CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Isabella's POV

“Dance with me,” Nathaniel said, and held out his hand in front of three hundred guests.

We had reached the edge of the ballroom. The orchestra had begun something slow and old, the kind of song my grandmother used to hum over her newspaper. Couples drifted onto the floor.

Every head nearby turned towards us.

The thoughts arrived in a wave.

The Ice King dances?

Ten years of these galas, and I've never seen him dance once.

Look at his face. Look at how he's looking at her.

My hand still trembled from the hallway. I looked at his open palm. Steady. Patient. Waiting.

I put my hand in his.

He led me to the middle of the floor. Not the edge. The middle, under the largest chandelier, where every person in the room had a clear view.

Then he drew me in.

One hand at my back, low, warm through the silk. The other holding my hand against his chest. He did not pull me tight. He left a breath of space between us, and then, slowly, as the music rose, the space disappeared.

“One step,” he murmured.

I almost laughed. It was the same words he had said on the staircase, on the night of the dinner.

We moved.

He danced the way he did everything. Without fuss. Without showing off. Every step certain, every turn smooth, his hand at my back guiding me so lightly I barely felt the guidance.

Our bodies fit. My cheek was level with his collar. His jaw brushed my hair when he turned. I felt his heartbeat under my fingers, slower than mine.

Over his shoulder, I saw them.

Adrian at the edge of the floor, a glass in his hand, his face blank and his thoughts black.

Vanessa beside him, white-faced.

Gideon Vale by a pillar, smiling faintly, watching with interest.

Marcus Hale, watching Vanessa.

And all around them, three hundred people watching us.

I understood then.

Nathaniel was not claiming me. He was not marking his property for the room. He had walked into a hallway and found me pressed against a wall, and now he had brought me into the brightest light in the building and held me there, in front of everyone, with his hand on my back and his eyes on my face.

His message was simple. To Adrian. To Gideon. To every person watching.

Nobody frightens her while I stand beside her. Nobody. 

My throat ached.

“You're counting,” he said quietly.

I was. Chandeliers. Couples. Exits. The old habit.

“Four chandeliers,” I admitted. “Eleven couples. Three doors.”

“Count something else.”

“What?”

He did not answer. He turned me under his arm, slowly, and drew me back against him, closer than before. His hand spread wide on my back. My breath caught.

I stopped counting.

***

Vanessa's POV

Near the end of the song, something fell from Nathaniel's wrist.

A small flash of gold. A cufflink. The clasp must have worked loose while he danced.

The cufflink bounced once on the polished floor and rolled to a stop a foot from the toe of my red shoe.

Nobody saw.

Isabella had her eyes closed. Nathaniel had his eyes on her. Adrian was staring at both of them so hard he had forgotten I existed.

I bent down as though to fix the strap of my shoe. Then I picked up the cufflink with the cocktail napkin in my hand, so my skin never touched the gold.

Not here, I thought. Not in front of three hundred people. Not with blood waiting behind my nose.

I folded the napkin around the cufflink and slipped the bundle into my purse.

Later. Alone.

Then I would see what Nathaniel Blackwood's future looked like.

***

Isabella's POV

The ride home was silent.

Harrison raised the glass partition without being asked.

Nathaniel sat on one side of the back seat. I sat on the other. Between us lay a strip of dark leather and the whole of the evening.

I did not look at him. I looked at the city sliding past the window. Lights. Snow. Shopfronts. My own reflection.

And beside my reflection, his.

He was looking at me.

Not at the street. Not at his phone. At me. The whole drive.

The air in the car felt thick. Every breath took effort. My skin remembered his hand on my back, low and warm, and the moment the space between us had disappeared.

Neither of us said a word.

***

The house was dark except for the lamp Eleanor left burning in the front hall. His parents had stayed at the Ellery for the end of the auction.

I crossed the hall to the staircase. Nathaniel followed a few steps behind.

I climbed one step. Two. Three.

Then I stopped.

My hand closed on the rail. The hallway at the Ellery came back in a rush. Adrian's whiskey breath. The wall at my back. His hand lifting towards my face.

Why do I know her perfume?

My breath went short.

Nathaniel stopped on the step below me.

The step below put his eyes level with mine. In the lamplight, I saw every line of his face. The shadow along his jaw. The steadiness in his eyes. The patience.

He did not touch me. He did not ask what was wrong.

“Take your time,” he said.

Three words. Quiet.

Something inside me broke loose.

I took his face in both my hands and kissed him.

Not softly. Not carefully. Weeks of looking and not touching broke in a single second. The kitchen at one in the morning. The bathroom door. The terrace. The car. Every moment poured into the kiss at once.

He made a low sound against my mouth. Surprise. Then something deeper.

He kissed me back.

His mouth was warm and tasted faintly of champagne. He kissed the way he danced, certain and unhurried, and then not unhurried at all. My fingers slid from his face to his shirt and knotted in the fabric, pulling him closer and closer, until the stair rail pressed into my back and his body pressed into my front and I felt his heart slamming as hard as mine.

His hands came to my waist.

And stayed there.

He did not grab. He did not pull. He did not push me back against the rail. His hands rested at my waist, careful and still, while I kissed him breathless.

Then the fear came.

Not fear of him. Never of him.

Fear of me. Of how much I wanted him. Of how fast my body leaned towards his, as though the decision had already been made somewhere I had no control over.

The last man I had wanted had killed me.

I tore my mouth away and stepped back, up one stair, breathing hard. My lips burned. My hands shook.

Nathaniel did not follow.

He stood on the step below with his chest rising and falling, his hair out of place where my fingers had been, his eyes dark. He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he spoke, low and steady.

“You don't need to give me anything you're not ready to give.”

I stared at him.

He meant every word. I knew without hearing a single thought.

And his patience frightened me more than force ever had.

Force, I understood. Force, I had survived. Force had a shape and a sound and a smell of whiskey.

I had no idea what to do with a man who waited.

“Goodnight,” I whispered.

“Goodnight, Isabella.”

I fled up the stairs.

***

I closed my bedroom door and leaned against the inside, my back flat against the wood, my heart racing.

My lips still tingled. My fingers still remembered the fabric of his shirt.

Footsteps in the corridor.

Slow. Even. Coming closer.

They stopped outside my door.

I held my breath.

He did not knock. He did not speak. He stood on the other side of the door, so close the wood between us was the only thing in the way.

One second. Ten. Thirty.

I lifted my hand and rested my fingers on the doorknob.

The brass was cold. One turn of the handle, and the door would open.

Forty seconds. Fifty.

A full minute.

My hand stayed on the doorknob. The corridor stayed silent.

Then his footsteps moved away.