Amelia
I kiss him.
I've got his shirt twisted up in my fist and I drag him in before my brain can lodge a complaint.
His mouth is warm and tastes like the vodka he barely touched and something darker underneath it, clean, like cracked black pepper.
He goes still for half a second. Then he kisses me back like a man who's been holding his breath since I walked through Pietty's door.
The nerves in my stomach release all at once, washing through me with excitement and need.
I make myself pull back first. My heart's banging around like a moth shut in a mason jar and I'll be damned if I let him see how close I am to climbing into his lap in a parked car like I've lost every brain cell my parents paid good money to install.
He frowns. A real one. This little crease cutting in between his brows, like I've handed him a number that won't add up.
"What?" I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “You kissed me, I should be asking the questions.”
"I was checking something." I sit back into the clean leather and try to look like a woman whose lips aren't still humming. "We're compatible."
The crease digs deeper. "Compatible?"
"Mm." I drag my thumb across my bottom lip in a slow line, and watch his eyes track it. "Couldn't tell from across a dinner table, could I? A man can look like all that and kiss like a wet dish cloth." A shiver of dislike runs through me. "You don't."
He blinks a couple of times, trying to formulate whatever thoughts have popped into his brain.
"And?" he says.
"And I think we'll do just fine. Unless you have any complaints?" I look at him expectantly and he looks at me with those dark patient eyes. The heat that was snapping between us a second ago cools into something with edges.
"We come from very different worlds, Amelia."
My name in his mouth. Low, rough on the vowels. I could get used to the way it penetrates me, making my pulse come alive.
"I know," I say.
"No." He shakes his head, slow. "You don't. You come from a house with a name carved in the gate and I’m guessing you have parents witch expectations for you.
High expectations. My family come from a place that isn't on any map you'd recognize.
" He glances at the lit windows of his huge beautiful house and there's no pride in it.
Just fact. "What I do isn't garden parties and ballrooms with champagne.
The men I answer to aren't men your father lets through the door. "
"My father wants to hand me off to a Texan whose family is in oil," I say. "Pretty sure his standards aren't the gold bar you think they are."
That earns me what could pass for a smile. Briefly.
"Why'd you go?" he asks. "To the auction."
I look out the fogged glass at the black wall of trees and try to find a way to say it that sounds less pathetic than it is.
"Because I'm twenty-seven," I say. "Because my baby sister got engaged six months after meeting a guy who agrees with everybody about everything, and my whole family looked at her like she'd cured a disease.
Then they looked at me like I am one." My jaw's gone tight.
I unclench it. "Because I want the ordinary stuff.
A husband. Kids. Sunday mornings that belong to me.
And I've sat through every man they've marched at me and not one made me feel a single thing except the urge to go home and run a bubble bath. "
"So you came to be sold."
"I came to choose," I snap. "For once in my goddamn life. Everything gets decided at me. Too particular. Too much. Too cold. So fine. They want me married so bad, I'll do it myself." I turn and look at him dead on. "It just so happens you aren’t the type of person they'd ever sign off on."
The quiet in the car goes thick and warm again as he watches me that I can feel the weight of it.
"And me," he says. "Am I what they wouldn't sign off on?"
"You're the scariest looking man I’ve ever seen in a suit." My voice comes out steadier than my pulse has any right to allow. "My mom would need a lie-down and a brandy."
His eyes go dark. Something in his face settles, like a door clicking shut behind the both of us.
"You chose me because you want to rebel?" he asks, and I can see I’ve said the wrong thing.
“No. Yes. I mean—” Fuck. “Honestly, I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Then I thought I could attend and slip out early. No harm, no foul… Then—” I emphasize the word now and punctuate it with a flick of my hands, “I thought, worst case scenario, I find a husband who I can negotiate with, rather than some suitor my parents parade in front of me who is only looking to marry into my name for the benefits it would give them. Which means it would only be a matter of time before they were banging their secretary or whatever. And that’s not what I want. ”
Dayan nods his head, mulling over my words. The temperature in the car is cooling now, the dark night sky not offering any warmth.
“Only you didn’t negotiate.” I pinch my lips together and try not to chew the inside of my cheek. “I guess what I’m saying is, I understand if you are the one who wants out.”