Chapter 9 Asher #2
It wasn’t a question. It should have been. But the adrenaline from Victoria’s threat and the proximity of Charlie in emerald silk had burned through the last of my restraint.
She hesitated. Then her hand slid into mine.
I led her to the edge of the dance floor and drew her in—one hand at her waist, the other holding hers at shoulder height. She was tense at first, her body rigid with the effort of being this close to me in public after three weeks of careful distance.
“Follow my lead,” I murmured.
“I don’t really dance.”
“I’ve got you.”
After a few bars, something in her loosened. The tension in her shoulders softened. Her body found the rhythm, and then found me, and the difference between those two things was a distance I felt closing with every step.
She was lighter than I expected. Or maybe I was just hyperaware of every point of contact—her hand in mine, her waist under my palm, the brush of her hip against my thigh when I guided her through a turn.
“See?” I said. “You’re a natural.”
“I have a good lead.” She glanced up and the look in her green eyes hit me somewhere below the sternum.
My hand moved from her waist to her hip. I didn’t decide to do it. It just happened, the way my hand had found her back at the entrance—my body making decisions my brain hadn’t authorized. She didn’t pull away. If anything, she moved closer, and the room shrank to the space between us.
“The earrings,” I said, because I needed to say something before I did something unforgivable in front of two hundred people. “What made you choose them?”
She touched one self-consciously. “They were simple. I’m not one for flashy jewelry.”
“Noted.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I was betting myself they’d be your favorite.”
Something shifted in her expression. Softened. “They’re borrowed. Like everything else tonight.”
“The earrings may be borrowed.” I guided her through another turn, holding her gaze. “But the intelligence, the passion, the brilliance—that’s all yours. That’s what matters here.”
The music ended. I didn’t let go. Neither did she. We stood there, connected, her hand still in mine, my palm warm against the silk at her hip.
Her breathing had changed. So had mine.
“There’s something I want to show you,” I said.
The research wing was quiet. I swiped Destry’s key card at the heavy doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and led her through.
“How do you have access to—”
“My brother Destry’s a marine biologist. His research is conducted here when he’s not at sea.” I held the door for her. “Also, there’s nothing like money to provide access.”
She laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of her—and the sound went through me like current.
The main chamber took her breath away. I knew it would. Three stories of crystalline water, bioluminescent organisms drifting through the artificial current system, points of ethereal blue and green pulsing like underwater stars. The technology was staggering—but I wasn’t watching the technology.
I was watching her discover it.
Charlie moved toward the observation windows with the reverence of someone entering a cathedral.
Her reflection in the glass was ghosted by the blue light, and the wonder on her face—open, unguarded, completely stripped of the professional armor she wore like a second skin—undid three weeks of careful distance in about four seconds.
“This is incredible,” she breathed.
I moved behind her. Close enough to feel her warmth. Close enough that when I spoke, my breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m thinking about how it feels to be down there. Weightless. Suspended in the dark, with only the sound of your own breath.”
“Go on.”
She turned within the circle of my arms. The blue light played across her features, and her eyes—those green eyes that had been driving me slowly insane for three weeks—were luminous.
“It’s like being in another world,” she said softly. “A place where gravity doesn’t exist, and you’re free to just . . . be.”
Her fingers found my chest. I don’t think she realized she was doing it. Her palm flat against my shirt, over my heart, which was hammering so hard she had to feel it.
“And I’d love to let go of control,” she whispered. “And just feel.”
Everything I’d been holding back—three weeks of distance, of Ms. Winters, of watching her through glass walls and pretending it was professional interest—broke.
I kissed her.
Not carefully. Not the way a man kisses a woman he’s trying to impress.
I kissed her like I’d been drowning and she was air.
My hand cupped the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair, and she made a sound against my mouth—a small, devastated sound—that I would hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
She kissed me back. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer, and her mouth opened under mine with a hunger that matched my own. She tasted like champagne and something sweeter, something that was just her, and I wanted to memorize every part of it.
My other hand found her waist, her hip, drawing her flush against me. The silk dress was nothing between us. She arched into me and I groaned against her lips, one hand tightening in her hair, tilting her head back so I could deepen the kiss.
I wanted more. I wanted everything. I wanted to lift her onto the table behind us and take my time learning every sound she could make.
But somewhere beneath the roar of want, a voice that sounded inconveniently like the man I was trying to be said: not like this. Not in a borrowed room at a gala where anyone could walk in. Not when she deserved better than a stolen moment between business obligations.
I pulled back. It was the hardest thing I’d done in recent memory.
Her eyes were dazed. Her lips were swollen. Her hand was still fisted in my shirt.
“Charlie,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like mine.
She blinked. And I watched reality come back into her eyes like a tide—first confusion, then recognition, then something that looked heartbreakingly like fear.
The shift happened so fast I almost missed it. One moment she was in my arms, warm and open and mine. The next, the walls were going back up—I could practically see them rising behind her eyes, brick by brick, mortared with panic.
“We should get back,” she said, stepping away. Her voice was steady. Her hands were not.
I let her go. Every instinct screamed to pull her back, to tell her this wasn’t a mistake, that what had just happened between us was the most honest thing either of us had done in years. But the look on her face wasn’t uncertainty. It was fear. And I would never be the man who pushed past that.
We walked back to the gala in silence. The noise of the party was jarring after the blue quiet of the chamber—too bright, too loud, too many people. Charlie smiled and made small talk with a composure that would have fooled anyone who hadn’t just felt her tremble against him.
I watched her glance at the door a couple of times, then back at me with determination.
I caught up with her as she was already moving toward the exit. “Can you get me a cab?”
“Take my driver.”
“A cab is fine.”
The panic was back. Not subtle this time—her breath was shallow, her eyes too bright. She wasn’t running from me. She was running from what she’d felt. The distinction mattered, even if it didn’t help.
I had a car and driver at the entrance in under two minutes. She climbed in without looking at me.
“Charlie.”
She glanced back. For one second—half a second—the walls dropped and I saw her. The real her. Scared, wanting, desperately trying to protect herself from something she didn’t know how to survive.
Then the door closed and the sedan pulled away.
I stood on the steps of the Oceanographic Institute while the valets brought cars around and the last guests filtered out, and I could still feel her.
Her hand fisted in my shirt. The sound she’d made when I kissed her. The way her body had curved into mine like it had been designed to fit there.
My phone buzzed. Mike.
Mike: She get home OK?
I had her tracked. Not creepy—Mike had arranged a security detail weeks ago, after the parking garage footage. Standard protection for a key asset. That’s what I told myself.
Asher: Safe. Heading back to the apartment, it looks like.
Mike: Good. You heading back?
I stared at the text. Back to what? The empty hotel suite? The laptop full of acquisition reports? The silence that I’d been fine with—content with, even—until a woman in an emerald dress had kissed me like I was the answer to a question she’d been afraid to ask?
Soon.
I pocketed my phone and stood there a while longer. The Pacific was out there somewhere beyond the lights, doing what it always did.
I knew, standing on those steps, that everything had changed. Not the kind of change I could manage with a phone call to Cheryl or a directive to legal. The kind that rearranges you from the inside, quietly, without consent.
Charlie Winters had kissed me back. Had trembled in my arms. Had run because she’d felt it—whatever this was—and it had terrified her.
I understood. It terrified me too.
The difference was, I had no intention of running.
I loosened my tie and walked to the car alone.