to have a car brought round and handing me into it (yes, he really did that) while I was still protesting I was perfectly capable of getting the bus like a normal person.
It was a ridiculously fucking nice way to travel though. I was sure, if I’d dared to peek, there’d have been a bottle of champagne in the cooler. But instead I just reclined the seat, closed my eyes, and drifted into a half-dream, remembering Caspian’s hands on me, his mouth, the consuming urgency of his kisses.
All in all, it could have gone worse.
Yes, I’d embarrassed myself in about six different, unique, and special ways, but he hadn’t had me arrested or thrown out of his building. Reported me to college as a dangerous lunatic.
He’d said he liked me.
For reasons that, now I thought about it, seemed hard to understand.
Maybe it had just been a really boring meeting and he was glad to have been interrupted by a crazy student.
Slipping out of the car a little over an hour later and—having no idea of the appropriate etiquette—awkwardly thanking the driver, I thought that would be the end of it.
But when I checked my pidge the next day, I found a scrap of paper telling me I had a parcel to pick up.
It was a bouquet. A simple hand-tie, in crisp, crinkly paper. Not, perhaps, what you’d expect from a billionaire.
Except he’d sent me tulips.
My own private rainbow, so riotously bright on an otherwise gray Tuesday before spring had properly found its feet.
Nobody had ever given me flowers before.
I didn’t even own a vase but Nik lent me a tankard and that did the job nicely.
I kept them until all their colors were gone. Until they looked like they were made of paper. Until they started to make my room unpleasantly swampy-smelling.
Until I had no choice but to let them go.
Along with the man who had sent them to me.