And—oh, yeah—we’d kissed a bunch of times and he’d seen me naked and brought me to orgasm.
This isn’t a date. No matter how much it feels like one.
I wanted the show to start so it’d distract from this uncomfortable longing. I pressed my lips to my wineglass and stole a glance at him, only to discover he was staring at me, the open playbill in his lap ignored.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
His forehead wrinkled with confusion. “Nothing.”
“Then why are you looking at me?”
His jaw clenched, only long enough to give me a sexy flash of it. “I enjoy looking at you. Have I not made that clear?”
My skin went hot as sparks coasted down me. “Oh.”
I wanted to tell him it was the same for me, but the lights dimmed, the orchestra began, and the curtain lifted, silencing us.
The production was completely different than what I had expected. The only opera I’d ever seen were the flashes of it in movies. A fixed stage with overly made-up women in big gowns standing in the center and belting out high notes in Italian.
Villain opened with a sparse stage and a chorus of young women in contemporary clothes. The music and story were dark and twisted, about a woman sold by her father into marriage to a terrifying rival. Hellbent on getting her revenge, she seduced her new husband and convinced him they should kill her father but fell in love with her husband in the process.
The set design was amazing. I wanted to take a million pictures and post them on Instagram, and slave over the images. The way they could paint the scene with just a few key pieces blew me away, and I was riveted. Macalister was too. At the intermission, he admitted he was enjoying it.
It was sexy too. The scene of the woman’s seduction was provocative and made my breathing go shallow. The chemistry between the leads was sizzling.
Perhaps it was in my nature to always fall for the bad guy, who I believed was secretly good, because during the climactic end sequence, the husband was wounded badly, and the wife’s emotional song as he lay dying cut my heart in two. I was right there beside her, asking for the devil to spare his life and let him live.
Tears trickled down my face, but I didn’t move to wipe them away, not wanting to call attention to them. My hand was tense on my armrest, itching to move, but I refrained.
Macalister’s cold fingers were abruptly on mine, pulling my hand down between our chairs.
I flinched in surprise, causing a tear to shake loose from my cheek and drip down my neck. We were alone in the box, and no one could see what he’d done, nor could they see how I turned my hand beneath his and laced our fingers together.
At first, I thought he’d done it solely to comfort me, and I had to take air into my body in controlled sips. But my mind was distracted by the woman on stage singing about how the love of her life was dying, and my heart broke further.
Macalister had probably held the love of his life in his arms while she was dying.
Had he taken my hand to find comfort with me as well?
I tightened my grip, and he answered in kind.
A cold, fluttery panic slipped inside me, squeezing until I couldn’t breathe. I was already dumb enough that I’d developed feelings for him and gotten too attached. I could not be stupid enough to fall in love with Macalister.
He’d been married twice before. He’d killed his last wife—possibly the first one too, if my mother’s friends were to be believed. He was sure he was cursed.
All of that, yet I didn’t want the show playing out on the stage to end. I swore in my head as the actors gathered and sang the final grand reprise. No matter how beautiful or powerful it was, it wasn’t going to last forever, and I wanted this moment to. The world needed to stop turning so it was just me and him together, our hands linked in this real connection, and I worried that once it was severed, we’d never get it back.
While the rest of the theatre watched the stage, I turned to look at him with my face still wet with tears and glimpsed a sight I never thought I’d witness. Macalister with his guard down. He was stripped bare of his bravado, becoming just a man who struggled to hide all he was feeling.
He was devastatingly handsome, but even more so when he was human and stared back at me like he had the same worry. He didn’t want to fall in love with me.
The audience below was already on their feet at the final note, clapping and whistling their praise, and when the curtain fell, we were out of time. The tension went out of his fingers as he drew away, our hands parting, and I choked back the noise of loss that threatened to escape.