Chapter 16
Falling for Pesh
I rush to the elevator, but just as I am about to enter, a strong hand grabs mine and pulls me toward its direction. It is Pesh. How in the world did he get here so fast? He was just on stage.
He pulls me into his office, and the door begins to shut automatically.
I don’t have time to think about the whole eye contact rule before I snap, “What are you doing!?”
“Saving you from killing yourself,” Pesh responds with an authoritative voice. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You’re trying to escape to The Seventh Zone.”
I am taken aback, but I try to pretend regardless, to understand what exactly he is trying to say. “That’s stupid, why would I do that?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question. Why would you do that?” he responds instantly, almost interrupting me. “What were you doing in my office last night?”
I’m in shock. “I… um… knew my last test was coming up, so… I wanted to see you to—”
“To get my attention.”
“I…” I stop talking.
He pulls out many files. My eyes flicker, confused. With each file he drops, I am thrown back by his casual demeanor, but I maintain my straight pose. He looks up at me. I take a deep breath.
Suddenly, he’s walking toward me with a fixated gaze. “Installed at The Selection are trackers in your neck. I am your Patron, so I can see everywhere you go, every move you make, and my computers here hold all of the information about you and all your attempts to find out information about Levon.”
I draw back in shock and spit out the next few words, unaware. “My sister? You know her?” I collect my posture quickly.
He pauses, then dissolves into a compassionate demeanor, just for a second. “I had met her a few times. She was crushing the tests.”
“And did she do the study abroad like Patron De Londe said?”
He is silent for a moment, then steps closer to me. “What do you think?”
“I think if I get too smart, that’s a problem and Levon had that problem.”
“And you don’t?” He takes a step closer, and that’s when I feel it. This thing between us, unraveling me from the inside out. He leans down, and we are close.
Trying to avert the heat of his gaze, I drive my feet backward. Pesh smirks before stepping back.
“Why did you help me just now?” he asks, leaning against his desk.
“A thank you would be nice,” I respond, thinking I have an edge with that ego, but his confidence speaks louder.
“I would thank you, but I don’t think your intentions are genuine,” he says. What is he getting at?
“Excuse me?” I respond, puzzled.
He paces around me, calmly. My eyes follow his movements as I try to figure out his next move.
“Did you save me to help me, or did you save me so I could help you?”
I curl my fists. He looks at my nervous hands, then up into my eyes. “I was trying to help you,” I say.
He walks closer and whispers, “Get my attention.”
“What?”
My eyes follow his every expression. I am at a loss on what he wants.
I’m flipping the pages in my mind and trying to remember the topics that came up prior to this, to see if I missed anything, if I wrote anything, or highlighted anything that might have given me away, but no…
I find none. Except one, the one that I was sure I hid.
The one I was sure I did not leave inside this book. A note.
Then suddenly, it hits me, the only explanation behind this interrogation and confrontation must be that he stole it. He stole it while I was unaware. He stole this heart of mine. And he knew it all this time as I pretended to still have it intact. How could he be so brutal?
I am exposed. I can no longer hide my affection for him. Like a magnet, I feel my chest pulling me toward him, so I have to run, to move as far away as possible from him, in hopes to deter him from my path. So, I push my feet backward and put my hand behind my back to hide its tremor.
But he does not relent. He follows my every movement. Like a magnet, he is gravitating toward me. “Looking into my eyes, spying on me, any excuse to seem favorable before me, all to get my attention.”
“I…”
“I think you have it. You have my attention.”
What? I can hardly believe what is happening.
But I can’t stop it. And in all honesty, I don’t want to.
I let go of a nervous breath. I try to draw back and bend to avoid eye contact, but I feel the pillar behind me.
From a gradual scroll through my neck, he closes in, caressing my hair.
I gasp as he draws closer, touching my breath with his lips.
“The question is, do I have yours?” Pesh says.
With a slight smile in my eyes, I nod, looking into his eyes.
“Bow to me.”
“I… what?” My voice flutters.
He whispers in my ear, “I don’t repeat the same thing twice.”
I can hear my beating heart against the feeling of his ultimatum, heating every part of me.
I see what he’s doing. I defied him on the first day we met by looking into his eyes, and now he wants me to surrender to him freely, of my own choosing, or he won’t go any further.
I can see through his golden glare that he’s not going to let me off easily.
A part of his challenge makes me smile on the inside, knowing that I’ve always felt drawn to him, but my lips fold so as not to show it.
My eyes dart up, staring at the face of his challenge.
My eyes blink. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
But I give him the satisfaction he seeks.
He wants me to concede. Okay, I’ll concede.
For now.
I cross my legs, my right hand stretched out.
My left hand scrunches the material at the edge of my skirt.
Slowly, I bow. I hold still for a while to give him the satisfaction he wants.
Then, my head gradually tilts up. I take a moment, then my eyes dart up, colliding with his.
My right hand flicks like a rifle as I whisper, “Are you happy?”
“Mm-hm, yes.” He nods with a self-assured smirk, drawing even closer, relaxing on the side of the wall near me.
Just as he does, my eyes dart up, and succinctly I say, “You next.”
His eyes darken, flashing into mine, our gazes locked in a fiery constellation, and I hold my breath, on edge on what he will say. Before I can exhale, he takes a step closer toward me.
I tighten my fists as he advances, his piercing stare searing into mine, tracking every breath that leaves my body… but… he doesn’t bow. No.
“I’ll give you something better than that.” He kneels.
My lips prop wide open, speechless. What the… I shut my lips instantly as my eyes glance down to see him lowered on one knee. For me!
His fiery gaze does not leave me once as his last knee glides to the floor, his eyes staring into my entire soul. And then all at once, his fingers scroll up my thighs, pressing tightly.
My chest rises, shock racing through me. Oh my!
“Was that what you had in mind, Tavia?” His voice sinks into every part of me, gliding up to my thighs, sending a rush of heat through my entire body. Oh my God.
“Yep. That’s good. More than enough.”
“I can go lower.”
“No. That’s really, really… satisfactory,” I insist, gripping his hands, my body utterly flushed, every part of me on fire.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be the last time I get on my knees for you.”
His golden eyes flash with a smile and he stands up in the same beat. Just as he does, I turn my face away to hide my smile. Gosh, I didn’t expect him to go that low or do all that.
Just as my eyes return to him and my mouth opens to exhale, he grabs my butt in his erupting palms, pulling me up, pushing me against the wall.
His tongue grabs mine and ties it into his like that’s where it belongs, and I cannot feel my tongue without feeling his.
I feel him press on my lips with his as he rips my mouth wide open with the strength of his grip, entering into its depths.
My tongue is no longer its own. It feels itself surrendering to the arsenal of Pesh’s affectionate attack.
Just a day ago, he was trying to get rid of me. And now he’s using this opportunity to kiss me mercilessly, to engrave on me that I have finally exposed myself before him.
I would like to say that I had never kissed Pesh before, ever since the Chemistry Hallway. But. That simply isn’t true. Maybe logically it was, but pragmatically, it simply isn’t true. For I had kissed Pesh before.
I had kissed him in my mind with my endless thoughts about his mind.
I had kissed him in my soul with my endless caring for every inch of his being.
I had kissed him in my lips with my endless attempts to awaken his to speak the truth of his identity.
I had kissed him in my dreams, despite all my attempts to feign a disinterest of attraction.
But now, I am not kissing him. He is kissing me. I am simply reacting to an ocean of emotion, unprepared, unanticipated, uncontrolled, unforeseen, unpremeditated on my part, unimagined to happen this fast, or even to happen at all, especially from his part.
I can’t say our kiss is one of intimacy.
It is more of passion. It is more of a reflection of a recent obsession, of one that begs your entire attention.
It is more of a kiss of surrender to a challenger who’s met his or her match in one another.
It is not one of submission, for to submit one needed to desire the true essence of what it was submitting to.
It is one of surrender. We merely surrender our pride in this moment.
Yet still, it is not a surrender of pride, for the pride was never a part of either of us to begin with, only a glimmer of pretense that we utilized as a defense mechanism to survive in The Commons.
But in other ways, it is of intimacy. I think we are kissing each other because we knew our hearts and souls were made of the same material in the very moment we had met.
So we decided that the only way to reach one another was to clash, in hopes of breaking the other’s walls down, in order to step into each other’s worlds and claim territory somehow.