Chapter 15 #2
The voices in my head disappeared.
We stared at each other. The seconds ticked by, but I didn’t want to move. In Donovan’s presence, locked in his sights, I’d never felt safer in my entire life. No voices shrieked in my head. No phantoms danced at the edge of my vision. There were no nightmares.
Only sweet dreams. Donovan looked at me like he’d been in darkness his whole life, and I was the sun. I basked in the feeling. I never wanted it to end.
Cynthia murmured something I didn’t catch, threw her head back and laughed prettily, and patted his forearm with a dainty hand.
Donovan flinched like he’d been shot and stood up abruptly. “Chosen.” Without even looking at Cynthia, he maneuvered his enormous body around the table, coming forward to meet me.
“Donovan.” It felt like I could breathe again—I inhaled, and my lungs expanded gratefully.
He came forward slowly—his eyes fixed on my face, towering over me, huge, brooding—and took a deep breath of his own.
The tense lines in his enormous shoulders visibly loosened.
He looked down at me, staring into my eyes hungrily, like a starving man looking at a plate of hot wings.
I stared up at him, equally dazzled. Why had I ever doubted myself?
I was forty-five, not eighty, and I looked incredible, especially now, in my elegant gold dress, with my hair swept back off my perfectly made-up face.
Cecil had taken polaroids to show me when he’d finished, and even I had to admit that I looked stunning.
Cynthia was beautiful, but she was just a minor princess. I looked like a queen.
And why had I let myself doubt him? There was no doubt in Donovan’s eyes. No hesitation, no apprehension. Only sweet relief and a deep, fathomless adoration shining in his eyes. He stared at me as if he loved me, and I let myself believe it.
I smiled. “Your Highness.” I dropped into a curtsey.
The edges of his lips curved, his very first smile. Then, he bowed. “My Queen.” Slowly, he reached out, took my face in his huge hands.
He leaned down and kissed me.
Stars exploded behind my eyelids. The sensation of his lips on mine was all consuming and all-encompassing, leaving no room for doubt or shadow of apprehension. His soft lips parted, cool breath mingling with mine. His tongue explored my mouth, and I reciprocated happily with my own.
God Almighty, his tongue—it was like another limb, dexterous and curious, promising wanton delights when it explored other places on me…
inside me. My core on fire, I nipped his bottom lip playfully.
He made a manly noise, deep in his chest, and wound his fingers in the hair at the back of my neck, pulling me closer, kissing me harder.
I forgot everything—my mile-long list of worries, the Aladdin’s cave filled with my enemies, even the sexy femme fatale at the table behind us. I kissed Donovan and savored every second.
After a million years and not nearly long enough, I heard the sound of a woman loudly clearing her throat.
I ignored it and happily kept on kissing Donovan.
The feel of his lips, soft and gentle but somehow hard and demanding at the same time, it was heaven.
You’d have to drag me kicking and screaming out of this ecstasy.
She cleared her throat again. Then, she laughed. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here and wait for you to finish sucking face with your mom. Come back to me when you’re done, would you?”
Irritation spiked. This bitch was only ten years younger than me.
And if the rumors were true, Cynthia did enough coke to directly prop up the economy of Columbia, so her looks weren’t going to last.
I broke the kiss and looked around Donovan’s enormous shoulders. Cynthia was still sitting there, watching us with an expression of patient bemusement on her face.
“Do you mind?” I asked her, my voice ice-cold. “You’re in my seat.”
Her eyes bulged for a second. “Excuse me?”
“I said, you’re in my seat.”
She lifted her chin. “Who the fuck are you?”
Just then, I realized that the restaurant had gone quiet. Cynthia Grace was a local celebrity; everyone knew her. She really thought she could wander over to Donovan’s table in the VIP area and seduce him.
I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. “It doesn’t matter who I am. I am the woman who should be sitting in that seat,” I told her patiently. “This is my table, and this is my date.”
Her lush ruby mouth dropped open in outrage. She turned to Donovan. “Are you going to let her speak to me like that?”
“Miss Grace.” Donovan turned to face her, still holding tightly onto my hand.
“This is my woman. I told you I was waiting for her, but you insisted on invading my personal space. I politely asked you to leave several times, but you declined. And right now, you are pushing my capacity to behave like a gentleman.”
Cynthia wasn’t going down without a fight. She wasn’t someone who was used to being told no. She bristled, thrusting out her chest. “Do you know who I am?”
I rolled my eyes. “Everyone knows who you are, Cynthia. It’s not a good thing, sweetie, in fact, it kind of makes everything worse.
You’re embarrassing yourself.” I tilted my head and gave her the most patronizing stare I could manage.
“Let me guess, you’re two grams deep already, feeling like you can take on the world, and Dan Raine and Jessica Morningside sent you over here to see if you could bag yourself a prince, huh? How’s that working out for you so far?”
Her face tightened with rage. She opened her mouth and closed it again, looking like an outraged goldfish. Suddenly, she seemed to realize she’d made a fool of herself. She glared at both of us for a furious minute, then tossed back her hair and flounced out of the booth.
A murmur of chatter broke out around the room, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I smiled up at Donovan.
He bowed slightly. “I apologize, Chosen, for the unpleasant intrusion. I should have thrown her bodily out of the booth.”
I grinned a little wider. “I would have paid to see that. But it’s not necessary, Donovan.”
“Indeed, it was not.” His eyes sparkled. “But as it happens, it was most auspicious.”
“Auspicious?” Realization dawned. “This just ticked a little box in the mysterious magical courtship rites, didn’t it?”
“It did. And it is one of the more difficult ones to tick off, as you say. The confrontation cannot be engineered, and it cannot be anticipated. I have already done it for you, and now you have done it for me.”
“I have?” I cocked my head. “And you have, too? What is it? What’s the rite?”
“Both of us must see off the ones who might challenge us for the object of our desire. Blood must be drawn.”
“But when did you— Oh. Vincent. The other day.”
He inclined his head, his eyes twinkling.
“No. Unfortunately, I arrived a second too late. You had already seen him off with broken fingers. I am speaking of Cress.” He frowned, and a wrinkle appeared between his eyes.
“Although that cockroach from your office would count, too, since he insisted on conjugals with you. Blood was not drawn, but bodily fluids were spilled, so I suppose that still counts.”
“Oh.” My cheeks warmed. I’d forgotten about Donovan beating up Richie Curran in the meeting room at work. Richie had been so terrified he’d peed his pants. “Well, to be honest with you, Donovan, I don’t think Cress has quite given up yet.”
His eyes shone with a lusty light of battle. “Then, I shall continue to fight her.”
“You’ll have to find her first,” I said, grinning at him. “Where is she, anyway?”
He sighed roughly. “She is quiet, and out of the way, so right now, Chosen, I do not care where my sister is. But you can rest assured that if she attempts to woo you again, I will bloody her nose.”
“We all know you pull your punches, Donovan.”
“Of course I do. She is my sister. She is young and silly.” He turned around, picked up a glass of champagne from the table, and handed it to me.
“How much younger is she?”
“She is the baby of the family, and the only female child, so my father spoiled her. She is barely a century old.” He sighed. “And a spoiled brat.”
“A century?” I choked on a sip of champagne. “She’s over a hundred years old?”
“She is old enough to know better than to interfere in my romantic interests,” he said, a little moodily. “If she continues to do so, I will continue to fight her.”
“You don’t need to. I can fend off that challenger myself.
” With a little effort, I tore my eyes away from him and turned to look down on the restaurant, searching to see where Cynthia had gone.
“And if we’re being technical, I don’t think I drew blood just then, so maybe I need to find another challenger to see off. ”
“The girl’s cheeks were blood-red,” Donovan replied. “You wounded her, almost mortally. Believe me, Chosen, you couldn’t have beaten her more thoroughly if you’d swiped a sharp blade through her throat.”
I could see Cynthia now, sitting at the table in the middle of the restaurant, in a threesome with Jessica Morningside and Dan Raine.
I’d been right; they had sent her over to stir up trouble.
Cynthia’s cheeks were still flushed, but not in a pretty way.
In fact, the skin of her bare chest was blotchy and red.
The three of them had their heads together, arguing in a low tone. Cynthia looked furious.
“I almost feel sorry for her,” I said softly. “She’s just a pawn in Juliette’s little mind-games.”
“Juliette. The one you had lunch with today? The one who deals in gossip?”
“That’s her.”
Donovan turned to look out at the crowd below us. We really had a fantastic view of the whole restaurant from here. I’d never been in the VIP area before, and now, I didn’t want to leave. I felt like a minor Greek god, watching the mortals do silly things from my perch high atop Olympus.
Donovan glared around the restaurant for a moment. “Is this Juliette here?”