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Bastian stayed in the room, silent for a moment. I met his eyes, my stare unchallenging for once.
I wondered what he saw when he looked at me.
The heavy slump of my shoulders? The way I slouched on his seat to dull the ache in my back? The way my legs crumpled to the floor in a lazy, sore mess that I couldn’t find it in me to hold up?
I had no doubt he noticed, inventoried, and processed it all.
That was the type of man he was.
But his expressionless eyes met mine and stayed there.
“Why didn’t you defend yourself?”
He meant against Dana.
A tired sigh slipped past my lips. “I don’t bother with insignificant things.”
We both froze at my muttered words, the implication clear and heavy in the air.
I bothered with him.
He was significant.
After all, we were always at war, engaged in a never-ending battle, with wits and lust as our weapons of choice.
I longed for my bed. Not my fake bed in my fake apartment.
My real one.
The one with the wine stain in the corner and the scent of coffee beans infused in the mattress from when my aunt had made me her ridiculous organic coffee stain remover, and I hadn’t had the heart to tell her those words put together made no sense, let alone in a stain remover.
I longed to bury my head in my Tempur-Pedic pillow and wake up a year from now, when the humiliation finally lessened and Bastiano Romano was just a memory I couldn’t shake but didn’t have to confront.
I waited for him to say something.
To deepen my mortification.
He didn’t.
Instead, he nodded his head and turned to the door, but before he left, he shifted to face me.
“Oh, and Ariana?”
My palms felt clammy. “Yes?”
Silence drifted between us.
He looked like he wanted to say something important, but he settled with, “Now, you’re late.”
ARIANA DE LUCA
“You’re coming with me,” Bastian stated as he strolled into the main area of the bar.
Not a question.
A statement.
Like I had no choice in the matter.
