WILLOW
A vacuum of silence envelops me. I’m squirming in my chair and my eyes flutter in disbelief. The most stunning man I’ve ever seen is standing over me.
An entire lifetime comes alive in this single moment. Sitting here in this wickedly beautiful room, surrounded by people who are confident in their own proclivities and lust. It sets an obscene backdrop for the rush of primal, animal desire that shakes me. Desire for the man that I called ‘Dad’ for a few years of my life. A moniker I gave him freely, even after he entered my life for such a short time.
“Willow.” He says my name as though he doubts I’m real.
“Pike.” His name feels unnatural slipping from my lips, but he is no longer who he once was to me and I’m not sure who he is now. Or what he’s doing here.
For a moment, I forget how much I missed him, lost instead in the green pools of his familiar eyes. The lines around his mouth a set a bit deeper now. His face is pure masculinity. Imperfect and yet beyond stunning. His full lips look warm and inviting. His left eyebrow sits slightly higher and at a different angle than the right. The silver scar on his cheek still visible from the day he slipped on my stuffed hedgehog I left on the kitchen floor. He fell into the corner of the cabinet, slicing open his skin and gaining him six stitches.
He never made me feel bad about that. He just said he would have a permanent reminder of me every time he looked in the mirror.
One, two, three, four, five...the counting he taught me to do long ago starts immediately, instinctively.
The dark arch of his eyebrows, set on a brow that juts out, square and proud and unashamed. The years have been good to him and I fight the thundering storm that is growing into a tempest down deep in my center.
Ice. Think of ice. Glaciers. Siberia. Anything that’s colder than your lust right now.
“Something you need?” My voice turns to granite.
A flicker of gold dances in the green of his eyes before a sadness swoops down over his face. I feel the change in him. It’s palpable. And the thump in my chest gathers in my throat preventing any more words from forming.
“You look more beautiful than ever, Caramia.”
“Don’t call me that.” I bite back.
I grip the sides of my chair and scoot myself backward. Pike is standing too close for me to think straight. But, just like he always did, he reads me before I even read myself.
“Don’t retreat. Please.”
I fight against the involuntary smile, hating my body for reacting the way it is. Only Pike would use such precision of language. Most people would say ‘don’t leave’, or ‘hey, wait’. But not him.
His hand comes out to twist in a curl that is hanging in a spiral over my left eye. He used to do that before. Wrap one of his fingers in a curl of my hair and tell me I was the prettiest girl in the world even when I knew it wasn’t true.
Intellectually, I understand I was too young for there to be any interest on his part for me. I was a child when we met and I know he is a man of honor. He would never have seen me as more than what I was: his stepdaughter.
But that hasn’t prevented me from the heartbreak I’ve felt over the years whenever his face comes to mind. How I wished whatever it was between us could have been so very different. Even as my brain tells me it couldn’t be. Wrong or right. I wanted him to want me. And not just as a legal obligation.
“I’m here with friends.” I see Adam towering over most of the crowd, heading back to the table. I grab my glass and empty the last of the water, trying to cool the flames that are melting me from the inside out.
“Caramia, I’ve missed you. Come with me to my office. Give me a few minutes.”
“Hi.” Murphy saunters straight to Pike and offers her hand. “I’m Murphy, remember me?”
“Pleasure.” Pike replies in his signature elegant politeness, but he doesn’t take her hand, doesn’t even seem to notice it hanging there in the space between them. “Welcome to Club Tower. I’m Lord Tower.” He knows my friends, but he’s in some kind of character. It’s a bit odd and at the same time, this persona only makes him more wildly attractive.
He nods toward Adam and Whitney, who are staring at him like he’s glowing bright orange or something. Earlier they had described the story of the owner of the club to me as though he was some sort of mythical God. At the time, I shrugged my shoulders and scoffed that someone would call themselves by such a pretentious moniker. They had any idea the owner was my former stepfather.
Lord Tower.
But now that I see Pike standing here, he is Lord Tower and it fits him as well as the tuxedo he wears.
He’s that stunning. People stop and turn when he walks by. It’s been like that from the time I met him when I was eleven. The day my mom called me to her office, had the limo take me from school and meet her there. To introduce me to my new stepfather. After the deal was already done. Romance was not a part of their bargain.
“Hello.” Adam laughs as he crosses his arms and doesn’t hide the way he takes in every inch, from head to toe, then back up to settle his eyes on Pike’s crotch.
Suddenly, I’m eleven years old again. That same electric rush covers me that I felt even then, only now it’s zapping me in places that have my thighs tight and my mouth dry. I hate to say, my eyes drop with Adam’s to the fly of Pike’s pants.