“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, still with his eyes closed, his hands trail up the side of my body and then he opens his eyes right before he cups my face. The way he seems so broken, scares me slightly and it makes it impossible for me to hold on to my grudge. “I’m sorry for everything, for caring enough to push you away.”
Oh crap. I’m rendered speechless and the blood rushing in my ears momentarily leaves me deaf. My sight blurs and fuck. It’s game over.
Flattening just below his chest, my palms press into him and although I know that his body is hard, I’m still taken aback by how solid he is. I soon find my voice.
“You didn’t push me away, though, did you, Leo? You baited me and when I bit, you reeled me in only to drop me like I don’t matter. Why not just walk away the night I bumped i
nto you at the concert and forget about me?”
Stroking my bottom lip his thumbs trail from the corners of my mouth until they meet at the middle and then run down my chin.
For a fleeting moment I worry for my gloss, but then I much prefer his touch to perfect lip make-up. Not to mention that we are so close that our chests touch when we inhale together.
“You didn’t bump into me that night. It wasn’t some clumsy moment where fate delivered you to me. Some perfectly composed moment by anyone other than me. I wanted to see you up close, just once. I wanted to know what it felt like to touch you.”
“Then why did you walk away?” Trying to step back I push at his chest, but he pulls me completely flush to him by my jaw.
He holds me in place with his hands and his stare, and my tangled strings pull even tighter until I’m sure they’re going to snap and I’m going to come crashing down from a height that will obliterate me.
“Because you have no idea of the world you live in, and I wanted to protect you.”
“Tell me about the world I live in then?”
“It’s all the horror stories you’ve ever been told and then some. People don’t care about people and life is a bartering chip. You deserve so much better than that. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on you, you’re too good for it.” The darkness in his eyes subsides as he brings his face closer to mine.
“And you?” My lungs are so dry that my words are barely audible.
“If I can’t even do the right thing when it comes to you, in which life do you think I belong?”
Mine.
Of course I don’t tell him that, instead I fist my hands in his opened shirt and croak, “I don’t believe that people have different lives, I think we experience this one differently.”
Shaking his head, he smiles with his gaze touching every inch of my face. And when he looks at my lips with hunger blistering in his eyes, I can’t help but ask the question I’ve asked myself every day since the birthday party. “Why did you kiss me?”
“I’d seen you at events and in the press, but seeing you in person that close, the moment I touched you, it became impossible to stay away. The more I tried, the more you were there and I—” Taking a deep breath, his eyes bore into mine and my racing heart runs away with itself. He looks at me like he is stripped bare before me, and it’s disconcerting because I’m used to the prideful, brooding bravado. “This close you are breath-taking. Impossible to ignore. Your innocence is addictive, and you are so warm and full of light that I can’t see or want anything but you.”
“So you watch me?” As the words leave my mouth alarms go of in my head, because I’ve heard of stalkers and people with unhealthy interests in others. It’s my dad’s job to protect people from others with unhealthy and unsavoury interests in them.
“Not in the creepy way you’re thinking. I’ve never followed you or purposefully put myself in places you were at. Well, apart from the concert. I took my brother’s ticket.”
Before I can take in the pained expression on his face, his forehead touches mine, rocking his head from side to side, and then he touches his lips to mine.
They feel even better than I remembered and all I want to do is bite them and suck them into my mouth. I want to make him feel as desperate as I do.
“How did I ever not see you?”
Chuckling, he rubs the tip of his nose across mine, and the sadness and frustration in his soft laugh is palpable. “We’ve been in the same room so many times, Cassie. Countless times.”
“Then why didn’t I see you?” Sweeping down his front, my hands come to rest on his hips, and I squeeze as hard as I am frustrated.
“I don’t know, but we were at the TATE gala in October, you spoke to my mum.”
I spoke to so many people that night that eventually their faces all merged into one. “I did?”
“Yeah, you did. We both attended the Stantons garden party last summer.” It was the worst garden party ever thrown by a Prime Minister. “There have been so many times I’ve seen you from afar, but until the day your father brought me here and I saw you running around out there…you were just another wealthy girl that was a part of the same circles as me.”
“Is that how you know Laura? From the garden party?”