5. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
I dreamed of the night he chose me.
Years ago, felt like a lifetime ago. Back when I still believed in fairy tales.
The cattle auction gala was all champagne towers and fancy lighting, a fundraiser for agricultural scholarships, and I didn’t belong there.
I was Demi’s plus-one, a last-minute substitution when her model friend had canceled. My sister had called me three hours before the event, her voice sharp with irritation.
“I need you to come with me tonight.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Wear the blue dress. The one from Aunt Cece’s wedding. It’ll have to do.”
It did, barely. Deep blue silk that kept slipping off my shoulder no matter how many times I adjusted it. I’d spent twenty minutes trying to pin it in place before giving up and accepting that I was going to spend the entire night looking like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen.
The venue was overwhelming. Crystal chandeliers dripping from thirty-foot ceilings.
Women in gowns that probably cost a hundred times more than mine.
Men in tuxedos and bespoke western suits that fit like they’d been born in them.
Everyone air-kissing and networking and performing wealth like it was an Olympic sport.
Demi had spotted Orion Barnes the second we walked in. I’d watched her eyes lock onto him like a missile acquiring a target.
“That’s him,” she’d murmured, gripping my arm. “Orion Barnes. Rancher, energy mogul, runs Cliff Holdings. He was on Forbes 30 Under 30 four years ago, and he’s only gotten richer since.” Her nails dug into my skin. “I’m going to introduce myself. Stay here.”
I’d watched her glide across the room toward him, all confidence and silver dress and practiced charm.
I’d watched him shake her hand, smile politely, listen to whatever opener she’d prepared.
They’d talked for several minutes, long enough for me to get a drink from the bar and find a quiet corner to hide in.
He looked like Texas money, but not the flashy kind.
A perfectly fitted charcoal suit with western detailing at the shoulders.
Dark hair slightly mussed, like he’d been running his hands through it.
A jaw that could have been carved from the Hill Country limestone.
And when he moved, there was something in the way he carried himself.
Confident, unhurried, like a man who’d spent his life around horses and hard work and had nothing to prove to anyone.
Then I’d seen him glance around the room like he was looking for something. Seen him excuse himself from Demi’s orbit.
Then I’d seen him walk straight toward me.
“You’re not mingling,” he said.
I nearly choked on my wine. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve been standing in this corner for twenty minutes, nursing that same glass of chardonnay, looking like you’d rather be anywhere else.
” He leaned against the wall beside me, close enough that I could smell him.
Leather and cedar and something warm underneath, like sun-baked earth. “I can relate.”
“You’re Orion Barnes.”
“Guilty.”
“Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know… networking? Shaking hands? Doing billionaire rancher things?”
“It’s my party. I don’t have to mingle if I don’t want to.” He was looking at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “Your sister introduced herself to me. She’s very… polished.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“She mentioned she was with someone. I assumed a date, but…” He tilted his head, studying me with those dark eyes. “You don’t look like a date.”
“I’m her plus-one. Her actual plus-one canceled.”
“So you’re the backup.”
“I’m the charity case.” I said it without thinking, without the filter I usually kept in place. “The little sister who doesn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night than tag along to a party she doesn’t belong at.”
Interest shifted in his expression.
“What’s your name?”
“Gianna. Porter.”
“Gianna.” He said it slowly, that slight Texas drawl turning my name into something honey-warm. “What do you do, Gianna Porter, when you’re not being someone’s backup?”
And somehow, impossibly, I told him.
I told him about my abandoned art history degree, the one I’d had to drop when the loans got too overwhelming. About my job at a small museum in Atlanta, cataloging donations and dreaming of something bigger. About my fantasy of restoration work, bringing damaged art back to life.
He listened. Not the way people usually listened, half-present, waiting for their turn to speak, but really listened. Like what I was saying mattered.
“Why didn’t you finish the degree?” he asked.
“Money. Lost the scholarship. The loans were already crushing me, and I couldn’t justify adding more.”
“Where would you go? If you could go anywhere?”
I thought about it. “Florence,” I said finally. “There’s a restoration program there, the best in the world. Two years of working with masters, learning techniques that go back centuries. At the end, you come out knowing how to save art that would otherwise be lost forever.”
“That sounds incredible.”
“It sounds expensive. Which is why it’ll stay a dream.”
“Dreams don’t have to stay dreams.” He said it simply, like it was obvious. “Not if you want them badly enough.”
We talked for three hours.
Three hours of conversation that ranged from art to philosophy to the specific taste of his abuela’s pecan pie.
She’d married into the Barnes family, he explained, brought her recipes from Mexico and refused to let anyone forget where she came from.
He waved off every investor who tried to interrupt.
He signaled the bartender to keep my glass full without ever making me feel like he was trying to get me drunk.
And through it all, he kept looking at me like I was something rare. Something worth paying attention to.
At some point, I noticed Demi watching us from across the room. Her expression was murderous.
“Your sister doesn’t look happy,” Orion observed.
“My sister wanted to be the one talking to you.”
He finished his drink and set the glass down. “I asked her to dinner.”
My stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“She said yes. But then I saw you standing over here, and I thought…” He paused, something flickering across his face. “I thought maybe I’d asked the wrong sister.”
“That’s… a line.”
“It’s not a line.” He stepped closer, and suddenly the air between us felt charged, electric. “I’ve been doing this for long enough to know when someone’s performing and when they’re real. Your sister is performing. You’re not.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. “Come somewhere with me.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere that isn’t here.”
My heart was hammering against my ribs. “This is very fast.”
“I know what I want,” he said. “I’ve always known fast.”
He took me to the coatroom.
It wasn’t romantic, a narrow space crammed with cashmere and wool and the faint smell of expensive perfume, but the second the door closed behind us, I didn’t care about romance.
His mouth found mine like he’d been waiting all night to taste me.
A kiss that stole the air out of my lungs and put his tongue in its place.
His hands slid into my hair, fisting, tilting my head back so he could take it deeper, and I grabbed the lapels of his jacket just to stay upright.
He made a sound against my mouth, and I felt it all the way down.
He broke the kiss only far enough to speak against my lips.
“If you want out, say it now.” His voice was rough. “Because once I put my hands under this dress, I’m not stopping until you come on my fingers in a room full of other people’s coats.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
He made a sound, approving, and his hands dropped to my thighs, sliding under the hem of my dress.
The silk bunched around his wrists as he lifted me, pressing my back into someone’s fur coat, wrapping my legs around his waist. The hard line of him slotted against me through his trousers, thick and already straining, and my hips rolled before I could stop them.
“Someone could walk in,” I gasped.
“Then they’ll see me with my hand in your panties at my own party.” His mouth dragged down my throat, teeth scraping. “Let them.”
His fingers found the edge of my underwear and hooked it aside. I had to bite my lip. He dragged two fingertips through me, slow, and his breath hitched when he felt how wet I already was.
“Fuck.” He said it like a discovery. “You were standing in that corner like this? Soaking through your underwear while your sister tried to sell herself to me across the room?”
I should have been embarrassed. I wasn’t, I was aching.
He pushed two fingers inside me without warning. My mouth opened against his shoulder and he clapped his other hand over it, pinning the sound there.
“Quiet.” His breath was hot at my ear. “Stay quiet and I’ll give you what you came in here for.”
He worked me with a precision that should have been illegal.
Curling and dragging. His thumb found my clit and pressed in tight circles while his fingers fucked into me in a rhythm that made my thighs shake around his waist. Every time voices passed outside the door, laughter, conversation, heels clicking on marble, he slowed just enough to keep me on the edge and not over it, like the risk was part of the point.
I froze once, a woman’s laugh right on the other side of the wood.
“Shhh.” His mouth was at my ear, his breath hot, his fingers still buried to the knuckle. “They have no idea I’m two fingers deep in the sister I wasn’t supposed to want. Don’t you dare come yet. Not until I say.”
I whimpered into his palm. He felt it and smiled against my throat, cruel and delighted, and crooked his fingers harder.
He didn’t ask me what I liked. He found it. The spot that made my vision spark. The pressure that made my hips jerk. He catalogued every tremor like he was learning a language, then used it against me until I was shaking, dripping down his wrist, my underwear shoved aside and useless.
“Now,” he murmured. “Come on my hand. Right here. I want to feel you ruin this coat.”