Chapter 17 Stephan #2
It’s just a dance. But it feels like watching my own restraint waltz out of reach.
Damien nudges me, breaking my trance. “Looks like you’ve got an admirer.”
He tilts his head toward the bar, where a brunette in a red dress nurses something pink and sparkling. Our eyes meet. She smiles—sweet, practiced, expectant.
I take it as the invitation it’s meant to be.
“Don’t wait up, boys,” I say, rising from my seat and weaving through the crowd.
She blushes the closer I get, the air around her perfumed and soft.
“Stephan Marek,” I say, extending my hand.
“Anna White,” she replies, placing her manicured fingers in mine—a hand that has never known the weight of work or want.
Her palm is a pristine, unwritten page. There are no faint callouses from late-night page-turning, no nervous tension in the joints from clutching a pen against a DOJ deadline.
It is a hand that has never known the gravity of a life-altering secret. It feels fragile. Insignificant.
It makes my skin crawl.
I find myself craving the nun. I want the hand that found the Halcyon anomaly. I want the fingers that tremble with Catholic guilt but never drop the evidence. I want a woman who understands that a touch isn't just a gesture—it’s a pact.
I tell myself this is control—choosing the sin with witnesses over the one that would damn me in private. But even as I reach for her, I can feel the self-loathing in my grip.
I bend and brush my lips over her knuckles, a gesture so rehearsed it feels like muscle memory. “Would you like to dance, Ms. White?”
Her smile widens, bright and easy. “I’d love to.”
As I lead her toward the floor, I catch a glimpse of black satin in the crowd—Katie, turning mid-waltz, Carlyle’s hand still low at her back.
My jaw tightens, but I don’t break stride. The music swells, and I draw Anna closer, my smile a perfect imitation of charm.
If I can’t have the thing I want, I can at least prove I can still play the part.
The music pulls us into rhythm. I lead easily, automatically; my body remembers what my mind refuses to feel.
Anna gazes up at me, her smile sweet and vacuous. “You’re so intense, Stephan. What are you thinking about?”
“The cost of an acquisition,” I lie, my voice a jagged edge. I don't look at her; I look past her, watching the way Carlyle’s fingers splay against the small of Katie’s back. “And exactly what it takes to make something—or someone—mine.”
Anna’s breath hitches. A deep, delicate blush creeps up her neck, staining her cheeks the same shade as her dress.
She leans into me, her touch turning proprietary, emboldened by the dark promise she thinks she heard in my voice.
She thinks she’s the prize. She doesn't realize she’s just the placeholder for a woman who would actually understand the threat in those words.
“I imagine you usually get what you want,” she murmurs, her eyelashes fluttering.
“I do,” I say, my jaw tightening as the music begins to swell toward its finale. “Eventually.”
It’s perfect—on paper: every step, every pivot, a study in practiced grace. And yet my eyes keep finding Katie.
Across the dance floor, she moves in Carlyle’s arms—elegant and restrained, but her shoulders have tightened, the smile a shade too careful. When his hand shifts again, just below her waist, something in me ignites.
I draw Anna closer, though she doesn’t notice the shift. Her breath catches, mistaking my anger for attraction.
“Stephan,” she murmurs, her lips near my ear. “You’re quite good at this.”
“I’ve had practice,” I say, the words flat, automatic.
But every note, every sweep of the orchestra feels like a heartbeat syncing with a memory: Katie in that robe, Katie’s confession, Katie’s lips on mine.
The room begins to blur—gold and crimson and candlelight bleeding together—until all I can see is her.
She laughs politely at something Carlyle says, the sound slicing through the noise like glass on silk.
Anna says something else, but I don’t hear it. My gaze meets Katie’s mid-turn across the floor.
The orchestra surges, the tempo quickening into a series of frantic, sweeping rotations. I steer Anna toward the center of the floor, my movements sharp and aggressive. And then, it happens.
The centrifugal force of the waltz flings another couple directly into our orbit.
For a breathless second, we are side by side, moving in a parallel blur of black and gold. I am close enough to see the heavy, liquid texture of the black satin as it ripples over Katie’s hip, close enough to count the individual pearls resting against the pulse point of her throat.
The scent of her—that sharp, clean vanilla that haunted my office for months—slices through Anna’s cloying floral perfume like a blade. My hand on Anna’s waist hitches, a jagged break in my rhythm that makes her stumble.
For one fleeting moment, our eyes meet. The dance leaves her flushed, her pupils blown wide, mirroring the same raw, panicked recognition clawing through me.
She sees my hand on this stranger. She sees the Monster hiding behind a mask of charm.
Then the music tears us apart again, the distance yawning like a vacuum as Carlyle sweeps her back into the shadows of the crowd.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe.
Months of distance undone by a single turn of her body. Whatever moral ground I thought I’d rebuilt collapses in one look. This isn’t desire. It’s recognition. The same darkness looking back.
If Carlyle or Cassian saw the look between us, they’d name it what it is—evidence. One glance that could destroy us both.
The waltz ends on a soft, final note. Applause rises around us like thunder. But all I can focus on is Katie.
Anna curtsies, still smiling, unaware that I’m somewhere far beyond the ballroom.
“Thank you for the dance, Ms. White,” I manage, bowing slightly.
I turn toward the bar, needing distance, needing air, knowing full well that no amount of either will help.