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“Go back tomorrow when everyone isn’t drunk,” Bennet says reasonably. “If you go back now it’ll just start shit.”
I’m about to agree with him when I realize where it probably is. I can’t go back tomorrow because it’s in their library. And they’ll want to know why I was in the library. “Shit,” I say, moaning. “I can’t.”
They both turn back to me, now genuinely confused. “Why?”
“It’s upstairs.”
There’s a painfully long silence and finally Bennet asks, “Why?” dragging the word out like two syllables.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just going back. Can you wait?”
They’re smug as fuck, grinning like henchmen as I get back out of the car and stride toward the house. The gravel crunches underfoot, I’m two steps from the door when I change course. Pierce is right, I can’t go back inside. Not right now. Even if Tyberius hits me, there are two dozen people who will swear I hit him first and then we’ll lose our seats. Which is frankly something my father should have thought of before sending us out here. If we’re going to provoke him we need more witnesses on our side. More of the Avons, the Cesarios and maybe, the MacBeths. It would also be better if there was a police report.
I know nothing about this house, aside from what I’ve seen tonight, but once you’ve seen one McMansion you’ve kind of seen them all. It seemed like there was a back door off the patio, and I’m willing to bet there’s some kind of in-law apartment around the other side of the house.
It’s quiet and dark as I walk around the grassy side yard, the noise from the back yard almost entirely muffled by the brick wall of the house. I’m cast in the shadow of the house and the enormous rose bushes all along the side, and for a moment it’s almost peaceful.
The yard slopes down in a slight hill, and I step carefully so as to not slip on the dew covered grass. There’s only one room lit up that I can see from this angle, but as I walk the light in that room flicks off. I freeze. Is someone up there?
I’m afraid to move, and I quietly creep forward, positive that the side yard is about to flood with light. I don’t think I can be arrested for being out here during a private party but I wouldn’t put that shit past them. Fuck.
I reach down, fumbling in my coat and pull out my cigarettes. Lighting one, I shove it quickly in my mouth to at least look busy.
I look up as the sound of a door opening has the hair rising on the back of my neck. There’s a balcony above me I’ve only just now noticed, the lights off in the room beyond. The doors open a crack and someone must be standing just on the other side. Can they see me standing out here?
Fuck.
I turn to go, holding my cigarette out, to look casual, when a tiny intake of breath makes me stop. I know that voice.
Why the fuck do I know her voice so well that I recognize it from a single gasp? Why am I turning around and peering up at the window, wondering what Etta is doing in the dark?
This is unhealthy on so many levels, yet I can’t make myself leave.
I pinch the skin between my eyes and exhale heavily, smoke rising in a cloud in front of me. I try to force my breathing to return to normal. It’s painful. Unnatural. When my entire body is buzzing and oh so aware of everything around me. When I’m fighting myself not to say fuck it, and rush up there right now, consequences be damned. When I’m wishing that I’d handled my few moments alone with her differently.
Unbidden, an image of a very different end to our conversation begins to form in my mind. I picture how I would lick into her mouth, stroking her tongue with mine, showing her without words how I would lick her everywhere else. She moans against my lips and I think she must understand as I tangle my fingers in her hair, not caring that I’m destroying her too-perfect curls.
I pull her closer, and I’m almost shocked when she lets me. I’m more shocked at how effortless she feels there, in my arms, like she belongs there and always has. I wonder how she’d feel wrapped around my cock. Riding me, with her tits bouncing in my face, or pressed up against her beloved bookcases while I rub her clit and take her from behind.
I blink several times. Gods. I don’t know for certain what defines good, or why she thinks she isn’t, but I know that things I want to do with her, to her, right now and every day until the end of time, are veryverybad.
If I wasn’t aware before this moment that I was not the hero of this story, I’m sure as fuck aware of it now.
I’ve studied every narrative theory, every form of storytelling and character model fromGilgameshtoSuperman. I don’t remember a part of the hero’s journey where the protagonist stands in the shadows of the heroine’s window, achingly hard and barely coherent.
But as I’m standing frozen, hating myself for not having the decency to leave, my entire purpose is shifted in the form of a single word. A single name. “Roman.”
What is a name, anyway, when it’s spoken like a prayer in the darkness?
Until this moment, I’ve been stagnant. But now, as the culmination of the last two days, the last three years, the last decade, comes into perspective in that word, I’m transformed.
I’m not alone in this. She wants me too.
And now, I have to have her.
Act Two
CHAPTER7
