The glass bubble shot silently skyward, floor after floor after floor rushing past in streaks of silver, burning at the corners of my eyes like I was about to cry.
But I wasn’t.
I totally wasn’t.
Because I was angry. Angry and invincible. Not sad. And definitely not scared.
The doors swooshed open Star Trek style and the lift disgorged me onto what would have been a landing in a less intimidatingly designed building. It was probably the closest thing to an antechamber I would ever stand in.
And, oh shit, there was another receptionist. A stately blond, built like an underwear model. Calvin Klein, not ASDA George.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Caspian.”
“Why do you need to see him?”
It was a fair question. I couldn’t think of a single plausible explanation why someone like Caspian Hart would know someone like me. Which was why I ended up blurting out the truth. “Because he’s an arsehole.”
The receptionist’s hand dipped below the edge of the desk, and I’d seen enough movies to know it was the “summoning security” gesture. I probably had about 0.2 seconds before I was dragged out of there by burly men with Tasers.
Fuck, I’d blown this. Ironically enough, considering I’d also blown Caspian.
I wheeled around on an inexplicable instinct—awareness or recognition or some painful entangling of both—and there he was inside a glass-walled conference room: Caspian Hart. Still the most impossibly beautiful man I’d ever seen, as cold and perfect and unreachable as a star.
Except he’d reached for me. And then cast me aside.
Blindly—God, maybe I was crying—I ran for the door. Pushed it open. And practically fell over the threshold.
Caspian paused midsentence. And gazed down at me with his hunter’s eyes, no expression on his face at all. Just the sight of him made me ache with wanting. With wanting to please, to yield, to warm and gentle him. To relieve such stark loveliness with the messiness of joy.
I’d prepared a speech. On the bus down, I’d rehearsed it over and over again in my head. It had been dignified and devastating, but now I couldn’t remember any of it.
All I could remember was Caspian Hart’s fingers, tight and desperate in my hair. The careful pattern of his breath breaking. The sound he made, pleasure-wrecked, as he came down my throat in a hot, harsh rush. And how I’d followed helplessly, touched by nothing but his need.
“You…,” I said. “You’re a…a dick.”
It sounded so childishly inadequate. Just like me.
I tried again. “And I’m not your—” Whore. Except calling yourself a prostitute in an insulty way seemed a bit rude to the oldest profession. After all, there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with exchanging sex for money, as long as you both knew that was what was happening. “Um, non-negotiated sex worker.”
It turned out I wasn’t angry or invincible at all. Just far too young for a game I hadn’t understood we were playing. “What the fuck, Caspian?” I finished helplessly. “Why did you do that to me?”
He blinked. Once.
That was all I got.
Then, “This matter would be better discussed in private.”
Wait. What? Private? Oh God. Of course. He’d been talking when I’d burst in, and for some reason, my jumbled brain hadn’t quite grasped what that meant.
I turned, limbs heavy and awkward as if I’d suddenly become part robot, and sure enough, there was my audience: five of them, be-suited and exquisitely composed, regarding me with the careful nonreactiveness British people adopt when you’ve mortified yourself so severely that they’re embarrassed on your behalf.
I closed my eyes for a second on the off chance all this would have miraculously gone away when I opened them again. But no. Everything was right where I’d left it. I was in London, in Caspian Hart’s office, my heart spattering on the expensive carpet in front of a group of total strangers and the man who’d smooshed it in the first place.
Anger was rubbish. It had deceived me into thinking I was strong and bold and undefeated. And now I wanted to die.
What was I supposed to say? How did you make something like this better? Non-April Fool! “Um…sorry. I can see I’ve interrupted.”
