My eyes shot up when the click of the library door hit my ears, and, as if my thoughts had conjured him, Nicolas stepped in.
When his gaze came up from the floor and he noticed me, he stopped short. For a second, I thought he was going to turn and leave without a word just because I was here. His stare was an indifferent, condescending one—like he’d come into his library to find a servant in his chair. The man really wanted nothing to do with me. Well, I didn’t like him either. Truthfully, it was mostly because he didn’t like me.
His gaze narrowed. “Why aren’t you at the party?”
“Why aren’t you?” I countered.
He ran a hand down his tie, watching me in a calculated way, like he was weighing the pros and cons of my presence. It didn’t look like there were many pros.
Making up his mind, he shut the door and headed to the minibar, never answering my question. He poured a drink, and I tried to pretend he wasn’t here, that his presence hadn’t filled the room, making my mind now useless. Nonetheless, I found myself watching him, every smooth move as he filled a glass tumbler with whiskey.
My skin lit like a live wire, the fabric of my dress felt heavy, and the breeze from the open window brushed my shoulders. As he walked past, I pretended to be engrossed in the little black sentences before me, but in reality, I didn’t take in one word of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. History, facts, they made me feel better in a time of doubt, because someday I would be nothing but a memory, just like them.
He sat in a gray armchair by the window and pulled out his phone. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He’d unbuttoned his jacket, showing his black vest that hugged his flat stomach. His tie hung askew from pulling on it, and the visual suddenly made me wonder: What does he look like in the morning, all disheveled? I swallowed.
He might be able to pull off his suit like a gentleman, but once again the red, busted knuckles of the hand holding his phone told me his appearance was just a façade.
Light scruff covered his jaw, and his hair was as dark as his suit, the top thick and messy. He was intimidating, with a heavy presence and a glare that burned, but when he wore a soft, sober expression like now . . . he didn’t even have to look at me to make me burn.
He glanced over and caught my gaze. “You’ve got to work on that staring.”
My pulse fluttered in my throat, and warmth rushed to my face.
His eyes fell to my cheeks.
And then he did something I never expected. Maybe it was from disbelief, or maybe he thought I was ridiculous. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. He laughed. Softly, darkly. The kind of laugh that has no good intentions. The kind of laugh the walls don’t forget.
Warmth curled low in my stomach, and I couldn’t help it, I stared even more. He had white teeth and sharp incisors, just like the villain he was. When he glanced at me sideways, with dark mirth in his gaze, a flame pulsed between my legs.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath, running a hand through his hair.
I leaned my head against the chair, my teeth tugging on my bottom lip. He glanced at me one more time as his laugh faded, his amusement disappearing into a tense atmosphere that sparked. A warm breath of air breezed through the window and I shivered.
I didn’t know how long we sat in the same room, in silence, not far apart. Time wasn’t a factor. The moment was recorded each time he shifted, looked up from his phone, took a drink, glanced my way when I’d flip a page or brush my hair off my shoulders.
I thought I was doing well, that I was turning pages at an equivalent of what someone would if they were reading them. But I was thrown off when his gaze pulled up from his phone and rested on my face. It settled there for a moment, before running down my bared neck and shoulders. My breathing stilled when it trailed over the curves of my breasts and down my stomach. And I flushed when it went lower to my thighs, tracing my legs until it reached my pink-painted toenails peeking out of my dress.
He was doing the staring now, but I didn’t have the courage to call him out on it. I’d been stared at enough times I’d gotten good at ignoring it, but not once had it ever made me feel like this. Over-heated, itchy, breathless.
Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You seeped under the door, and I could hear Benito belting out the words. He was the first to start the karaoke, and ironically, it was always to iconic love songs. My cousin wouldn’t sleep with the same girl twice unless she had double-Ds. His words, not mine.
When he mangled his next line, a soft laugh escaped me. I let myself glance at Nicolas, expecting some amusement, but my laughter faded when I found him already looking at me. The darkness in his eyes shaded his sober expression.
The music and voices outside the door became indiscernible noise as blood drummed in my ears. He got up, set his unfinished glass of whiskey on a side table, and headed to leave. He stopped by my side. The ability to breathe ceased to exist when his thumb ran down my cheek, as light as satin and as rough as his voice. He gripped my chin and turned my face toward his.
We looked at each other for seconds that felt like minutes.
“Don’t follow men into dark corners.” A spark flickered to life in his eyes. It softened when his thumb skimmed the edge of my bottom lip. “Next time, you might not get out alive.”
With the warning hanging in the air, his hand slipped from my face and he left the room without another word.
I rested my head against the armchair and breathed normally for the first time since he’d walked through the door. I didn’t know what that was, why it felt like I had a continual live wire under my skin in his presence, but I didn’t want to analyze it. I knew it wasn’t a good thing. Anything that stops your breath can’t be good for you.
My gaze fell to his drink on the table.
I was out of my mind.
I was burning.
I closed the book and got up from my chair. Walking around the side table, I twirled the tumbler on the lacquered wood between loose fingers.
The remaining liquid sat on the bottom, golden and forgotten.
I never did like whiskey.
But I brought it to my lips . . . and I drank it anyway.
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
—Emily Dickinson
THE WHISKEY WAS A MEMORY of warmth in my stomach as I sat on my haunches before my sister’s TV stand. “Fright Night, Evil Dead, or Night of the Living Dead?” I placed the movies on my lap and waited for a response.
Adriana’s muffled words sounded from the bed. “Sixteen Candles.”
My eyes widened. “Sixteen Candles?”
“Mmhmm.”
This was bad. Very bad.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
A sigh. “Yes, Elena.”
“Okay. . . let me go get it.”
I eyed my sister like she’d grown two more heads as I headed out of the room. However, she only looked drunk and tired, covered by a Star Wars blanket.
I returned from my room a moment later, popped the DVD in, and climbed into bed next to her. Stealing half the blanket, I pulled it over the dress I didn’t have the energy to change. Soft light flashed from the TV in the dark room as we watched the movie in silence.
“Elena?” Her voice was quiet.
“Yeah?”