Chapter 30 Eliana
ELIANA
baked alas·ka: /bākt ??lask?/: noun
“You need to install a clock in your coffin,” I inform him acidly.
“I—” Bastian frowns. “Wait, what?”
I shake my head. I’ve got creases from my pillows lining half my face, my hair is a bedraggled mess, and I am unwilling to open my eyes more than a quarter of the way.
But compared to Bastian, I’m ready for my debutante ball. He’s way more worn-looking than I am. His hair is standing on end, like he’s been running his hands through it repeatedly for hours. His shirt cuffs are messily rolled up, and the hollows beneath his eyes are dark and gaunt.
“A clock,” I explain. “In your coffin. To tell the time. Because it’s three-fucking-forty-fucking-eight in the motherfucking morning, Bastian. People tend to sleep at this hour!”
He just stares at me.
There’s no way he’s not hearing my volume, and I’m pretty sure he’s familiar with all the words I just used. His attention, however, seems directed a bit south of my mouth.
I follow his gaze and see him staring at my thigh. It occurs to me then that the sleep shorts I’m wearing are pretty tiny and pretty threadbare, and that, from a certain angle and in a certain light, you can pretty much see straight through them.
I blush tomato-red, cross my legs, and drop my hands in front of my lap.
Only then does Bastian clear his throat and drag his gaze back to my face. “I came to take you to see the sunrise.”
I feel like my brain is buffering. “You… came to take me to see the… what now?”
“The sunrise. From the lakefront.” He pulls my notebook from his jacket pocket and holds it up. “Number one on your list.”
My eyes widen as recognition dawns. “That’s my— Hold the hell on. You stole my notebook?!”
“Borrowed. Not permanent.”
“Bastian, that’s—” I reach for it, but he holds it just out of reach. “Give that back!”
“In a minute. First, you need to get dressed.”
“It’s not even four in the morning! Sunrise isn’t for hours!”
“Which gives us plenty of time to get to the lake, drink some coffee, and pick a good spot.” He meets my eyes. “You wrote that you wanted to see it. So I’m taking you to see it.”
I shake my head. “You have officially gone fully insane.”
“Probably.” He shrugs. “But I’m also not leaving until you get dressed and come with me.”
I cross my arms, and the motion makes his pullover, his goddamn pullover that I’m still wearing, ride up just enough to expose another inch of skin at my waist. The same inch he touched earlier in the elevator. “This is ridiculous.”
“You’ve mentioned that,” he says.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Also noted.”
“And you’re not going to leave, are you?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
I let out a long, defeated sigh that makes my whole body deflate. “Fine. Fine! But if you think this means we’re picking up where we left off…”
“I had no such thoughts.” He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’ll be the picture of restraint and decorum.”
“That’ll be the freaking day.” I turn back into my apartment, leaving the door open behind him. “Give me five minutes. And stay right there. ‘You shall not pass’ and all that. Got it?”
He mimes drawing a line on the ground. “Wouldn’t dream of stepping across.”
“Pfft, yeah right. You’ve never met a line you didn’t want to ruin.”
I pause in the doorway to my bedroom and glance back at him over my shoulder. There’s a long, pregnant pause.
I look at Bastian.
Bastian looks at me.
Then I shake my head and disappear.
I can hear him shifting in the doorway, but true to his word, he doesn’t follow. Part of me almost wishes he would. The other part of me knows that if he did, we’d never make it to the lake.
I pull on layer after layer—leggings, joggers over those, two sweaters, my puffer coat, another coat over that.
When I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I look ridiculous, but I don’t care.
If Bastian Hale wants to drag me to the lakefront in February at four in the morning, I’m going to dress for survival.
When I’m finally ready, I take a breath before opening the bedroom door. My hand hesitates on the knob for just a second.
It’s stupid, but I feel like a bride about to step out for the first look on her wedding day. That same fluttery, anticipatory feeling in my stomach. A before-and-after moment about to unfold.
I open the door.
Bastian turns at the sound, and our eyes lock.
The air between us thickens. His gaze rakes over me ravenously, and even through all my layers, I feel exposed. Seen. His jaw tightens, and there’s heat in his eyes that I’ve only ever seen in the half-gloom of an elevator suspended in time.
My breath catches.
So does his.
Then his mouth twitches, and suddenly, he’s laughing, and the spell breaks. “You look like a marshmallow.”
My face twists up in a scowl. “You just can’t help being an asshole, can you?”
He bites back a cackle. “You’re wearing so many layers that you’re wider than you are tall, Eliana.”
“Says the guy who barged into my home at the ass crack of dawn to drag me to the lake! In Chicago! In February!”
“You’re the one who made the agenda,” he counters. “I’m merely executing it.”
“You— I— Ugh!” I stamp and exhale an angry half-scream. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Yeah,” he mumbles to himself as he turns and retreats into the hallway. “Neither can I.”
I make Bastian promise not to say a word to me until I’m halfway done with my coffee. He nods and hands me a thermos, then stares out at the slate blue surface of the lake.
We’re sitting in the back of his car with the trunk raised up. The wind off the lake is brutally cold, but the car heaters are cranked to full blast and we’re both buried under a pair of the thickest blankets I’ve ever seen. I’m also dressed like the Michelin Man, so I’m not even shivering.
Bastian, on the other hand, looks completely unbothered by the cold. Like he doesn’t even feel it.
After a few minutes, I smack my lips and sigh. “Alright,” I announce. “The embargo has been lifted. You may speak.”
“Generous of you.”
“I am nothing if not a magnanimous queen.”
Silence again. The tension is ripe, but neither of us are quite willing to broach it just yet.
I take another long pull from the thermos. “How’s Zeke?”
Bastian blinks. “He’s… fine.”
“Is he ever gonna call Yasmin?”
“I wouldn’t know. I make it a point not to involve myself in his romantic disasters.”
“Smart policy.”
“I thought so.”
More coffee. He does the same. I watch a jogger pass by on the lakefront trail, their breath making clouds in the frigid air.
“So the HVAC situation,” he starts.
“It’s a nightmare,” I finish. “But fixable, I think. Frank sent over the full assessment. I’ve already started working on contingency plans.”
“Of course you have.”
“That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it?”
“Among other things.”
My head whips toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. “Nothing,” is what he settles on.
“Good.”
More silence. Each one is worse than the one before it. I can feel him gearing up to say something. His jaw is tight, his hands are fidgeting with the thermos lid, and there’s this energy radiating off him that I’ve come to recognize as Bastian Hale Trying Not To Say What He Actually Wants To Say.
“Look,” he begins awkwardly, “about today—or, fuck, I guess it was yesterday now—but anyway, about—”
I stop him by grabbing his wrist under the blankets. My other hand is pointing out at the horizon. “Look!”
He frowns and turns to follow my gaze. “What are you—”
But he freezes when he sees it.
The sun has poked above the surface of the water.
It’s just a tiny sliver, but as soon as it’s reared its head, the whole sky seems to sigh and give up its deepest blacks and purples.
We both sit in silence as it keeps prying open the lid of the night to make room for morning.
Gold, tangerine, flamingo—it’s unseasonably fiery.
Chicago in February is usually a pure gray affair. This is anything but that.
My hand stays clamped on his wrist. I don’t dare let go.
The sun rises. We both breathe in sync. Slow inhale. Slower exhale.
Heated skin beneath my fingertips.
Fire in the sky, golden and gorgeous.
“Check,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
Bastian looks at me. “Check?”
“Off the list,” I explain. “Sunrise on the lakefront—check.”
He nods slowly. “Did it live up to your expectations?”
I don’t answer right away. I’m not looking at the sunrise anymore, either—I’m looking at him, head tilted to one side like I need to find the right angle to view him from. In this light, his eyes are molten bronze, reflecting the same fire that’s soaking the sky.
“It did,” I say at last. “I’ll remember this one forever.”
I don’t know who makes the first move. There’s a longing churning inside me that’s been building since the elevator, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was me. But there’s something in Bastian’s eyes, something desperate and hungry, so, shit, maybe it’s him. I don’t know.
I just know that we’re leaning, we’re leaning, we’re leaning—and then, all of the sudden, there’s no more room left to lean.
There’s just the brush of his lips against mine. Soft. Impossibly soft. Gentle, too. Like he’s afraid I might break.
He deepens the kiss. His hand slides up to cup the back of my neck. That same spot from the elevator, a spot that seems to fit perfectly in his palm.
My fingers tighten on his wrist, like before, then migrate to his chest, fisting in his shirt. A tiny sigh escapes me that I didn’t mean to let out.
The blankets rustle as we shift. He pulls me horizontally until we’re lying in the trunk.
I’m beneath him now. We’re a tangle of limbs and layers, my marshmallow coat bunching between us. His hand finds the zipper and drags it down. Then the zipper below that. Then the one below that, too.
I wriggle out of my layers until I’m wearing only the pullover he gave me what feels like a lifetime ago.
He pulls back far enough to look down at me again and, fuck, there’s that look in his eyes. That hungry, devouring look that makes me feel like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
Then he slides down until his lips press against that sliver of skin at my hip.
I gasp as his mouth nibbles and sucks there. My fingers comb through his hair while he scoops one hand under my ass and raises me to his lips.
Everything smells like wintergreen gum. I drag him back up to me because I need him to kiss me again and I need it now. His mouth is as warm and commanding as it was before. Maybe even more so.
Our tongues clash and explore. He shifts the angle and cups my neck again.
I’m grinding my hips up to him, and he’s grinding back down into me, but carefully, because he still thinks I’m breakable, even though what I want to tell him is that every girl wants to be broken, just so long as she can be sure that the man doing the breaking knows how to put her back together again.
His free hand skates down. It passes over my shoulder and the thin line of my arm. Glides centrally, brushing my chest, then down again.
He hesitates at the waistband of my leggings, though. Pulls back again. The sun has risen far enough that we’re awash in gold. It’s cold as fuck where my neck is exposed to the wind off the water, but beneath the blankets, both of us are burning to bits.
In the elevator, we both acknowledged that this—this—was a bad idea. There’s no point in repeating ourselves now.
He just looks down at me. Fuck knows what he sees or why I’m going along with this insanity.
But all I have to do is nod.
Then we both know there’s no going back.
As soon as I do, his hand slides inside of my leggings. My panties are a thin scrap of cotton, and they’re embarrassingly soaked. He rubs his middle finger across my seam and the smallest whimper passes my lips. My hands scrabble for purchase on his shoulders.
Another pass and I cling harder, moan again. But when he teases my underwear aside and strokes a finger through my folds, that’s when I make the sound that’s been building since the elevator.
“Bastian…” I whine, with such a catch on the first syllable of his name that I feel him go rigid above me.
“I know,” he tells me as he starts to work a fingertip inside of me. “I fucking know.”
A curse punches out of him when I clench around his finger—a broken, reverent, “Christ.” He curls upward until he finds a spot that makes my back arch off the trunk floor.
My hands fumble for his wrist, nails biting his skin, but he doesn’t let up. “Look at me,” he rasps. I open my eyes and he nods. “That’s it. That’s so good. Let go. Let go for me.”
My mouth forms a silent O as it hits. He presses his palm flat between my legs to ground me through it.
I cry up toward the sunrise-streaked ceiling of his trunk as it ravishes me. He keeps pressing as he watches. Everything is golden light and sensation and Bastian.
When I finally stop twitching, he pulls his hand free slowly. I shiver at the loss of contact, then prop myself up on my elbows and settle my dazed eyes on him.
“Why do bad ideas always feel so good?” I ask with a wheezy laugh, as the sunrise I wanted to see so badly warms up my skin, wintergreen simmers on my tongue, and the perfect ache of Bastian’s beautiful hands pulse between my legs.
All he can do is shake his head and laugh along with me. “I have no fucking clue.”