Chapter 15 Eliana
ELIANA
tan·nins: /?tan?nz/: noun
It’s not the things Bastian says that befuddle me. Well, not just the things he says. It’s the way he says them that does something insane and inexplicable to my frontal lobe.
When he growls, Get your coat, Hunter. You’re coming with me, I’m suddenly no longer an adult woman in possession of things like “common sense” or “social skills.” I’m a cavewoman.
A Neanderthal. My brain has devolved approximately forty thousand years, and all I can think is, Big man say go. Me go with big man.
It’s mortifying.
Even more mortifying? The way my stupid, treacherous body responds when he places his hand on the small of my back to shepherd me toward his car.
It’s barely a touch—just his fingertips through my coat—but my nerve endings light up like someone set off Fourth of July fireworks under my skin.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound that would be wildly inappropriate for a parking garage.
“You’re shaking,” Bastian observes as we reach his car—a sleek black Audi.
“Am I?” I ask, trying and failing to keep said shake out of my voice.
“Mm.” He opens the passenger door for me—an unexpectedly gentlemanly gesture that scrambles my circuits even further. “Practically vibrating.”
“That’s just the hypothermia from being imprisoned in your walk-in freezer,” I mutter. I slide into the seat and my Ann Taylor-clad ass makes an unladylike squelch on the German leather.
He closes my door and walks around to the driver’s side. When he settles behind the wheel, the car suddenly feels too small. Like all the oxygen has been replaced with his cologne and testosterone and whatever pheromone he emits that makes me want to do deeply unwise things.
“So,” I say as he pulls out of the garage, “are you going to tell me what’s really going on? Because I gotta say, I’m a little confused. This morning, you wanted to murder me and stash my corpse alongside the frozen sides of beef. Now, I’m your plus-one to some fancy-pants event?”
“It’s an investor wine tasting at Coruscant.
” He navigates Chicago traffic with one hand.
The other rests on the console between us.
I can’t stop looking at it again and again, like it’s gonna do something risqué if I take my eyes off it.
“You’re my project manager. Try not to embarrass either of us. ”
Coruscant. The crème de la crème of Chicago fine dining. The sort of place that tells movie stars to take a hike. Even saying the name out loud makes me feel poor.
“I don’t think I can afford to eat there,” I mumble.
“You can now,” Bastian replies.
“Okay, fine, yes, your generosity has changed my station in life and I am eternally grateful—truly, I worship at your feet—but seriously, I don’t know the right forks to use or how to pronounce the wine names or—”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Easy for you to say. You probably came out of the womb knowing which spoon is for soup.”
A shadow crosses over his face, so dark and cold and sudden that I almost shiver. “Not quite.” The hand resting on the console between us flexes and then straightens out again.
Before I can ask what he means, we’re pulling up to Coruscant’s valet stand.
The building is a giant egg of black glass and graceful steel.
Through the windows, I can see glimpses of the interior: chandeliers dripping crystals, white tablecloths, people who look like they stepped out of a Vogue spread.
“I can’t do this.” The valet opens my door, but I stay frozen in my seat. “Bastian, I’m serious. I don’t know how to—”
“Get out, Eliana.”
I climb out on shaking legs, hyperaware of my off-the-rack outfit that’s two years old and wasn’t even that nice when I bought it. The valet’s eyes slide over me with polite disinterest, but I feel the assessment anyway. She doesn’t belong here.
You’re right about that, buddy.
Bastian appears at my elbow. His hand finds that spot on my lower back again. But instead of guiding me toward the main entrance where a suited doorman waits, he steers me around the side of the building.
“Where are we going?”
“Service entrance.”
“Oh, good,” I snark. “Because I wasn’t feeling quite enough like the help already.”
“Quit pitying yourself. It doesn’t suit you.”
He pushes through an unmarked door into a narrow hallway that smells like fresh bread and brown butter.
We pass servers polishing silverware, line cooks prepping their stations, a sommelier examining bottles under the light.
No one questions Bastian’s presence—they just nod respectfully and return to their work.
He leads me into a small private room and starts pulling bottles of wine out of a small refrigerator tucked beneath the shelf.
“Uh… what are we doing?” I ask.
“School is in session. Crash course.” He’s popping the cork on one of the bottles and pouring a splash each in two glasses. “The investors we’re meeting are wine obsessives. They’ll judge you within thirty seconds based on how you hold your glass.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Welcome to high society. It’s even dumber than you could possibly imagine.” He hands me a glass of something that looks like liquid rubies. “Come here.”
I approach warily. When I reach for the glass, he makes a disapproving sound. “Wrong.”
“I haven’t even touched it yet!”
“Exactly. You’re reaching like you’re grabbing a beer at a sports bar.” He sets the glass down. “Try again.”
I reach again, more carefully this time, but apparently still wrong because Bastian steps behind me. His chest presses against my back, solid and warm, and his hand wraps around mine.
“Stem, not bowl.” His fingers adjust my grip. “You’ll warm it otherwise, which will change the temperature and ruin the taste. Hold it like this. Gently. Like a lover.”
His breath ghosts across my ear, and I have to lock my knees to keep from swaying back against him. This is torture. Exquisite, confusing torture.
“Good. Now, swirl.” He guides my hand in a circular motion. As I rotate, the wine climbs the sides of the glass in elegant, swishing waves. “Feel that weight? That’s how you know it’s real. Good wine has presence.”
“Like you?” It was supposed to be a sarcastic joke, a real zinger, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the tone of the message got switched around, so it comes out instead like a husky, Marilyn Monroe-esque come-on.
I feel rather than hear his laugh—a rumble in his chest against my spine. “I have presence?”
“You have something,” I mutter in a desperate attempt to avoid this disastrous turn in the conversation. “Mostly, it’s arrogance, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”
I don’t want to wait around to see what his reaction might be, so I drink instead.
I bring the glass to my lips and take a healthy swig, the way I usually drink wine—which is to say, like someone who buys it from the grocery store sale rack and chugs it from a coffee mug while binge-watching Love Island.
“Christ, that hurt my soul to watch.” His free hand comes up to stop me. Fingers pressing against my throat. “Slower. Let me feel you swallow.”
I nearly choke. “Excuse me?”
“You’re drinking it like water. Wine needs time on your palate.” His fingers stay on my throat, and when I swallow reflexively, I feel him track the movement. “Again. Smaller sip.”
This time, I barely let the wine touch my lips. All of my powers of concentration are focused on the points where his fingers touch my skin.
I knew that hand was dangerous.
He’s proving me very, very right.
“Better. Now, hold it in your mouth for a moment. Let it warm slightly. Let it tease you.”
I do as instructed. The flavor of the wine simmers and spreads across my tongue.
“What do you taste?” He’s still behind me, still close enough that I can feel his body heat.
“Cherries? Which is to say, it tastes like my lip gloss from sixth grade, and that tasted like cherries, so I’m gonna say, ‘cherries.’”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. Dirt?”
“That’s earth. Terroir. What else?”
“Something… sharp? Dry?”
“Tannins.” He reaches around me for his own glass. “They create structure. Without them, wine is just grape juice with ambition.”
“Title of my autobiography,” I joke weakly.
Bastian doesn’t laugh. I feel his eyes boring into the side of my face instead. He’s quiet for a moment, then steps away. The loss of his warmth makes me shiver. “Again. This time, aerate it first.”
“How?”
He demonstrates, drawing air through the wine with a subtle slurping sound that should be gross but somehow isn’t when he does it. Everything Bastian does has this infuriating elegance to it.
Me, on the other hand? I try to copy him and end up spluttering as wine goes down the wrong pipe.
“Classy,” he says dryly. “Try again. Less air.”
“Why do you care if I’m good at this?” I finally ask, setting down my glass before I do something stupid like knock it back purely for the liquid courage.
He looks at me for a long moment. “I don’t. But if you’re going blind, I figure you’d better develop the senses you’ll have left.”
At first, I think to myself, That’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like he’s pronouncing my death sentence. Not that he’s the one doing it to me, but when he says it like that, it feels like hell, maybe he is.
But then the initial sting passes and a different sort of reaction starts to blossom.
It’s almost… nice, how few fucks he gives.
He doesn’t care if I like him or if anyone on this planet does.
He doesn’t give a shit about politeness or feelings.
It’s so freeing, in the strangest way, to meet someone who can afford not to waste heartache on trying to make the people around him happy.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to make Mama happy, and I still can’t. The thought of simply letting that burden float off my shoulders and away is… It’s something. Not something possible, not for me, but still… something.
“That’s… ” I swallow hard. “That’s actually good advice.”
“I have my moments.”
His eyes fix on mine. Another beat passes of him looking at me and me looking at him and the rest of the world receding into meaninglessness and nothingness. Then…
“Well,” he sighs, “class is dismissed.”
“How’d I do?”
“D’s get degrees, as they say.”
I smack him in the shoulder. “Rude! That was a C-plus effort at worst.”
One half of his mouth grins while the other stays planted in its usual scowling position. “Your palate isn’t terrible,” he says finally. “That’s as nice as I’m ever gonna get. Ready to go feed the sharks?”
“Nope,” I say flatly.
“Good. Confidence is overrated.” He straightens his cuffs—a tell I’m beginning to recognize as his reset button—then starts to move toward the door. Halfway there, though, he pauses. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“When Harold Fitzgerald—he’ll be the one with the bow tie—starts talking about his wine collection, look impressed but not too eager. He’ll offer to show you his cellar. Decline politely.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s sixty-three, married, and has wandering hands.”
I shudder. “Gross.”
“Agreed. Stay close to me.”
“Worried about my womanly virtue?”
“Hardly,” he snorts. “I’m more worried about a lawsuit when you break his fingers.”
“You think I’d break his fingers?”
“If you don’t, I will.” He gestures for me to go first. “After you, Ms. Hunter.”
I walk past him into the hallway, my body still humming from the wine and his proximity and the impossible tension of whatever this is between us. As we make our way toward the private dining room, his hand finds my lower back again.
This time, I don’t even pretend to mind.