“Almost like I’m not human, you mean?”
“I know you’re not,” she said, her smile challenging him to deny what everyone knew.
He threw back his head and laughed at that. “Ah, my best kept secret, exposed.” He realized they were flirting. Strange to find himself flirting with the object of his obsession. At work, whenever she’d caught him staring at her, the sudden tightening in her expression always made him think she disliked him. Made him feel rotten to be harboring such illicit feelings toward his junior.
It was wrong for so many reasons.
He was her boss.
He was two hundred years older than her. With a fucked-up past and a mental health problem he wouldn’t foist on any other living being, let alone this beautiful human.
And yet… and yet, there was this connection he couldn’t explain, like an invisible thread, binding them.
However much he tried to tell himself he was imagining it, to excuse his insatiable longing for her, he could not rid himself of the sense there was a darkness in her that complemented his own.
And because of that, he always felt lighter when she was around.
It was ludicrous, but it made him happy just knowing Clare would be in the office each day, with her solemn steady gaze, the tiny frown that puckered her brows, as if she was so much older than her years. And then, of course, there was the possibility that he might catch one of her rare smiles or hear her laugh ata joke Saul made. When that happened, he would hold onto the memory like a precious jewel, tuck it next to his heart and revisit it with his whiskey at night.
Sad fuck that he was.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked now. She hesitated, and he added, “There’s a tab on the bar tonight. No need to worry about being indebted to me.”
Her eyes danced mischievously. “Indebted in what way… Oliver?”
He laughed, heating behind his beard. “I refuse to answer that.”
When she accepted, he also refused to acknowledge the thrill of her standing by his side, not choosing to venture away even when others tried to tempt her. As if this was where she wanted to be. Afterward, he couldn’t recall exactly what they’d talked about, but he remembered that her laugher had been more spontaneous than he’d ever heard it, and it made his own repartee light, and hopefully witty.
When they went in to dinner, by some fluke of fate she was seated directly opposite him. And amid the conversation and laughter, the banter and joking of their colleagues, their gazes would graze, and he would feel that invisible thread pull taut between them.
Later, he made his escape from the throng, trying to temper his elation, to return to his usual controlled self. Out on the balcony, he set his back against the railings, his gaze tracking the dart of red satin as she moved around the room, mingling but not dancing with any of those eager monsters who would happily put their burly arms around her waist, hold her against their brutish bodies. The thought sent jealousy spreading through his veins, thick and viscous.
Abruptly, he turned and stared at the skyline instead, remembering how it had changed over the centuries, themodern high-rise buildings that had sprung up around The Hole In The Wall District. The rooftops of Old Motham remained unchanged, however. Further out, there was that dark patch of nothingness that signified the Wastelands and the Pit, where ferals still gathered in makeshift huts and lit fires and fought among themselves.
He bit back memories of his own time among them. Oh yeah, he knew that black hole on the edge of the city far too intimately.
Gods, nowhere was safe to rest his gaze. Neither inside, nor out.
Suddenly he sensed Clare’s presence by his side and stiffened.
Casting a glance sideways, he drank in the sight of her profile, the strong clean line of her brow and chin, the straightness of her nose, her long, slender neck.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” He smiled into his glass to hide his pleasure.
“I can’t dance.”
“Can’t, or choose not to?”
“Choose not to, I guess.”
“Then how can you say you can’t dance?”
“I’m tone deaf, for a start.”
“So music doesn’t move you?”
She shrugged. “Not really.” He detected a small huff. “Once or twice, maybe.”
