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Casual. Confident. Comfortable. Cunning. Cultured.
How many other cheesycwords would I think of to describe him? But none of them really caught the essence of those few minutes when everything around us melted away and his full attention was on me.
Just me.
Not my name or connections through my father. Not the ghosts of my past or the obligatory sympathy I garnered by simply existing when so many of my other family members did not anymore. Even when I brought my mother and brother up, he hadn’t given the run-of-the-mill responses I typically received. He didn’t offer an apology for a crime he didn’t commit. He hadn’t looked away in shame for still having all of his dearest and most loved people still alive and in his life.
He’d just . . . stayed. He stayed in that moment with me, and though he hadn’t known more than my name thirty minutes earlier, he had provided a safety I hadn’t felt since being with Mads. I missed that familiarity more than I actually missed Mads or our relationship.
I shook myself from the moment we stole in the garden. Overanalyzing and focusing too much on the way he looked into my eyes would have no positive outcome. And putting more emphasis on one compliment than he’d likely meant had my chest shrinking like a giddy schoolgirl with their first crush.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t think about him, but having to remind myself while I showered that his words meant nothing was still thinking about him . . . wasn’t it?
After getting into bed and taking some melatonin for good measure, I drifted in and out of sleep for hours. The image of his lips grazing my skin resurfaced over and over. It was the briefest of moments. The quickest of touches. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of butterflies in my stomach or the skitter of goose bumps over my arm.
Stolas haunted my dreams with images that hadn’t happened but felt just as real as his hand had felt in mine: blurred flashes of him tracing my curves, soft, pouty lips warming my neck then chest. A soft caress of his palm at my back drew me in closer. A firm grip on my waist, then fingertips that dug into my bare hips, his head between my thighs to bring me to climax.
* * *
It was still dark when I woke up in a cold sweat and had to shake the eerie sense of being watched from the shadowy corners of my room. My stomach was full of nervous energy and a queasy tremor to the point that I checked my temperature. I had convinced myself that I was experiencing a delirious fever from food poisoning or a mysterious virus.
I was sick, but not physically.
It was a frenzy that I would have to drown out with mind-numbing paperwork followed by a night of excessive drinking—if I ever finished this report in time.
It was Saturday, but filing and emails had to be done before Monday. I hated wasting my weekends, but if I didn’t do it, my work would never get done.
My boss was reasonable most of the time. He had hired me before he realized who my father was, and he never treated me like the trust fund baby most of my coworkers saw me as. Someday, I would be funded by my father’s estate, but not until he had made his blazing dash for the White House.
I enjoyed my job and the team I had been placed on for the most part, but I tried to keep every facet of my life in its own little box. It was to protect myself from anyone who would want to get too close and see that I was a mess of old family trauma.
The constant work and obligations from my father kept me too busy to do much of anything else anyway, including moments with tall, dark strangers in fairy-lit gardens.
And there it was again.
My brain wandered back to the memory of Stolas’ lips on my hand for about the hundredth time that morning. The spark ignited to a blaze that shot up my arm and raged a storm in my core.
When the heat sank lower and caused a throbbing ache between my legs, I forced myself out of yet another distracting cloud.
How could his lips over my skin feel like they’d set my soul on fire?
Between actively trying to stay busy and my face getting so hot, I worried I would pop a blood vessel or melt my eyeliner off, I was fantasizing about whether or not I’d ever see him again. If our paths would cross at another fundraising event, or maybe on my father’s campaign trail.
Not that I would know what to say or why I wanted to be near him again so badly, but I was making up scenarios and would-be conversations in my head nonetheless. We would find an empty corner somewhere with a bottle of wine to split between us. He’d joke about his brothers, and I would tell embarrassing stories from when I was younger and would scare my nannies half to death by hiding in closets.
I would laugh at his jokes, allow the wine to go to my head and feel playful enough to touch his arm or chest. Then I’d lean in to tell him a secret just so my lips would graze his ear. Maybe our cheeks would touch and the stubble of his chin would rub against my skin. Our eyes would meet. We’d share a breath. Then, after the rest of the world had slipped into darkness, our lips would touch and my entire world would be torn to shreds because that moment would end too soon.
Damn it, Evie. Snap out of it!
I needed fresh air to clear my head of the alternate universe I had created in my head of his hands slipping up the hem of my dress and his fingers exploring me until I was breathlessly moaning his name . . .
A walk outside wasn’t going to be enough, but I locked up my office anyway and started down the street toward the coffee shop at the end of the block.
9
STOLAS
Ididn’t have to wait long. I knew after the night of restless sleep I’d invoked, she would be in the need of an afternoon espresso.
