While my eyes adjusted to the change, Dorian spoke. “Hold my hand. It gets very dark from here.”
I gave my hand to him again, delighting in the feel of his powerful grasp. No sooner did he wrap his fingers around mine than I felt myself go weightless. Dorian swept me off the ground and into his arms, lifting me like a doll. Before I realized it, he was carrying me, his feet crunching on the trail with each steady step
A flashback hit me.
I’d felt his touch before, his embrace… I was sure of it, but the vision wasn’t clear in my mind. It was hazy, like a distant memory, but then it all came rushing back at once – the night of the accident.
The hardness of his body, the strength of his grasp were there to protect me then, like now. I probably should have resisted, told him to put me down, but for some reason, I couldn’t.
Wouldn’t?
I felt safe, in spite of the unknown darkness in front of us on the path but also in the days ahead. With every ounce of strength I had, I resisted an urge to lean in close to him.
It was an almost impossible fight to win.
“It won’t be long.”
“L-long for what?” I stammered, swallowing hard, unsure of what he was talking about.
Dorian pointed ahead. Even in the darkness I made out the shape of a dome-like structure. He continued walking, finally stopping just short of it and placing me on the ground.
I glanced up at the building. “What is it?”
Dorian looked down at me, arching an eyebrow. “You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“It’s an observatory.”
I frowned at him while he continued to talk.
“This isn’t the best time to see them, but…” he paused and looked up to the sky, “light pollution is low. We might get lucky.”
“Get lucky? What do you mean? What are we going to see?”
He ignored me, pressing buttons on a keypad next to the entrance. “This is where I come to relax.”
The lock unlatched. He turned and looked at me, moonlight from overhead casting a seductive shadow across his cheek.
“Do you know anything about stars?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good.” His expression softened, and he smiled. A mouthful of white beamed at me, brighter than all the twinkling lights overhead. “Come on.”
He cracked open the door and walked inside. When he did, subtle lighting flickered on, running the length of the floor and illuminating the interior with a soft glow. I followed him and stopped when I saw it.
It was huge. The telescope took up most of the room.
“Close the door,” he said.
I did as he asked and joined him. Dorian spent the next few minutes adjusting the telescope. It buzzed and clicked, making lots of mechanical sounds before he’d finished getting it like he wanted.
He turned to me. “Here, come look. You’re a very lucky girl.”
I wrinkled my brow at him. Curiosity got the better of me, and I walked over.
“How am I lucky exactly?”
Dorian nodded and got up from the chair where’d he’d adjusted the telescope. He stepped aside, pointing towards the eyepiece.
“You’ll see. Just look through it. That’s all you have to do.”
I’d never looked through a telescope in my entire life. After positioning my eye against the eyepiece, I couldn’t believe what appeared. It was as if I could see straight into space. Never had I seen so many stars, so clearly.
“Do you see it?” he asked, breaking my trance.
“I-I’m not sure what you mean. I see a lot of stars. What am I looking for?”
Dorian was silent, at first. Eventually though, he answered me, the deep tone of his voice sending chills along my spine.
“Concentrate, Tempest. Look. Do you see them?”
I blinked several times in a row, refocusing my attention and continuing to look up into the star-choked sky. More than once, I caught myself holding my breath in anticipation of whatever it was he wanted me to see.
“Do you see them?” he asked again, further heightening my frustration and excitement.
“What though? Where?”
“Bright streaks, long and multicolored, you can’t miss them…”
I bit my lip. I didn’t see anything like that. Impatience got the better of me, but just as I was about to turn around and tell him it was hopeless, something caught my eye.
At first, I thought I’d imagined it.
“You see them don’t you?” he said, paying attention to the change in my demeanor.
Engrossed in a world I didn’t know existed, I licked my lips while I watched the spectacular light show above.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” I began, leaning hard against the eyepiece. “I see them! What are they?”
Dorian chuckled behind me. “It’s the Perseid meteor shower.”
“Wow,” I said, my voice not much more than a whisper. “That’s so incredible.”
Without thinking, I pulled my face away from the telescope and smiled at him. Nothing could have prepared me for being so thrilled after looking through a telescope, but yet I was.
Our eyes met. He looked at me with steadiness in his gaze, like the eons-old stars overhead. I looked away, returning my attention back to the telescope and leaning into it. Soon after, Dorian moved in behind me, pressing his body against my backside.
“Keep looking,” he began, his hot breath beating against my neck. “I’m just making an adjustment.”
His hands weren’t the only thing hard on his body.
While he lingered there, I felt an unmistakable firmness just below his hips. Nothing about his approach was gentle – far from it. I lost my ability to concentrate.
Oh shit. No, no.
My tongue slipped from my lips, gliding across them a subtle flick. The feel of his hard body and pulsating, warm breath against my exposed skin started to take a toll on my resolve.
“Almost there, Tempest. Almost.”
His voice vibrating inside of his chest sent prickles down my arms. I started to feel weak, each breath more difficult to take than the one before it.
What is happening to me? No man has ever had this effect on me before.
Then, I thought about him…
What the hell was he doing? What about Ainsley?
No matter how bad my body might’ve wanted his, I wasn’t about to give him a reason to cheat. Reality came crashing down on me, sharpening my senses and focusing me on what I had to do –– stop him before it was too late. Swallowing hard, I made up my mind to tell him to back off when, at the last instant, he beat me to it.
“All set,” he said, stepping away from me. “Better, right?”
I didn’t even know what the hell he was talking about.
Oh right, the telescope.
Looking into the eyepiece again, I felt lucky to have the distraction. The tension between us, real or imagined, relaxed over the next few minutes. Dorian switched topics with a casual ease, asking me questions about what I was seeing.
While he talked, I detected a genuineness in his tone. Maybe I’d misinterpreted, taking things too far in my own mind. Watching the stars helped. They calmed me. It wasn’t hard to understand why he felt the same way about them.
“A shooting star!” I yelled, seeing the streaking slash in a way I never had before.